Brothers or “Others”? Attitudes of Thais Towards Chinese Tourists during COVID-19

Abstract

ABSTRACT Although the influx of Chinese tourists boosts the economies of host countries, their arrivals are not without doubt. The present study aims to explore what underlies different attitudes of Thais toward Chinese tourists in the lens of exchange and contact at a time when the Covid-19 pandemic was decimating Thai tourism. By examining the nature and intensity of host-tourist contacts, and through thematic analysis of interview data, this study found that although the economic importance of Chinese tourists became salient when the pandemic drove away tourists, what substantiated an exchange approach represented by Social Exchange Theory was locals’ social and symbolic benefits/costs. Drawing on intergroup contact theory, we found that for Thais to improve their attitudes toward Chinese tourists, or metaphorically speaking, to find their lost brothers, social-cultural compatibility and resonances between the two peoples aroused in sustained interactions was the key. This study suggests that tourism researchers pay careful attention to the interplays of cultural particularities and the landscape-changing pandemic in a more complicated reality, when applying existing theories.