| Author: | Chen, Xiaolian |
| Title: | Understanding gumi holidays : an interdependence perspective |
| Advisors: | Mak, Barry (SHTM) |
| Degree: | Ph.D. |
| Year: | 2021 |
| Subject: | Women in tourism Tourism -- Social aspects Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations |
| Department: | School of Hotel and Tourism Management |
| Pages: | xii, 247 pages : illustrations |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | Women's studies in tourism are dominated by various feminist perspectives with research themes that merit travel constraints, empowerment, independence, sexualized gaze, and so on. Moreover, women's friendship is a special chosen relationship to which women usually attach great personal, emotional, and cultural importance, as it not only provides them with a sense of identity, but also confirms their social worth. Nevertheless, due to the less tightly scripted nature of women's friendship, women's friendship travel and its group dynamics have not been stressed or well-studied in tourism research when measured against the bundles of literature regarding the familial holiday and couple holiday. This phenomenological study examines the lived holiday experience of female friendship dyads, namely, guimi in Chinese pinyin through the data gathered from dyadic interviews. This study takes an interpretive research paradigm and proposes guimi holidays as mirroring contemporary women's demands for a diversity of leisure opportunities and interests as well as their yearning for a wide range of social and various intimacies in their lived touring experiences. A total of 25 friendship dyads were interviewed in semi-structured phenomenological interviews for the purpose of exploring each participant's views of their guimi holiday experiences with the specific enquiry into the meanings and the group dynamics of interdependence. The findings reveal that the experiences and meanings of guimi holidays are multiple and contextual for women with different marital statuses. Data analysis also revealed essential sub-dimensions which underlay the group dynamics of interdependence in the guimi holiday experience, including power over and power to, mutual dependence, coordination, and compromise. However, the guimi holiday conflicts were less mentioned by the participants in this study, but more coordination and compromise cases were reported. This is not surprising, as Chen, Mak, and Kankhuni (2020) indicated that it is a common Chinese cultural practice to emphasize the positive aspects and hide the negative parts, especially when interviewing Chinese participants about their personal relationships. The findings regarding the experiences and meanings of guimi holidays support previous literature about such experiences and meanings of girlfriend getaways and extend this line of literature by including the examination of women's close friendships and travel dynamics. However, the difference is: single women tended to have more guimi holidays than the married ones. Furthermore, single women emphasize the value of social connectedness from guimi holidays while married women tend to view guimi holidays as escapism from familial responsibilities. Moreover, all the participants in this study indicated that guimi holidays are authentic leisure and recreation activities. The authentic guimi holidays provide them with gendered fun and entertainment, escapism and freedom, a sense of empowerment, social connectedness, as well as a buffer to life events such as a break-up of a relationship, divorce, changing or losing a job, and so on. Clarifying the essence and the group dynamics of guimi holidays benefits the literature by illuminating this under-researched topic. This also provides directions for research and suggests actions that the tourism industry and health counselors might consider providing for females of different marital status to experience the benefits that guimi holidays can accrue fully. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | open access |
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