ABSTRACT
The role of domestic tourism as a substitute for international tourism has not received adequate attention in the literature. However, the potential for substitution has become particularly important in the COVID-19 pandemic context which has significantly impacted travel flows as well as the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Drawing upon data on major tourism destinations and generating markets, a tourism policy thought experiment is conducted to explore the substitutability of domestic for international tourism in selected countries in light of COVID-19 and other situations, such as the climate crisis and the urgent need for low carbon tourism. The analysis and discussion highlight the complexities in achieving sustainable substitution in rescaling international mobilities to domestic. It is argued that without careful changes to overall tourism provision and consumption behaviours in the international-domestic tourism division, a (partial) shift may provide short gains but is likely to fail in the long term. The paper concludes with a critical analysis of contemporary debates on COVID-19 related tourism transformation in relation to substitution between domestic and international tourism and sustainable tourism futures.
ABSTRACT
This study investigates the effects of cognitive destination image shaped by media during the COVID-19 pandemic on willingness to support and post-pandemic travel intention. Drawing upon the concept of cognitive destination image and through an online self-administered survey, the effects of four factors including trust, crisis management, healthcare system, and solidarity on travel behavioral intention are compared based on tourists’ prior experience of a given destination. To achieve this aim, ten countries with different coping strategies, numbers of positive cases and mortality rate were studied. A total number of 518 useable questionnaires were collected from the prospect international tourists who followed news related to COVID-19 for one of the selected countries and plan to travel in the future. Partial least squares – structural equation modeling and multi-group analysis were used to test the model and hypotheses. The results showed the high predictive power of the model on post COVID-19 travel behavioral intention. The findings revealed the strong and positive effects of trust and healthcare system on behavioral intention of respondents without past experience to visit a destination, whereas the effect of solidarity on behavioral intention was identified much stronger for the prospect tourists with past experience of visiting a destination. This research provides unique theoretical contributions by investigating the effects of trust, crisis management, healthcare system, and solidarity shaped by media during COVID-19 outbreak as the components of cognitive destination image on future behavioral intention across past experience of visiting a destination. This study also provides insights on post-crisis recovery factors affecting travel behavioral intention and demand.