Recasting sustainable summer holidaying: scripts, time experiences, freedom, place change and environmental imprints

Abstract

In the summer of 2020, COVID-19 border closures, travel restrictions, infection risks and other uncertainties forced many people to cancel or adapt their holiday plans. This disruption created an exceptional context to study home-based holidaying experiences, representing a departure from pre-pandemic habits and routinely rehearsed summer holiday scripts. Responding to a longstanding bias in tourism research towards (high-carbon) international travel and a neglect of near-home holidaying, an explorative quantitative survey elucidated what novel or altered experiences may disclose about summer holidaying attitudes and transitions towards more sustainable forms of tourism. Theoretically informed by conceptualisations of holiday time, place change, role change, and routinisation of holiday practices, a SEM analytical framework revealed two primary inclinations. One was receptive to summer home holidaying and was associated with recognition of the environmental footprint of regular leisure travel and a willingness to recast vacation plans accordingly. The other was averse to home-based holidaying, driven by the view that it was unfulfilling and by a desire to resume international travel when restrictions were eased.

Recasting sustainable summer holidaying: scripts, time experiences, freedom, place change and environmental imprints