On the importance of leisure travel for psychosocial wellbeing

As psychosocial wellbeing includes a variety of hedonic and eudaimonic aspects, findings on
the wellbeing impacts of tourism can vary from negligible to substantial, depending on the research approach. The present study demonstrates this complexity by analyzing 508 qualitative
interviews in Austria to identify the spontaneously mentioned travel-related wellbeing statements contained within. Our analysis shows that holiday trips serve a variety of purposes, including long-term effects of both hedonic and eudaimonic travel experience, and – less
prominent in the literature – the importance of meeting travel aspirations. Future scientific
or practical investigations into the wellbeing impacts of travel need to consider this variety
and, consequently, seek to mitigate conceptual framing effects.