Cruise Tourists’ Well-being Study Based On Ground Theory

The development of human society can historically be seen as the process of the pursuit of a happier life. Therefore, how to obtain a life filled with well-being is the ultimate goal for both individuals and the whole community. However, improvement in people’s happiness is not significant during rapid economic development. This observation suggests two important facts. First, growth in the gross national product(GDP) does not mean that there will also be rapid improvement in gross national happiness(GNH). Second, individual possession of wealth does not equate to having well-being. This observation also shows that for the vast majority of people, work is insuffic ient for a complete experience of well-being. Nowadays, tourism is an increasingly normal part of peoples’ lives. Tourism has become a way for people to pursue a high quality of life and experience well-being. Therefore, tourism research needs to discuss the meaning of well-being in tourism and study how it is generated.Scholars have conducted in-depth research on tourism from many different perspectives such as economics, culture, sociology, and psychology, and nowadays, the number of tourism studies from the perspective of well-being is increas ing. The tourism industry perceives that its social function is gradually strengthening. Individuals perceive tourism as an important means for realizing a better life. The quantitative method is currently the m ain research method used in tourism, happiness, or well-being and it uses study variables obtained through operational definitions. This research approach lacks the process of verification of study variables from the tourist perspective.To explore tourism from the tourist perspective, the current paper selected 200 bloggers from the Sohu travel blog and used theoretical sampling to identify 35 bloggers for the study sample. We collected qualitative data by using grounded theory, which needs three analys is steps to explore tourism well-being: open coding, spindle decoding, and selective decoding. We found that tourism is a process of searching for well-being. A spatial composition perspective shows that tourism well-being exists throughout the entire process of movement between three spatial locations : tourist residence–tourist destination–tourist residence. In terms of its time composition, tourism well-being consists of three important parts: expectations before travel, experiences during travel, and memories after travel. Our construction of tourism well-being consists of nine states: fugue before travel; relaxed and comfortable; weakened negative emotions; enhanced positive emot ions; better interpersonal relationships; improved quality of life; immersion in tourism well-being; transforming tourism well-being; and settled tourism well-being. In exploring the experience level of tourists, we found that the level of experienc ing tourism well-being gradually increased with the travelers’ experience of tourism. Tourism well-being before and after travel is mainly a cognitive and emotional experience, while tourism well-being during travel is mainly a cognitive, emotional, and spiritual experience. Tourists come from a secular state of daily life and experience a memorable or sacred state of life during travel, but eventually return to their secular state of daily life at home. Tourism well-being is the ultimate pursuit of not only tourists, but also tourism operators(practitioners). Therefore, to deliver a well-being experience to tourists, tourism services should begin the tourism well-being experience before travel, which peaks during travel and extends to after travel.