From Hospitality to Hostility: The Impact of COVID-19 on the Tourist-Host Relationship

At the beginning of 2020, the COVID-19 virus took the world by storm. It required society to stand still and left governments with the difficult task of implementing adequate measures, which also had many implications in the field of tourism. Feelings of uncertainty and fear have prevailed, creating uncomfortable situations between tourists and locals and their relation may even resemble temporary ‘alienation’. Hitherto, little is known about the exact effects of the presence of this virus on the tourist experience. Therefore, this thesis dedicates itself to find an answer to “How and in what ways has the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic affected the Western tourist experience, the destination image and the tourist-host relationship in destinations in Southeast Asia”. In order to answer this question, this thesis performed a qualitative research with an ethnographic approach in the form of in-depth interviews with ten participants who practiced international travel to Southeast Asian countries at the time of the Coronavirus outbreak. The results of this thesis demonstrate that the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak unleashed xenophobic behaviour of the local communities towards the Western tourists, which was caused by several factors, such as media portrayal, information scarcity and (often ungrounded) assumptions. In turn, the local communities acted out of fear, panic, and self-protection, leading to uncomfortable tourism encounters in which the Western tourist had been Othered, and temporarily took the position of the Reversed Other. Strikingly, the results of this thesis show that the Western tourists interviewed were able to put it all into perspective, by realising and expecting it was a momentary experience driven by steering emotions as panic, anxiety, and protection during a time of crisis. Therefore, interestingly enough, neither the tourist–host relationship nor the destination image seemed to be negatively affected in the long-term.