Working Tourist Serious Leisure: A Qualitative Study of Irish and New Zealand Leaders in South Korea

• Main Author: Dain Leathem
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: People & Global Business Association (P&GBA) 2018-03-01
• Series: Global Business and Finance Review
• Subjects: benefits; motivations; qualitative research; serious leisure; working tourists
• Online Access: http://www.gbfrjournal.org/pds/journal/thesis/20180405113934-K5ZPN.pdf
• ISSN: 1088-6931; 2384-1648

This study sought to understand working tourist’s activities based in South Korea, and how their leisure activities and leadership roles impacted their lives, their leisure groups, and also unique forms of tourist activity. Using semi-structured interviews with 11 serious leisure volunteers from New Zealand and Ireland currently based in South Korea as working tourists, this research looked to understand their motivations and the benefits that their participation and leadership roles played in their lifestyle. It also sought to analyze how they utilized their prior knowledge, skills, and home country and culture to improve their working tourist lifestyle. Using qualitative analysis and three layers of coding, the interview results indicated the surprising importance of the social aspect as a main motivation and outlined four strong and distinct benefits that seem to differ from serious leisure volunteering in their home country. It also identified three key impacts that these working tourists have on their groups and outlines the importance that serious leisure plays in their life satisfaction. The results can offer insights for domestic and international tourism as these leaders impact their leisure group’s activities in several ways, and also show how important leisure is for working tourist community’s. It also shows the changing dynamics of tourism, where leisure activities and home culture are no longer concepts that tourists must live without.