Two research questions lie at the heart of this paper: what are the needs of terminally ill patients and their families and what can tourism providers do to better meet these needs? We offer both theoretical and managerial contributions to these questions, drawing insights from our extensive empirical research into terminal illness, positioned here as a profound form of unsettled times. We mine the stories collected from in excess of 200 patients and their families diagnosed with a terminal illness through to bereavement. Domestic tourism, visiting friends and relatives and respite care all dominate this space. We propose a hierarchy of service needs categorised as: emotional; informational; environmental; restorative; and aftercare, offering also a temporal understanding of which services are needed, and at which point in time. Future opportunities to test the validity of this hierarchy in other health-tourism contexts to aid tourism business planning and practice are outlined.

本文的核心有两个研究问题：绝症患者及其家人的需求是什么，旅游提供者可以做些什么来更好地满足这些需求？我们为这些问题提供理论和管理方面的贡献，从我们对绝症的广泛实证研究中汲取见解，在这里将其定位为动荡时代的深刻形式。我们挖掘了从 200 多名被诊断患有绝症到丧亲之痛的患者及其家属的故事。国内旅游、探亲访友和临时照顾都占据了这个空间。我们提出了服务需求的层次结构，分为：情感；信息；环境的; 恢复性；和善后护理，还可以暂时了解需要哪些服务，以及在什么时间点。