Reconfiguring urban tourism systems after COVID-19: a bivariate mobility configuration analysis of leisure mobility in Indonesia

This study examines the spatial reconfiguration of leisure mobility in Indonesia following the COVID-19 crisis using large-scale Google Community Mobility data from 2020 to 2022. Moving beyond dominant linear recovery narratives in tourism research, this study conceptualises post-crisis leisure as a process of spatial reconfiguration within urban tourism systems shaped by normalising uneven mobility. Methodologically, this study introduces a bivariate mobility configuration framework to analyse the interaction between leisure activities (parks) and mobility systems (transit stations) in 33 Indonesian provinces. By positioning provinces within a two-dimensional mobility space, the framework identifies distinct mobility configurations without imposing parametric assumptions, which are subsequently visualised geographically to examine their spatial distribution throughout Indonesia. The findings reveal four coexisting configurations of post-crisis leisure mobility: adaptive reconfiguration, accessible leisure, local/nearby leisure, and leisure substitution. These configurations demonstrate that leisure recovery does not converge towards pre-pandemic conditions but stabilises into multiple heterogeneous spatial equilibria shaped by accessibility constraints, proximity-based behaviours, and uneven infrastructure. This study contributes to urban tourism research by advancing a configuration-based spatial framework that interprets mobility data as signals of leisure ecosystem reconfiguration, offering a geographically grounded alternative to linear recovery models. The findings provide policy-relevant insights by highlighting the need for place-based and accessibility-sensitive strategies to manage tourism in heterogeneous urban and regional contexts.