Going on workation – Is tourism research ready to take off? Exploring an emerging phenomenon of hybrid tourism

Abstract

This article examines current developments towards workations as a new form of hybrid tourism driven by the Covid-19 pandemic. The neologism workation is composed of the words work and vacation – two terms that at first glance seem incompatible or even contradictory in tourism research. Since our study aims to delve deeper into the phenomenon of workation, we conducted a qualitative study in which we explored both the supply side (hotel managers) and the demand side (workationers). Based on the analysis of eleven qualitative interviews, we show that workationers neither fit into the category of working tourists nor traveling workers. Instead, the artificially created distinction between business and leisure tourism seems to be outdated, especially in a digitalized world.