2021, Vol.45, No.3

Journal of Tourism Sciences 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 2.7

pISSN : 1226-0533 / eISSN : 2713-6388
https://journal.kci.go.kr/JTS

Based on the grounded theory, this study examined the experience of employment insecurity of travel industry workers during the COVID-19. In-depth interviews were conducted with travel industry workers who experienced employment insecurity after COVID-19. We conducted the theoretical sampling until the data achieved the satuaration. The data were continuously reviewed by experts during the analysis processes and NVivo 12 was used to manage and analyze the data. In the open coding process, we found total of 118 concepts, 30 sub-categories, and 12 categories related to employment insecurity of travel industry during the COVID-19. The findings suggest that casual condition was turned out to be ‘tourism crisis caused by COVID-19', contextual conditions were ’industrial structure vulnerable to external factors’, ‘insufficient employment policy’ and ‘digitalization of the tourism industry’ The phenomenon was 'experience of employment insecurity of travel industry workers' and the intervening condition were 'psychological change', 'low work capacity of human resources' and 'limited turnover opportunities'. The action and interaction were 'search and utilize of employment policy', 'k-quarantine and a system-based HRM' and 'establishment of tourism employment safety net'. The consequence was 'improvement of the tourism employment structure in the New Normal Era'. In the selective coding stage, the core category was found to be 'improvement of the tourism employment structure in the New Normal Era according to tourism employment insecurity'.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the domestic air transport as well as tourism and culture industries have suffered significant economic loss due to restrictions on movement between countries. This study investigates loss on production outputs in the domestic tourism/culture and related industries due to the decrease in inbound tourists caused by COVID-19, and analyzes pervasive effects on the entire industry. The amount of losses in the tourism/culture and related industries was estimated based on the per capita expenditure of inbound tourists and changes in the number of foreign tourists after the outbreak. Results show that loss in sales volume was significant in the order of the shopping, air transport, accommodation, and food service industry. Based on the results, scenarios were made by deriving estimated economic losses from 2020 to 2023 (4-year scenario period) in the nine tourism/cultural and related industries. The scenarios were incorporated in the input-output analysis to analyze ripple effects on the whole industry in terms of production, value-added, and employment. Final results indicate that the decline in sales of the tourism/cultural and related industry due to COVID-19 will result in a decrease of 94,071.7 billion KRW in industry output, a decrease of 39,064.8 billion KRW in value-added, and a decrease of 71,557 jobs over the 4-year scenario period. In the case of the culture/arts and entertainment industry, which is the industry of our main attention, would have a loss of 612.1 billion KRW over the four years. This will have a negative effect of 191.9 billion KRW to other industries. Contribution of this study lies in quantifying specific amount of damage caused by COVID-19 on the tourism and culture industry and related industries.

Freedom is an important concept in tourism, as it distinguishes tourism activities from other activities. Freedom is a prerequisite for tourism and an important factor influencing tourism motivation, tourism experience, and tourism outcomes. However, despite the change in the liberal paradigm and the diversified demand of tourists, freedom in tourism does not reflect this trend. Hitherto based on the classical philosophy of freedom, the concept of freedom in tourism only explains individual choice opportunities. Under the consciousness of this problem, first, the context and discussion of the concept of freedom are reviewed to examine the limitations of the concept of freedom in tourism literature. This paper proposes the expanded concept of freedom in the field of tourism, named tourism freedom. Tourism freedom consists of tourist-level psychological freedom, behavioral freedom, and communal freedom formed through tourism activities. This includes an understanding of community freedom within the scope of tourism, beyond individual and subjective benefits. In addition, freedom at the tourism-based level can be understood as internal resources of tourists necessary to realize freedom in tourism, external resources as a tourism environment, and institutional resources that promote them smoothly. Consequently, it is emphasized that freedom in tourism is a comprehensive examination of the aspects of tourist-level and tourism-based level, leading the issues related to tourism freedom to public rather than to individuals.