Travel for Meaning: The Present and Future of Tourist Wellbeing

Abstract

The relationship between tourism and wellbeing is becoming one of the focus issues in current tourism study. It is significant in theoretical and practical fields. Through analyzing the existing researches, the paper found out existing studies focus on the different impacts of tourism activities on happiness, but there are many inconsistent conclusions in existing studies. Some studies focused on "pleasure" (hedonic) level of wellbeing which lacking a deeper exploration of happiness, such as "eudamonia" level of wellbeing. Moreover, there was evident inconsistency in understanding and defining what is tourist wellbeing. Furthermore, the existing studies did not examine tourists' wellbeing from tourist experience, which is the important outcome variables, and ignored the experience of diversity and dynamism. On the basis, this paper presented future research directions and ideas.