The Cocreation of a Pandemic Tourist Experience: The Case of Belitung, Indonesia

Abstract

Even as the global tourism industry has begun to recover, the evolving COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact how tourism experiences are offered and consumed. This article contributes to the literature by illuminating how power operates around and through interactions in the experience cocreation, particularly in the time of COVID-19 pandemic. It focuses on the way tourism experiences have been cocreated and influenced by what has been termed the ‘new normal’ for the tourism industry since the start of the pandemic. This article examined the impact of the pandemic on tourism experience cocreation on-site through exploring the construction and negotiation of the ‘pandemic gazes’ of hosts and tourists in a cultural tourism village on the Indonesian island destination of Belitung. Our findings identified 4 factors, namely Pandemic fatigue, Safe zone, Setting Impracticality and Convivial relations, which influenced how hosts and tourists (re)adjusted their pandemic gazes during their interactions in the experience cocreation process.