Adversity Creates Serendipity: COVID-19 Lockdown Experiences of Six Young Women in Hospitality and Tourism

Under the umbrella of a critical feminist theoretical framework, this exploratory paper unpacks how six young women, residing in New Zealand, Canada and the UK, within the hospitality and tourism industry, discursively managed their COVID-19 lockdown and related experiences, amidst the social-psychological dilemma of being available and/or wanting to work, yet not being able to work. This study adds to a current gap in critical feminist tourism research by deploying six young women’s emotional experience of vulnerability as hospitality and tourism workers during a global crisis to generate nuanced understandings about how they used this vulnerable experience to gain empowerment and transformation. Data was collected via interviews between April and May 2021, and a discourse analysis was carried out on the interview transcripts underpinned by a social constructionist framework. The finding of an “adversity creates serendipity” repertoire and its resources of “luck,” “having the time,” and “appreciating things” offer ways of managing the challenges posed during the lockdown. Interwoven through an adversity creates serendipity repertoire was a social connectedness theme, which is examined in relation to the indigenous Māori concept of whanaungatanga. The findings are relevant because they demonstrate effective strategies for managing the adverse psycho-social affects of the COVID-19 lockdowns. The findings have application for a range of occupational sectors within society, where working remotely is not possible during a national pandemic lockdown or during other events leading to similar workplace limitations.