COVID-19: Determining the changing motivations of international second home tourists in coastal Turkey

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought dramatic changes in all the areas of life, and has inflicted many societal costs. The negativities in the field of health and economy are the prominent ones. The whole process significantly affected human behavior, preferences, and priorities. The aim of this study is to determine the impact of COVID-19 on the motivations of international second home tourists (ISHOT). In addition, motivations for buying or renting a second home in the pre-pandemic period, the push and pull factors affecting their decision to stay in a destination, and the emotional experience they had during the pandemic were also interpreted in the study. Qualitative data research method was used with semistructured interview forms. In-depth interviews were conducted with 26 ISHOTs living in Alanya, coastal Turkey. The results proved that there were significant differences between pre-pandemic and postpandemic motivations of ISHOTs for second homes. In the pre-pandemic period, increasing the quality of life, being happy, providing mental health and well-being, emotional relaxation, and getting away from stress were in the frame among the reasons that pushed ISHOTs to acquire second homes. During the pandemic, it was determined that these motivations were replaced by feelings such as anxiety, complaint, protection instinct, uncertainty, and a trust pledge. Low risk, information provision, hygiene, and health system were important reasons that pulled ISHOTs to their second homes during the pandemic process. Insecurity, late intervention, the health system, the risk of being infected, and inadequate precautions were the reasons pushing them away from their home countries.

Changing perspectives of international second home tourists towards recreational activities in Türkiye

“…The rest came to their second homes during the pandemic process. This proved that second homes were seen as an area of isolation for people (Baltaci & Kurar, 2022;Seraphin & Dosquet, 2020;Zoğal et al, 2020). ISHOTs participated extensively in both indoor and outdoor recreational activities before the pandemic.…”

“…COVID-19 has also affected the rate of use of recreational areas. Interest in some indoor leisure activities has disappeared (Baltaci & Kurar, 2022). This led people to engage in more outdoor recreation, which has been deemed safer than congregating indoors (Landry et al, 2020).…”

“…People who prefer a second home holiday usually choose a place of stay within the national borders. Research conducted during the pandemic includes these people (Baltaci & Kurar, 2022;Seraphin & Dosquet, 2020;Sheller, 2021;Zoğal et al, 2020). There are no studies on foreigners who buy or rent second homes from other countries.…”

“…Thus, both the destination gains economically and the local people and foreigners can live in harmony (Baltaci & Cevirgen, 2020). Finally, one of the motivation sources that affect ISHOTs in destination selection is outdoor recreational equipment (Baltaci & Kurar, 2022;Müller, 2016). Monitoring the attitudes of ISHOTs during the pandemic is important in predicting their decision to stay in the future.…”

How Has COVID-19 Changed the Way We Travel? Exploring Tourist Personality, Reactions to the Perceived Risk and Change in Travel Behavior

“…In the past two years, the influence of COVID-19 on tourism has been studied from many different perspectives. Besides numerous papers that dealt with managerial aspects of coping with the COVID crisis in tourism destinations and COVID-19 impacts on destinations [1,[14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23], a significant number of studies also focused on tourist behavior in the time of crisis [21,[24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31], due to its important practical and theoretical importance for the tourism industry. According to Yang, Zhang and Rickly [32] who have done a systematic literature review of early COVID-19 papers, some of the most popular topics referring to tourist behavior during COVID-19 included tourists' perceptions, intention to visit, psychology and their well-being.…”