The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the psychological needs of tourists: implications for the travel and tourism industry

ABSTRACT

This study aims to explore the psychological needs and satisfaction of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean tourists across three phases (i.e. before, during and perceived aftermath) of the COVID-19 pandemic. It fulfilled the theoretical extension of the Existence, Relatedness and Growth (ERG) theory to identify the basic psychological needs of the tourists in a pandemic situation. In-depth interviews, findings confirmed ERG processes of Satisfaction-Progression, Frustration-Regression, and Simple-Frustration. Nevertheless, the predominant psychological needs of tourists were different in each phase. The study contributes to a better understanding of post-pandemic needs of the tourists and is useful in redesigning travel experiences.

KEYWORDS:

• Psychological needs
• ERG theory
• COVID-19 pandemic
• tourism marketing strategies
• satisfaction progression
• frustration regression
• simple frustration
• tourism recovery
• tourists in Asia

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge Dr. Catherine Cheung is the first author of this paper. Ms. Miki Takashima, Dr. Helen Choi, Dr. Huijun Yang and Dr. Vincent Tung are all second authors of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The work described in this paper is fully supported by a grant from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (Project No. G-UAKA)