ABSTRACT This exploratory research investigates how tourism microentrepreneurs built postpandemic resilience, focusing on Thai street food vendors and local tourists. Applying a qualitative triangulation approach, this study thematically examined 3344 online reviews, alongside 25 in‐depth interviews with 17 tourists and 8 vendors. The findings reveal that resource‐constrained street food microentrepreneurs successfully utilized digital platforms to mitigate crisis impacts, seize emerging business opportunities, and reconfigure daily operations. Consequently, digital adoption transitioned from a temporary crisis response into a permanent structural framework for sustainable business survival and community development. From the consumer perspective, while nostalgia and the desire for social reconnection strongly drive a postpandemic behavioral rebound, transforming street food visits into “must‐visit” attractions, this renewed demand remains permanently moderated by heightened food safety and hygiene expectations. This research contributes to the sustainable tourism recovery literature, offering actionable insights for stakeholders to facilitate bottom‐up empowerment and achieve the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals.
Kattiyapornpong et al. (Sun,) studied this question.