Chain tourism in post-disaster recovery

Post-disaster research relating to tourism tends to focus on broad economic measures that can miss local-scale actors and contemporaneous impressions by tourists and tourism-based business owners in places undergoing recovery from a disaster. Hurricane Harvey, a Category 4 storm, swept across coastal Texas in August 2017. Many of the communities affected by Harvey have economies largely based on family recreation. Interviews in Rockport–Fulton, Texas, with tourism-oriented business owners, staff, and tourists during the Independence holiday provide qualitatively robust accounts of the community’s first major summer event following Harvey and highlight the importance of social networks and place attachment to bringing tourists to the recovering area. Furthermore, we discuss the chain tourist’s role in the recovery of affected locations and consider strategies to draw on these social networks to increase the number of tourists visiting the recovering communities.