Enabling home and destinations for the well-being of seasonal retired tourists

Abstract

This article focuses on the complex relationships among mobility, aging, and well-being among seasonal retired tourists. By adopting the notions of mobility turns and enabling places, it investigates how seasonal retired tourists maintain their well-being between their hometowns and destinations throughout their seasonal mobility. The cities of Sanya and Harbin in China were selected as study sites, and 54 retired tourists who engaged in annual seasonal mobility between these cities were interviewed. Four situations of seasonal retired tourists’ experiences of well-being in their home and destination were identified based on the characteristics of tension, balance, interpenetration, and reconstruction. This study demonstrates the dynamics and complexities of how seasonal retired tourists mobilize and assemble material, social, and affective resources, which further influence their well-being experiences between their homes and destinations. Its findings contribute to the literature by mobilizing the enabling places perspective to explain how seasonal retired tourists construct relations, generate enabling resources, and maintain well-being between different places.