Travel craving

Abstract

Tourists have not been able to travel during the lockdowns imposed to contain the spread of COVID-19. This unprecedented confinement has put travel in a new perspective, representing, for some at least, an intense desire which cannot be fulfilled. It seems that the effects of travel deprivation can be likened to the cognitive and emotional states experienced by behaviour addicts undergoing conditioned withdrawal (Savci & Griffiths, 2019). Travel is not an addiction, although expectations of travel and people's desire to modify current cognitive experiences make the concept of travel craving useful to understand individuals' subjective states. It is important to investigate the phenomenon of travel craving because the construct can potentially be applied in tourism studies to explore any situation in which travel is impossible. Pearce and Packer (2013) called for the study of the psychological, cognitive and mental processes that underlie tourists' motivations and travel intentions. Sporadic attempts have been made to investigate some travel-related addictive behaviour, specifically excessive flying (Cohen et al., 2011), but the application of the behavioural addiction framework has been criticized by Young et al. (2014), and Griffiths (2017). The contribution of this research note is to conceptualise the travel craving phenomenon, to advocate the concept as a measurable construct in tourism, and to assess its relevance in an empirical cross-cultural study.