Vacation as a Public Health Resource: Toward a Wellness-Centered Tourism Design Approach

Abstract

In today’s technology-driven configuration of work and life systems, wellness imbalances underscore the need for time away from sources of stress in the workplace, school, and other living scenarios. Increasingly, consumers are turning to vacation travel for health and wellness enhancement. The tourism and hospitality industries can design experiences and services that support optimal health and wellness outcomes for consumers. Drawing from interdisciplinary perspectives, this study revisits tourism as a personal health and wellness resource and discusses opportunities for better leveraging design factors in delivering, communicating, and sustaining health and wellness benefits of tourism. This article proposes a traveler wellness–centered design framework and highlights the important role of tourism and hospitality providers in safeguarding human health and wellness.

Imagine being off-the-grid: millennials’ perceptions of digital-free travel

“…By relying on technology, travellers are no longer able to explore the holiday destination independently and have fewer interactions with locals (Neuhofer, 2016). Lehto and Lehto (2019) linked psychological sustainability with vacations by proposing a wellness-centred design framework to revisit the holiday as a public health resource. They argued that technology is one of the key factors leading to wellness imbalance, and travellers are seeking wellness enhancements on holiday.…”

Restoration of Visitors through Nature-Based Tourism: A Systematic Review, Conceptual Framework, and Future Research Directions

“…However, while the term “restoration” is occasionally used within tourism theory, it has not been clearly defined, related to nature, and theorized or tested until recently [ 13 , 14 ]. Apart from the number of published empirical studies on the restorative experiences of visitors through nature, no structured overview of research findings on the relationship between visitors and nature-based tourism exists.…”

Listening to Forests: Comparing the Perceived Restorative Characteristics of Natural Soundscapes before and after the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…However, based on our current knowledge, previous studies lack attention to the perceived restorative characteristics of natural soundscapes. They tend to take types of natural soundscapes in forests as the "treatment" without further dissecting the restorative process of natural soundscapes [29]. As Galinsky puts it, a very important, but much neglected question is "What makes a natural soundscape renew and re-energize people?"…”