Tourism, Suboptimal Health Status, and Dementia

This chapter critically discusses how seemingly disparate domains—tourism, dementia, and suboptimal health status—can be integrated in research to enhance people’s well-being through tourism engagement. Global challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic and societal ageing have drawn increasing scholarly attention to well-being and health in the social and medical sciences. Tourism, as a subfield of social science, may not frequently appear in the medical literature. Yet tourism scholars have determined that vacationing boosts travellers’ physical and psychological well-being, thus contributing to disease prevention and treatment. Consistent with the principles of predictive, preventive, and personalised medicine, travel therapy could offer people opportunities for customised health interventions through tailored trip experiences. Emerging interdisciplinary research has striven to bridge tourism, marketing, dementia, and suboptimal health status to provide insight into the impacts of tourism engagement on people’s well-being and health. This chapter presents a conceptual foundation for related empirical investigations. Future research directions are also recommended.