Daily uplifts during the COVID-19 pandemic: what is considered helpful in everyday life?

Background Knowledge of what is uplifting and helpful during pandemics could inform the design of sustainable pandemic recommendations in the future. We have explored individuals’ views on helpful and uplifting aspects of everyday life during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Methods Participants answered a brief, daily survey via text messages during 14 consecutive days in July–August, 2020. The survey included the question: “During the past 24 hours, is there anything that has made you feel good or helped you in your life?” We used content analysis to compile responses from 693 participants, who provided 4,490 free-text answers, which resulted in 24 categories subsumed under 7 themes. Results Positive aspects during the COVID-19 pandemic primarily related to social interactions, in real life or digitally, with family, friends and others. Other important aspects concerning work, colleagues and maintaining everyday life routines. One theme concerning vacations, going on excursions and being in nature. Leisure and recreation activities, such as hobbies and physical exercise, also emerged as important, as did health-related factors. Bodily sensations, thoughts, feelings and activities that benefited well-being were mentioned frequently. Lastly, people commented on the government strategies for containing COVID-19, and whether to comply with restrictions. Conclusions To summarize, daily uplifts and helpful aspects of everyday life centered around social relationships. To comply with recommendations on physical distancing, people found creative ways to maintain social connections both digitally and face-to-face. Social interaction, maintenance of everyday life routines, hobbies and physical activity appeared to be important for well-being.

Assessing the Potential for Tourism Development

Increasing awareness of the relevance of natural resources for the practice of outdoor leisure and recreation purposes has contributed to the increasing attention upon the assessment and monitoring of the quality of sports spots. As such, evaluating the existing natural conditions and leisure-related infrastructures is crucial, helping public and private stakeholders in decision-making processes. This chapter aims at examining the conditions for surf tourism in the north of Portugal, enabling the monitoring and positioning as an international flagship destination for surf practitioners. This is done through a mixed-methods approach comprising the demand and supply perspectives and supported by an assessment tool developed to evaluate the conditions for the practice of surfing activities within a framework of sustainable tourism development. The relevance of assessing the potential and monitoring of the existing conditions for sport and outdoor activities, namely surf tourism, according to a defined set of attributes, is also discussed.

Fostering Daily Life Skills in Young and Older Adults With Neurodegenerative Diseases Through Technological Supports

Persons with neurodegenerative diseases may have behavioral, cognitive, emotional, motor, and social impairments due to their clinical conditions. The objective of this article is to provide the reader with the newest empirical contributions available and a comprehensive critical overview on the use of assistive technology-based interventions and virtual reality-mediated setups to assess and recover individuals with neurodegenerative diseases. A literature overview was carried out. Thirty-one studies published along last decade were selected. The retained studies overall recruited 438 participants. Four categories of studies were identified, namely (1) recovering of functional and physical activities, (2) communication abilities, (3) leisure and recreation, and (4) virtual reality. AT-based interventions were effective and suitable to promote adaptive behaviors of patients with neurodegenerative diseases. VR setups were helpful to assess and recover persons with neurodegenerative disorders.

The Effect of Leisure and Recreation on Sustainable Tourism: An Editorial Commentary

This article aims to introduce a Special Issue that contains five chosen articles on sustainability [...]

Leisure and Recreation in the Socio-Cultural Memory of Urban Women in the 1950 and 1960s Based on Materials from Volgograd

The article examines everyday practices of rest and leisure among urban women living in the city of Volgograd (Stalingrad) - a city that had been completely destroyed during the war. The goal of the present study is to identify specific characteristics in the everyday practices of women. The methodology combines comparative historical, biographical and aggregate methods. Interviews conducted along the empathy method made it possible to identify the sensual and emotional sides of the respondents' lives. The research is based on ego-documents (diaries, oral history), periodicals (magazines, newspapers), and statistics. The article discusses the concepts of free time and rest as preserved in the memory of townspeople, and also private and public forms of leisure. A major finding is that women's memory and texts reveal sensory and emotional experiences that can be used for the history of everyday life. This allows for an imagination of everyday life from a new angle. Domestic work took away the vast majority of women's free time, and given the cultural potential of the region was still underdeveloped, most city dwellers concentrated pastime activities on their homes. However, with the high workload of women at home and at work, it was leisure outside the home that remained one of the few ways for women to relax and recover from mental and physical stress. The everyday life of urban women in the 1950s and 1960s was characterized by a division of leisure in private and public forms.

Cooperator or supporter: how can cross-boundary Macau–Zhuhai metropolis promote regional tourism together?

PurposeThis study initiated an investigation of how the Macau–Zhuhai tourism cooperated and discussed how Macau and Zhuhai could join hands to develop tourism in the region. The study demonstrated an approach for destination marketing organizations to explore online tourist-generated content and to understand tourists' perceptions of the destination image (DI).Design/methodology/approachA total of 1,291,057 reviews (535,317 for Macau and 755,740 for Zhuhai) were collected, analyzed and examined to determine how the DI s of Macau and Zhuhai changed during the period of 2015–2019 based on tourist-generated content on travel websites (TripAdvisor, Ctrip.com and Qyer.com) through a text-mining approach.FindingsThe result revealed that Macau and Zhuhai were in a hybrid of competition and collaboration on tourism DI s. First, Macau and Zhuhai competed in hotel and catering industry. Macau was appealing to international tourists and provided high-end and prestigious offerings; while Zhuhai was impressed by cost-effective accommodation and food. Second, Macau diversified industrial structure with diverse “Tourism, Leisure and Recreation” and “Culture, History and Art” more than Zhuhai did. Meanwhile, Macau should balance the different demands of international and Chinese tourists. Third, complementary potentials were found in natural resources, urbanization technology and tourism innovation and related projects.Practical implicationsThe research provides valuable insights for policymakers and industrial managers on their endeavors to develop DIs. Policymakers should be able to develop supportive mechanisms and tourism facilitators to promote industrial collaboration and mutual DIs. Managers could refer to the components in the changing DIs and identify the developmental gaps and cooperation potentials in their targeted areas.Originality/valueThe research fulfills the gap in regional tourism studies on Macau, in which the evaluation on synergetic influence and neighbor effect from Zhuhai has been underexplored. Facilitated by up-to-date data mining techniques, the study contributes to both DI and coopetition literature in tourism marketing; and this should inspire further studies on the antecedences of DI changes, resolutions to the competing interests and DIs of different stakeholders in different forms of strategic cooperation in regional tourism. The employment of DIs is an explicit demonstration of tourists' immersion and values attached to the destination, providing effective cues on the status of coopetition.

Online Leisure Activities for Sustained Mental Health Well-being in Older Adults with COVID-19 Mitigation

Older adults (OA) experience psychosocial distress from the COVID-19 pandemic mitigations. While their participation in leisure and recreation activities (LRA) would be ameliorating, we do not know how LRA OA engages for their mental health (MH) well-being with COVID-19 mitigation. This scoping review aimed to trend the evidence on the types of LRA OA engage for their MH well-being across the young-old continuum (60-69 years) through to older-old (80 years and above) in the COVID-19 pandemic. We searched the following electronic databases (PubMed, EMBASE, CINAHL, Cochrane, JBI-ES, and Epistemonicos for LRA studies by OA with COVID-19 mitigation. To be included, we considered empirical articles published in English on LRA of OA 55+ years-old. Another criterion required articles describing those activities' qualities and the impact of LRA on MH and well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. We resulted in seven empirical studies, two of which implemented in the USA and one from the USA and Canada, Spain, Israel, and Japan. Findings following narrative synthesis revealed trending evidence on OA to engage in online LRA for social, cognitive /intellectual, and emotional health. Leisure-time physical activity reduced negative MH symptoms as anxiety and depression in OA under COVID-19 threat. In conclusion, the present review's trending evidence suggests that OA engagement in social, physical, mental, and cognitive LRA enhanced their MH and overall well-being. Activities delivered by way of the Internet and television provided a cluster of beneficial opportunities for the OA mental health needs under the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cross-Cultural Analysis of the Consumer Profile of Hunting Tourism and Trophy Hunting from Tradition to Protected Areas: Study Case on Romania and Spain

Hunting has major importance from many perspectives: As a product of leisure and recreation, as a tool for conservation and wildlife management, as the main economic activity in rural areas, or as a cultural heritage and traditional activity for countries around the world, especially for countries in Europe and Africa. Therefore, this research fills a gap in the literature and offers a cross-cultural opinion and perceptions of 198 hunters from Romania and Spain. The aim of the paper is to analyze the perceptions and opinions of hunters regarding hunting tourism through an online self-administrated questionnaire by convenience sampling using hunters associations from these countries. Among the values that identify hunting as an activity, hunters highlight the human values (friendship, company, ethics), ecological values (love of nature associated with hunting as a tool to understand and enjoy the natural environment), and social values (resources generated, hobby, effort). The respondents can self-criticize some components and aspects of hunting groups. Hunters believe that the future of this sector is moving towards commercial hunting, associated with purchasing power to ensure results. Regardless of the nationality of the hunters, their values related to this sector are similar.