There's no place like home: a systematic literature review of research related to staycations

The combined effects of COVID-19, inflation and the global cost-of-living crisis have impacted both consumers and the tourism industry, resulting in changed consumer behavior. One of these changes has been the increased interest in staycations. The term “staycation” has become a common term in the last twenty years; however, the term carries with it a certain ambiguity as to its meaning (Calder, 2024). Some researchers have defined it as a vacation spent at home (De Bloom, Nawijn, Geurts, Kinnunen, & Korpela, 2017) while others define it as a vacation in one's home city, either partaking of a tourist attraction (Phuc & Huan, 2024) or staying at a hotel (Au, Tsang, & Fung, 2021).

This lack of clear definition, however, has not stopped staycations from becoming increasingly popular, with many popular travel magazines discussing the benefits of staycations like Forbes (Anas, 2024), Sunset Magazine (Simmons, 2025), and GB (Great Britain) News (Gray, 2025). In 2025, the Global Staycation market was valued at US $410 million and projected to grow to US $943.7 million by 2035 (FMIa, 2025). Google Trends data (Figures 1 and 2) demonstrate that consumer interest in staycations has increased substantially over the past 10 years and is trending upward. Figure 1 shows the consumer interest in the United States; while interest peaked in May 2020 during the pandemic, searches have continued at a higher rate than pre-pandemic, and the data appear to indicate a different type of seasonality. Figure 2 shows the worldwide Google searches for staycations; this indicates a clear structural break during the pandemic with an exponential increase in interest in staycations that has continued to trend at a higher rate than pre-pandemic.

Staycation interest also increased in academic literature. Due to the increased travel restrictions during the pandemic, academic research related to staycations increased at a similar rate (e.g. Geremew & Kleynhans, 2025). While there has been a systematic review of the staycation literature (Kou, Wu, Lin, & Gong, 2024), that review does not account for more recent studies (17), is not restricted to peer-reviewed studies and did not focus on the theories used or the practical implications found in the studies. The current study seeks to better understand the definition of a staycation, the theoretical underpinnings of staycations, the trends in the literature and the gaps related to staycations. Additionally, this study seeks to understand the practical implications for hotels from the academic literature. Popular press articles and searches indicate that staycations have continued to be popular since the end of travel restrictions; therefore, what lessons can academic researchers provide for hospitality and tourism professionals as they adjust to the new normal of increased staycation travelers?

To answer these questions, the researcher conducted a search for peer-reviewed journal articles related to staycations on Scopus, Science Direct, Elsevier, Springer, Web of Science and Articles were limited to those in English. A total of 33 articles were found. These articles were analyzed using descriptive statistics and text analytics. The results of this study will help to shape future studies related to staycations and will provide guidance for researchers regarding the gaps in the literature. For hoteliers, the results of this study will give them guidance on this growing tourism sector.

As the term “staycation” is the focus of this inquiry, it is important to note the difference between domestic tourism, local markets and staycation. These three terms often overlap, creating ambiguity in the understanding of “staycation.” Domestic travel is defined as travel within one's own country (Woodside & Pitts, 1976). Local markets are any time residents consume goods or services (Shoemaker & Zemke, 2005). Staycation, however, can have multiple meanings, although it does encompass both domestic tourism and consumption by locals or residents.

Domestic tourism has been studied globally in several previous studies. Kim, Jung, Seok, and Choi (2022) differentiated between domestic travel and “day trips,” which were participation in a tourism activity that included travel to the activity and a return from that activity in one day. That study, which involved longitudinal data in South Korea, found that younger participants used day trips as a substitute for other travel while older travelers used it as a complement (Kim et al., 2022). The distance for domestic travel, however, can vary greatly based on the size of the country and the city of origin of the guest. Countries like Canada, China and the United States are large geographically; therefore, domestic travel can still be expensive and involve traveling a long distance for citizens of these countries. However, due to the proximity of many European countries, an international trip could be a day trip or staycation; Alcorisa, Spain is 6.77 miles/10.9 kilometers from Andorra (Cities Now, 2025). Domestic travel has been extensively studied across different regions, including studies related to the relationship between domestic and international tourism (Seyfi et al., 2024), the role of ethnocentrism in domestic travel (Todorović et al., 2024) and generational differences between domestic tourists (Lee & Han, 2023). These studies consistently defined domestic travel as including an overnight stay.

Local markets can be defined as those patrons who consume a hospitality product in their home city (Pezenka & Weismayer, 2020). Gaming researchers have studied different aspects of locals' gambling in their hometown (e.g. Shoemaker & Zemke, 2005). These studies have found that consumers who use different marketing efforts (Lucas & Brewer, 2001) and different customer satisfaction metrics (Shoemaker & Zemke, 2005) are often needed to understand the local market. For restaurants, researchers have found that customer satisfaction for locals and visitors often has different antecedents, and the valence of antecedents is often different for these two types of customers (Pezenka & Weismayer, 2020). Tourists and locals often have different perceptions of price and of brand reputation (Yi & Choi, 2012). Locals have also been studied by tourism scholars, particularly as to how they consume and view heritage locations. Those who live near tourism sites have been found to have different views on the economic and social benefits of those sites (Rasoolimanesh, Taheri, Gannon, Vafaei-Zadeh, & Hanifah, 2019). Additionally, Zhang and Smith (2019) found that there are benefits to tourists when residents are more involved with heritage tourism sites. None of these studies included an overnight hotel stay in their definitions or inquiries.

Therefore, staycations have a unique place in travel and tourism. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a staycation as “a holiday spent in, or in the neighbourhood of, one's own home” (OED, 2015); notably, that definition was added in 2015. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as “a vacation spent at home or nearby” (Merriam-Webster, 2025). Some researchers (De Bloom et al., 2017) and popular press writers define it as taking a day off from responsibilities at home (e.g. Berry et al., 2025). Others define it as a day trip to a tourist attraction in your hometown (Phuc & Huan, 2024). Still others would define it as an overnight stay in your hometown (Huang, Wang, Xu, & Wang, 2024), while sometimes that definition is expanded to an overnight stay in close proximity to one's hometown (Kou et al., 2024). Staycations are not unique to the twenty-first century; however, the academic inquiry into them began during the recession (e.g. Bronner & De Hoog, 2012) and then increased during the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g. Choirisa, Suhartanto, & Arsawan, 2025). Due to the emerging nature of staycation as a field of academic inquiry, this study seeks to answer the following questions:

Research Questions:

To examine the literature on staycations, Scopus, Science Direct, Elsevier, Springer, Web of Science and ProQuest were used to search for relevant articles. The search terms used were “staycation,” “staycation tourism,” “hotel staycation,” “Airbnb staycations,” “peer-to-peer accommodation staycation” and “camping staycation” were used. The search was conducted between October 1, 2025 and October 31, 2025. Only articles in English were included in this study. The term “local tourism” was also used, but did not result in relevant research. Book chapters, conference proceedings and thesis/dissertations were excluded from the study. As such, a total of 33 articles were included in this study. Figure 3 details the process of screening the articles for this study.

Each article was logged in a table, including the name of the article, author, year, region, topic, theory and methodology are detailed in Table 1. Then, these data were analyzed using descriptive statistics related to the trends in staycation literature. Finally, a thematic analysis was conducted to understand the practical implications for hospitality and tourism professionals. The thematic analysis was conducted by the researcher and the data were cross-analyzed by ChatGPT. Previous research has indicated that large language models like ChatGPT can be used as a tool for text analysis in hospitality and tourism research (Ramos-Henriquez & Morini-Marrero, 2025). Additionally, a text analysis was conducted of the practical implications from the literature to provide advice to the industry.

To answer research questions 2, 3 and 4, what is the trend in staycation literature, what are the gaps in the literature and what are the theoretical underpinnings of staycation behavior, a descriptive analysis was conducted. First, the papers were examined by year (Figure 4). The first published study related to staycation was published in 2012, and that paper was related to the downturn in travel related to the Great Recession. The largest uptick in academic articles related to staycations took place in 2021 and continued through 2025. These coincide with the increased consumption of staycation during the pandemic. By count, there was 1 article in 2012, 2 in 2017, 1 in 2020, 3 in 2021, 8 in 2022, 3 in 2023, 8 in 2024 and 6 in 2025.

Table 2 displays the count by methodology used to better understand the type of research that has been conducted related to staycations. Several of the articles utilized multiple methods. In Table 2, each method is counted separately; therefore, the total exceeds 32. The results of this analysis demonstrate that both quantitative and qualitative methods have been used to examine the staycation phenomena. The most commonly used quantitative method was SEM, with 7 studies using traditional SEM and 3 studies using partial least squared structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Patha analysis was the second most used quantitative method. ANOVA, CFA, EFA, Regression, and T-tests were used, but to a lesser degree. Less common quantitative methods like correlation analysis, discrete choice modeling, logit and quadrant analysis were also used. For qualitative analysis, the most commonly used method was in-depth interviews (4) with other methods including longitudinal field study, meta-analysis, case study and text analysis.

Table 3 examined the count by journal. The results indicate that there is no one journal that dominates the discussion of staycations. Most articles were four in the International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, followed by three in Current Issues in Tourism. It is worthwhile to note that nonhospitality and tourism journals have published articles about staycations, including Frontiers in Psychology, and Journal of Multidisciplinary in Humanities and Social Sciences. It should be noted that many of the recent studies related to staycations were centered in Asia (see Table 4), and the journal list mirrors this trend with many Asian based journals like the Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies and Journal of China Tourism Research publishing staycation articles.

As detailed in Table 4, there have been a variety of different topics studied as related to staycations. Most of the studies have been related to some form of consumer behavior: 15 focused on the motivations for staycation travel, two are specifically related to perceived risk, one related to customer loyalty, and 1 related to customer satisfaction. Wellness was the focus of seven studies, with five related specifically to wellness travel and two related to the wellness effects of staycations on employees. One study was focused on the term definition, which was the meta-analysis study. Additionally, three studies focused on the economic impact of staycations. One study focused on market segmentation, and one study focused on corporate social responsiblitiy (CSR). From an employee perspective, there were three studies related to the employee point of view. Two of these studies were related to employee wellness, and one was related to the abusive behavior of staycation guests.

In terms of theory, there is no one theory that dominates the research related to staycations (see Table 5). The most used theories were construal level theory (three) and theory of planned behavior (two). Researchers have sought to apply theories related to their specific research question. As consumer behavior dominated the literature, consumer behavior theories dominated as well (e.g. theory of planned behavior). The risk perception model was used for a risk-related study. Almost half (15) of the papers did not have an underlying theory. Of the nontheoretical papers, eight were related to consumer behavior, one to customer loyalty, two to economics, two to employee wellness, one to market segmentation, one on perceived risk and consumer behavior, and one related to general wellness travel.

Finally, the articles were sorted by region (Table 6). Asia dominated the studies, with 23 studies examining staycations in Asia, specifically in China and Hong Kong. South Korea (3), India (1), Indonesia (1) and Vietnam (1) were also studied. The Asian studies do include two cross-cultural studies, one that compared consumers in Australia and China and one that compared South Korea, the United Kingdom, the United States and South Africa. The two studies on Africa were both focused on South Africa. The European studies were centered around Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Europe in general. Three studies were related to the global market. For the United States, one of the studies focused only on college students in Ohio during the Great Recession (James, Ravichandran, Chuang, & Bolden, 2017), which is hard to generalize to the entire population.

Finally, an examination by the author was also conducted. There was no one author or author group dominating the field of staycation research. Dr. Choirisa had two publications as the first author. However, there were no other authors with multiple works in this field.

To answer research questions 1 and 5, what is the definition of staycation and what are the practical implications for industry, a thematic analysis and text analysis were conducted. For RQ1, the peer-reviewed articles were examined for the different definitions of staycation using ChatGPT. These results were cross-referenced with the human researcher, who made a second table with definitions. Table 7 shows the combined results. There was no one consistent definition of staycation in the hospitality and tourism research. Specifically, there are four different definitions. First, a staycation is defined as time off from work spent at home (e.g. De Bloom et al., 2017). A second definition is being a tourist in one's home town or taking a daytrip near one's home, without an overnight stay (e.g. Lin, Wong, Kou, & Zhen, 2021). Third, a staycation is defined as a local overnight stay (e.g. Lau, Ren, & Feng, 2025). Finally, a fourth definition is an overnight stay without traveling “far” from one's home (Geremew and Kleynhans, 2025). This final definition does not include a definition of distance needed for it to be considered a staycation.

Finally, a thematic analysis of the practical implications was conducted to determine the recommendations to industry from the academic literature related to staycation. All 33 articles were analyzed. First, the researcher reviewed the practical implications and listed the themes from the different articles. Then, the practical implications were placed into an Excel spreadsheet and uploaded to ChatGPT to examine the themes. The result of this analysis is shown below in Table 8. The major practical implications were that staycation guests are their own segment of domestic tourism (e.g. Duman, Erkaya, & Topaloglu, 2020), and destinations that seek to market specifically to those consumers are more successful at attracting staycation guests than those who do not directly market to them (e.g. Mulvey, Elliot, & Lever, 2025). Staycation guests are usually more budget conscious than the typical consumer (Bronner and De Hoog, 2012). During the COVID-19 pandemic, staycation guests were less risk-averse than the general population. Finally, staycations can have the same psychological benefits as vacations, which is a potential marketing tool for hotels (Lin et al., 2021).

RQ1 sought to examine the definition of staycation. Four definitions of staycation emerged from the literature. For researchers, this lack of a clear definition may be a challenge. Therefore, it is imperative for researchers to define how they are using the term in their research. Multiple definitions also demonstrate a gap in the literature (RQ3), which is an opportunity for researchers to determine how consumers define staycations and how that may vary between different groups. In terms of hospitality and tourism research, each definition has its own implications. For consumers who do at-home staycations that do not involve engaging with the community, there would be a negative economic impact. For consumers who engage in tourism activities for a day, there is an economic impact, but it may be at a different level than for a visitor. For those who stay in a hotel in their town, there is a measurable economic impact that could also be different from that of tourists. The final definition of a staycation in itself has ambiguity. What is a “short distance” from home? That may vary by consumer. Additionally, crossing state lines in the United States or passing into a different country might not be considered a staycation, even if the distance is short. All of these themes can be explored by future researchers.

For RQ2, the descriptive analysis helped to determine the trends in research related to staycations. Staycation literature peaks during economic downturns, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of the research during that time was conducted in Asia. The main topic of the research has been understanding the motivations for guests to take a staycation (e.g. Zhang, Shen, Xu, & Qian, 2022). A secondary theme has been the staycation as a source of wellness tourism, looking primarily at wellness as a mental health construct (e.g. Yi, Kim, Luo, & Wan, 2024). This theme was prevalent in the literature related to the COVID-19 pandemic, with the conclusion being that staycations had a restorative impact on consumers similar to a traditional vacation (Liu et al., 2023; Yi et al., 2024). Additional themes have included examining the Google Trends search patterns for staycations (Mulvey et al., 2025), staycations as a component of consumers saving money during the Great Recession (Bronner and De Hoog, 2012) and classifying different types of domestic tourism in Austria (Duman et al., 2020).

Regarding the gaps in the literature (RQ3), this analysis has identified several gaps. First, even the most recent articles in 2024 and 2025 are still pandemic related. This means there is a gap in the research as pertains to post-pandemic motivations for engaging in staycation data. Second, the papers used a predominantly Asian sample. While there are two notable cross-cultural studies in the sample, this means there is a lack of research in other countries. The difference in size between countries like the United States and South Korea, for example, could mean that the very word “staycation” could have different meanings to those groups. The only African studies were conducted in South Africa, which neglects the rest of the continent. Several countries in Asia, Europe and North America have not been studied; no studies have been conducted regarding staycations in South America. Most of the studies have been related to consumer behavior, but are not related to concepts related to revenue management. Geographic segmentation is a cornerstone of revenue management (Belarmino, 2025), understanding the unique dynamics of local or quasi-local guests might show different patterns related to forecasting, willingness-to-pay, the impact of price fences, cancellation rates, no-show rates and distribution channel management. Staycation literature has focused primarily on staycations at home or at a hotel, but there are no studies related to staycations in peer-to-peer accommodations. Finally, there have been only three papers related to employees and staycations. One of these is related to abusive employees, and the other two are related to the wellness benefits of staycations on employees. There is an opportunity to study different topics related to the impact of staycation guests on hotel employees, including their tipping behaviors or the way they treat employees.

For RQ4, this study sought to understand the theoretical underpinnings of staycation research. No one theory dominated the staycation research; however, it is worth noting how theory has been applied in different studies. Construal level theory was applied in three studies; this theory purports that four different levels of psychological distance can impact how abstract or concrete our response is to the object or stimuli (Fiedler, 2007). Mulvey et al. (2025) stated that their findings suggest that consumers can achieve a psychological distance from home and responsibilities during a staycation even without traveling a long distance. Similarly, Muritala, Hernández-Lara, and Sánchez-Rebull (2022) also found that staycations can provide psychological distance from day-to-day concerns. The final application of construal level theory was by Zhang, Islam, Karatepe, and Jambulingam (2025), which combined construal level theory with the stimulus organism response model to examine the relationship between CSR and staycations. That study examined the impact of immersive experiences, in the form of a staycation, on emotional distance and their findings supported that staycations can allow for a similar emotional distance as a traditional vacation (Zhang et al., 2025).

The other theory that was used more than once was the theory of planned behavior. Proposed first by Ajzen (1985), the theory of planned behavior discusses how human behavior is influenced by attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control. This theory was applied to two studies about staycations, one related to general consumer behavior (Choirisa & Rizkalla, 2021) and one related to the relationship between perceived risk and consumer behavior (Choirisa et al., 2025). Both studies were related to staycation behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic. Each extended the theory to the examination of pandemic norms and their influence on consumer behavior to engage in staycation (Choirisa & Rizkalla, 2021; Choirisa et al., 2025).

Finally, RQ5 sought to examine the practical implications of staycation research. The results of the current body of research can help inform destinations and hotels in terms of best practices for marketing to staycation guests. First, as Mulvey et al. (2025) demonstrated, destinations and properties that market to staycation guests do better than those that do not. While this seems intuitive, this is especially an important finding since it is based on Google Trends data. Additionally, this implication is echoed in practice by marketing in Las Vegas at the end of 2025; due to a decrease in visitor volume, many of the properties have been advertising deals for locals, many of which include overnight stays (Loftis, 2025). The finding that staycations are as good for mental health as traditional vacations is an important finding for destinations and properties trying to attract staycation guests (Lin et al., 2021). Third, the results of Bronner and De Hoog (2012) demonstrate that consumers are willing to engage in staycations during times of economic crisis or downturn, which gives guidance to hospitality and tourism professionals during a downturn. Finally, the fact that staycation guests are their own unique segment means that hotels and destination marketers need to examine their own local market to understand what will attract and retain these guests (Duman et al., 2020).

As staycations have become more common around the globe (Ghosh, 2025), this study sought to understand what elements of this travel trend have been studied by academic researchers, what were their results, what are the gaps in the literature and how those studies can inform industry. After reviewing 33 studies, this study sought to present a comprehensive review of the literature to date. Based on this examination, most of the studies were conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g. Lin et al., 2021) in Asia (e.g. Yan, Shen, & Hu, 2022). While nearly half of the studies were nontheoretical (Kim & Han, 2022), several studies have used theories like construal level theory (Zhang et al., 2025) and theory of planned behavior (Choirisa et al., 2025). Researchers have used both quantitative (e.g. Zhang et al., 2022) and qualitative methods (e.g. Liu et al., 2023). Implications and limitations are discussed below.

For researchers, the results of this study have several implications. While staycations are a growing segment of the hospitality and tourism industry that is projected to reach US $117.7 million in the US by 2035 (FMIb, 2025) and US $943.7 million by 2035 (FMIa, 2025), academic studies in this area have largely focused on consumer behavior during the pandemic (e.g. Hung & Huan, 2024). As discussed in detail in the discussion section, there are several potential studies that could be conducted regarding staycations. While not all of the previous studies have used a theoretical foundation, those that have applied theory have used a variety of different approaches. This means that researchers still need to determine if there is one underlying theory that best explains staycation consumer behavior. Additionally, researchers can use this study to examine the different definitions of staycation. How do these four types of definitions impact hospitality and tourism businesses? What are the differences between guests who engage in these four types of staycations?

For tourism and hospitality businesses, this study has several implications. The practical implications section has detailed the benefits of staycations to hospitality and tourism professionals. However, the gaps in the literature are just as important to practitioners. Without guidance around revenue management, each property needs to understand the behavior of their own guests. Additionally, the impact of poorly behaved staycation guests on employees (Au et al., 2021) implies that there is a need to train employees for these particular guests. Finally, while staycation studies have primarily focused on Asia, there have been studies around the world. This demonstrates that all markets can potentially market to staycation guests in their local area.

This study is a systematic literature review of the previous peer-reviewed literature related to staycations. As such, there are limitations to this study. First, an examination of popular press articles would include information about post-pandemic staycations (e.g. Ghosh, 2025) as well as other topics that have not been explored by researchers. Second, this research is limited by examining papers that used the term “staycation” without examining other articles that included other types of local tourism. Future researchers could examine the intersection of staycations with other types of local consumption of hospitality and tourism products.