Experiences of Polish Tourists Traveling for Leisure Purposes during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Visitor preferences in rural gastronomic tourism environment and the related design implications

Since COVID-19, people have suffered tremendous impacts in all aspects of their lives and work, with subtle changes in their environment preferences. The rural areas, with their natural green space, low density, and leisurely habitat, have played an important role after the pandemic and are widely favored by people. Research on rural environments after COVID-19 has received much attention. In the wake of the pandemic, people's needs for the environment have changed not only in terms of physical space, but also in terms of psychological needs. To address the issue of adaptability and resiliency of the future tourism development of the rural areas, this study takes the real subjective feelings of rural visitors as the evaluation standard, and takes the rural gastronomic tourism environment as the research object. We analyzed a sample of 14,373 images and 324,676 comments in Chinese posted by 3484 visitors on social media to explore whether and how people's preferences for rural environments have changed since the pandemic. Findings revealed significant differences in preference for the rural gastronomic tourism environment factors before and after the pandemic. There is variability in environment preferences depending on different gender, environment flexibility and the region. From the perspective of the rural gastronomic tourism environment, the research results provide suggestions for rural planning and rural tourism sustainability, and provide feasible paths for sustainable development and conservation of rural landscapes oriented to human needs, to enhance the resilience and sustainability of rural environments in the future.

Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Tourist Travel Risk Perception and Travel Behaviour: A Case Study of Poland

This article aims to identify the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the perception of the risk of travel and travel behaviour by Poles. The study was conducted using the survey method and the CAWI technique and was carried out in January 2021. The final research sample consisted of 509 respondents. Tourism has always been exposed to various threats: natural disasters, terrorism, etc. In such cases, tourists choose a different, safe direction. However, in 2020, tourism found itself facing a crisis that brought it to a complete stop worldwide. The spread of the COVID-19 virus and safety concerns, as well as global travel restrictions, led to a change in travel during this time. The results show that the respondents resigned especially from going abroad for security reasons, choosing to rather stay in the country and other places that, from their point of view, were safer places to rest.

Food-Related Behaviours of Female and Male Tourists before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The literature contains scant information on the relationship between tourists’ gender and their attitudes toward food while vacationing. The present study had as its main aim to examine the role of gender in key behaviours concerning tourists’ food choices and eating habits; in addition, our study evaluated the hypothesis that gender interacts with the “pandemic effect” in modifying tourists’ food-related behaviour. By implementing a quantitative, exploratory, and descriptive methodology, an online questionnaire was developed based on existing literature. To this end, data derived from 474 female and 370 male tourists visiting Greece in 2019 (before) or in 2020 (during the COVID-19 pandemic) were analysed and evaluated. The results indicate that, compared to men, women were more motivated to taste local food, especially with respect to obtaining cultural experience and excitement, promoting interpersonal relations, and as a result of health concerns. In addition, they dined at facilities at their place of stay, as well as at Greek restaurants and taverns at a higher rate compared to men. Women also reported being more satisfied than men by their food experiences during their trips, and was found that during the pandemic they spent, on average, more on food than before. The study showed that the pandemic affected both genders; however, the most significant of the differences observed relates to the choice of dining facilities, in all likelihood, as a result of women being more sensitive to the risks of COVID-19. Overall, during the pandemic, women appeared more likely than men to adopt behaviours that are in line with the principles of sustainability, such as a positive attitude and motivation to consume foods produced locally in the country. Differences detected between genders can be used by various stakeholders as a benchmark to further improve the food services offered at tourist destinations.

Branding Built Heritage through Cultural Urban Festivals: An Instagram Analysis Related to Sustainable Co-Creation, in Budapest

Global tourism is posing challenges on the environmental and social sustainability of host communities, while the industry itself has proven to be vulnerable to threats such as a global pandemic. Proximity tourism was demonstrated to be a more sustainable form in every aspect, especially when locals can co-create the experience and develop place attachment in urban environments through placemaking practices valuing previously underused urban heritage. An alternative urban festival in Budapest focusing on the built environment attracts locals annually to visit open houses providing visitors with genuine experiences. Residents are actively involved in the cultural placemaking practices of the event. As visitors documented the festival and the architectural heritage and uploaded hundreds of photos of their experience to social media platforms such as Instagram, they contributed to the branding process of the event and to the placemaking process involving less known heritage values. In this study, a dataset of more than ten thousand posts was retrieved by scraping Instagram posts based on hashtags related to the Budapest100 festival and analyzed from a temporal and spatial aspect. Returning visitors were identified, who contribute substantially to the sustainability of the event and to the branding of the built environment. Results suggest that community-based local urban festivals are a sustainable form of proximity tourism, resilient even to the COVID-19 pandemic. Place branding through urban festivals focusing on the local built heritage can also decrease the growing pressure on city centers in tourist-historic cities dealing with overtourism.