Sensory therapeutic assemblages in tourism: Qi and the health of snowbirds in China

Ke Wang, Qingming Cui and Honggang Xu

Annals of Tourism Research, 2024, vol. 105, issue C

Abstract: Individuals can cultivate novel sensory connections with places through tourism mobility, thereby obtaining health benefits. However, there is limited research on how the senses interact with other socio-material elements to enhance tourists' health. This study draws on assemblage theory to examine the health of snowbirds (Houniao) who regularly travel to Sanya city from north China in winter. The findings reveal that Qi is a vital component that associate senses (vision, touch and smell), destination elements (air, climate, landscape, people), body organs, and emotions to constitute sensory therapeutic assemblages to heal and restore snowbird tourists. This study demonstrates the dynamics, relationality and materiality of obtaining health through tourism. Tourism practitioners are suggested to adopt a relational approach to developing health tourism destinations.

Keywords: Health tourism; Therapeutic landscape; Senses; Assemblage theory; Qi; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160738324000045
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:anture:v:105:y:2024:i:c:s0160738324000045

DOI: 10.1016/j.annals.2024.103727

Access Statistics for this article

Annals of Tourism Research is currently edited by John Tribe

More articles in Annals of Tourism Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().