Tourist Affinity and Animosity: A Study Into Their Impacts on Vietnamese Independent Tourists’ Destination Choices

This study explores tourist affinity and animosity and their effects on foreign tourist destination choices before and after a foreign holiday. To achieve these research objectives, semistructured interviews with critical incident techniques were employed to recall tourists about their past foreign holidays, to identify their specific affinity and animosity components towards foreign destinations, and to explore their impacts on tourist destination choices. As a result, 17 interviews lasting 40 min to almost 1.5 hr were done. The results show that tourist affinity including components such as feelings of sympathy, admiration, and attachment toward a specific foreign country are positive drivers of tourist destination choices, while tourist animosity including components such as war animosity and the pandemic of COVID-19 animosity negatively influences tourist intention to visit and provide word of mouth. As such, this study tracks tourist affinity and animosity on tourists’ attitude changes during holidays, enriches the literature on tourism affinity and animosity, and also provides a further understanding of Vietnamese tourist destination choices.