소셜미디어를 통한 코로나19 발생 전후 웰니스관광에 대한 인식 변화

Abstract

Purpose This study aims to identify changes in tourists' perceptions of wellness tourism during the COVID-19 outbreak - spread - recovery through social media big data.
 Methods This study divided the study period into four periods: pre-COVID-19, COVID-19 outbreak, COVID-19 spread, and ongoing recovery, and conducted text mining using wellness tourism as a search term on social media. The collected big data were analyzed for keywords using the TF-IDF index, the centrality of keywords was checked through semantic network analysis, and the structural equivalence of keywords was analyzed through CONCOR analysis.
 Results The TF-IDF index confirmed that words such as forest, healing, and Jeju increased in importance with the outbreak of COVID-19; while travel, health, experience, and spa decreased in importance with the outbreak of COVID-19. The structural equivalence analysis showed that the important words were divided into general characteristics clusters, local characteristics clusters, public characteristics clusters, and festival/event clusters. With the outbreak of COVID19, there was a noticeable increase in the formation of clusters based on local characteristics compared to prior periods.
 Conclusion This study is significant in that it goes beyond a simple comparison before and after the COVID-19 outbreak to a comparative analysis of the recovery period to identify more precise changes in tourists' perceptions. Through this study, it was confirmed that not only the outbreak of COVID-19 but also the ongoing recovery period is changing tourists' perceptions. It is necessary to actively utilize social media in the development and operation of wellness tourism destinations, and to plan and hold more diverse and sustainable wellness festivals and events.