Following the military advance of Russian forces into Ukraine in February 2022, Russia became the most sanctioned country in the world (Shapiro, 2022) as global leaders attempted to condemn the act and impose several sanctions on the Russian Federation including the ban of Russian oil and gas imports, the closure of airspace to Russian airplanes and the removal of Russian banks from the Swift international payment network (BBC, 2022). Among the noticeable effects of the Russia-Ukraine conflict is the animosity expressed against Russians. In a marketing context, animosity has been studied mostly from the perspective of consumers and is conceptualized as the “anger related to previous or ongoing military, economic or diplomatic events” (Klein et al., 1998:90) which impacts purchasing behaviour. Given that animosity has been found to have enduring effects, it is worth examining the anti-Russian sentiments currently manifesting as these may have impacts in terms of tourism management and marketing.

The challenge of adjusting to new travel trends has led to a quest to find ways to motivate people to travel again and to make the industry more resilient long term. The implementation of phygital marketing as an information source seems promising. This is the first study considering phygital marketing initiatives as an approach to trigger people’s travel intentions. An online questionnaire incorporating a scenario-based 2x2 factorial designed experiment with a longitudinal prospective (2 waves) explored the impact of a technology-based peer-to-peer versus human-machine interaction phygital marketing initiatives as an innovative approach to trigger travel intentions for long-distance and short distance destinations. Study 1 (n=330) shows that the experience of using phygital initiatives not only builds trust but also encourages people to visit destinations, leading to a dynamic experience. Study 2 is currently in the field which means after all most of the pandemic related restrictions have been removed to compare to Study 1’s results. Alongside theoretical contributions, this study presents practical implications on how destinations could implement phygital marketing initiatives.