A Review of Spiritual Tourism: A Conceptual Model for Future Research

Abstract

Purpose – The growth of non-materialistic impulses among people around the world has led to the emergence of a special category of tourism that can be termed ‘spiritual tourism’. This article presents an attempt to provide a conceptual model for spiritual tourism drawing from the literature on spirituality, religion, and tourism. Design/ Approach – As this study intends to build a bridge between spirituality and tourism, the authors reviewed various articles and adopted the Spiritual Intelligence Model devised by Hanefar, Sa’ari, and Siraj (2016) to build a conceptual model of spiritual tourism. Methodology – Content analysis was used to arrange more than forty dimensions of spiritual tourism from the chosen articles. These dimensions were coded and mapped against the Spiritual Intelligence Model. Findings – The emergent dimensions of spiritual tourism showed that tourism offers unique opportunities in guiding human being to gain spiritual development through religion and non-religion tourism activities/experiences. Originality of the research – The authors developed a Conceptual Model of Spiritual Tourism with seven themes: Meaning/Purpose of life, Consciousness, Transcendence, Spiritual resources, Self-determination, Reflection – soul purification, and Spiritual coping (with obstacles). This model intends to serve as a systematic pathway to authors and other researchers for future research related to spiritual tourism.

Keywords

• spiritual tourism
• purpose of life
• consciousness
• transcendence
• content analysis