Imperfect Perfection: Constructing a Complete Tourism Experience from the Perspective of Wheelchair Users

Tourism activities not only afford wheelchair users benefits comparable to those of non-disabled tourists but also occasionally deliver a higher level of satisfaction. Therefore, despite various difficulties and limitations encountered during their travels, wheelchair tourists can still achieve a complete tourism experience as they perceive it. However, existing literature has insufficiently explored how wheelchair tourists can achieve a complete tourism experience. Herein, eye-tracking experiments and observational methods are employed to reveal the objective incompleteness faced by wheelchair tourists during their travels. Subsequently, this study combines Gestalt theory with semi-structured interviews to examine how wheelchair users attain a complete tourism experience through their subjective efforts, even amid imperfect objective conditions. The results reveal the objective incompleteness faced by wheelchair tourists before, during, and after tourism, and two strategies are correspondingly proposed for achieving subjective completeness: external compensation and internal compensation. Overall, these findings not only enrich individual understanding of the tourism experience of wheelchair users but also provide valuable insights for the tourism industry on ways to better serve this special group. Also available in Chinese. See supplemental material for details.