Proposing “healing tourism” as a post-COVID-19 tourism product

摘要

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the world’s tourism industry to a halt in 2020. UNWTO (2020) has estimated annual international tourism to decline by 58–78%. The COVID-19 pandemic has negatively impacted not only the economy but also peoples’ physical and mental health. The angst caused by the virus and the lack of social interactions caused immense emotional pressure on people. Recent research has reported significant adverse impacts of COVID-19 on mental health (Fan et al., 2020; Zeng et al., 2020). Hence, post-pandemic recovery plans must include products that focus on mental healing. However, the tourism industry has not proposed any concept to address the psychological impacts of COVID-19.