Living travel vulnerability: A phenomenological study

Abstract

Most tourism-scholars have taken an etic perspective on vulnerability, defining the concept as a risk for - and mostly confined to - vulnerable populations. An emic perspective, defining vulnerability as a universal, experiential state of the human condition is anyhow largely absent. Based on forty collected experiences from interviews with twelve participants, this study adopts a phenomenological stance and demonstrates that travel vulnerability is typically lived through different inherent, situational and pathogenic sources, ranging anywhere from potential physical harm and unfamiliar contexts to heightened dependence on the other. The peak experience for the traveller is described as a loss of soundness, where vulnerability actualises from a dispositional state into a transformative experience. Through a Nietzschean lens, the study suggests a different and more complex approach to travel vulnerability, where the concept is embraced and not transcended, lived and not avoided; in order to move towards fulfilling travel experiences.