Health and Wellness Benefits of Travel Experiences: A Literature Review
Abstract
Tourism has been widely regarded as a mentally and physically healthy pursuit. Thus, recent studies in tourism have paid more attention to the benefits of travel experiences. However, most studies pertaining to the topic have been conducted in the fields of organizational behavior and health science. Therefore, this research attempts to provide a comprehensive review of the literature on the health and wellness benefits of travel. The results revealed that positive effects of travel experiences on perceived health and wellness have been demonstrated by multiple studies. These benefits have been found to gradually diminish after a vacation. It was also found that there is a lack of research demonstrating the positive effect of travel experiences on physical health. Based on these findings, directions for future research are addressed.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Tourists who are at risk of burnout in daily life will actively engage with the restorative experience to obtain or maintain psychological resources.
“According to core tenets embedded in conservation of resources theory, tourists who are at risk of burnout in daily life will actively engage with the restorative experience to obtain or maintain psychological resources (C.C. Chen & Petrick, 2013).”
From Perceived Destination Restorative Qualities in Wellness Tourism: The Role of Ontological Security and Psychological Resilience (2025) · cites this paper as C.C. Chen & Petrick, 2013
Cites
Sonnentag, S., & Fritz, C. (2007) · Journal of Occupational Health Psychology · doi:10.1037/1076-8998.12.3.204 · Cited by 2,133 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
The role of functional and wellness values in visitors’ evaluation of spa experiences
Choi, Y., Kim, J., Lee, C.-K., & Hickerson, B. (2015) · Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research · doi:10.1080/10941665.2013.877044 · Cited by 72 · see citing works
Virtual tourism for older adults living in residential care: A mixed-methods study
Fiocco, A. J., Millett, G., D’Amico, D., Krieger, L., Sivashankar, Y., Lee, S. H., & Lachman, R. (2021) · PLOS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0250761 · Cited by 67 · see citing works
Liu, B., Kralj, A., Moyle, B., He, M., & Li, Y. (2025) · Journal of Travel Research · doi:10.1177/00472875241230019 · Cited by 42 · see citing works
Baldwin, J., Haven-Tang, C., Gill, S., Morgan, N., & Pritchard, A. (2021) · Information Technology & Tourism · doi:10.1007/s40558-020-00179-x · Cited by 15 · see citing works
- Authors
- Chen, C.-C., & Petrick, J. F.
- Affiliations
- Pennsylvania State University (US)
- Texas A&M University (US)
- Venue
- Journal of Travel Research
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2013-07-17
- Volume
- 52
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 709-719
- ISSN
- 0047-2875 (ISSN-L)
- 1552-6763
- OpenAlex
- W2099081637
- Cited by
- 369
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 45 · 2025: 40 · 2024: 46 · 2023: 40 · 2022: 32 · 2021: 39 · 2020: 19 · 2019: 24 · 2018: 25 · 2017: 19 · 2016: 17 · 2015: 12 · 2014: 11
- FWCI
- 20.01
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Travel Research (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Recreation, Leisure, Wilderness Management
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Diverse Aspects of Tourism Research
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Global Healthcare and Medical Tourism
- Keywords
- travel experience, wellness, health perception, physical health, mental health
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
