Post-Olympic Tourist Experience: An Autoethnographic Perspective

This article employs an autoethnographic methodology to investigate a solo travel experience in the post-Olympic Beijing. It is intended to advocate a constructivist approach in researching tourist experience and to identify theoretical features regarding tourist experiences from the narratives. Epistemological and hermeneutic foundations of applying ethnography and especially autoethnography in research are discussed. Theoretical features identified in this study to help further the understanding of tourist experiences include tourists' past life experiences' influence on the formation of tourist experiences, daily routine experiences' role, and the bench.markingl comparing mechanism between daily routine experiences and tourist experiences and atmospherics as an environmental factor in provoking tourist emotions.