Revisiting the tourism experience model: Tourists’ lived experiences during social unrest

This study explores the lived experiences of tourists visiting Hong Kong during the 2019 political movement. It adopts a constructivist philosophical stance and a phenomenological research approach, conducting interviews with non-randomly recruited tourists who were visiting, returning, or had recently returned. Through thematic analysis, we were able to identify and categorize these experiences into three phases: pre-visit, visit, and post-visit. These experiences include information gathering and emotional responses during the pre-visit and visit stages, setting expectations beforehand, enjoying discount offerings, facing challenges, engaging with local culture during the visit, and reflecting on evaluative and decision-making processes after the visit. The findings of this study extend the tourism experience model to crisis-affected destinations, enrich our understanding, and fill the research gap regarding how tourists experience such destinations. Additionally, the study challenges the prior conclusion that tourists can only expect negative experiences from crisis-affected destinations. It also plays a crucial role in providing implications for destination marketing and management, as well as policy development.