Digital Nomad Tourism: The Experience of Living at the Destination

ABSTRACT

The negative impact of COVID-19 on international tourism mobility generated two opposite types of discussion: one focusing on how to return to "normality,” and another on how to transform this crisis into an opportunity for redesigning tourism. Mobility restrictions have created a test scenario for teleworking, which has led to the consolidation of the number of digital nomads, describing the professional who uses digital technology and needs a high-quality Internet connection to be able to develop both a professional and a social online and offline lifestyle, while travelling. Digital nomadism represents an increasing tendency worldwide, questioning the existing forms of combining work and leisure and blurring the boundaries between mobility for work and for tourism. As a consequence of the rapid growth of digital nomadism, various destinations have refocused their marketing strategy and present themselves as "digital nomad-friendly” destinations, with ideal conditions to live and work. Urban spaces were the first to react to this new demand due to existing infrastructure standards, whereas rural territories entered the game without much preparation due to the need for escaping the pandemic's effects, considered as isolated and safe areas. Through a theoretical perspective, this paper investigates innovation in the tourism sector in general, as it focuses on the analysis of not only a new segment of tourism but also the analysis of a new concept of mobility that challenges the conventional profile of a tourist and offers new opportunities both for rural and urban destinations. A number of emerging concepts of analysis associate coworking spaces with tourist attractions and the gender perspective within this type of mobility. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.