Exploring the Conceptual Structure and Perspectives of Religious-Spiritual and Wellness Tourism Research from the Destination Community: A Bibliometric Review

Abstract

The conceptualisation of specific holistic tourism components (religious-spiritual-wellness tourism) and their influence on community well-being in contemporary literature appears complex and needs to be more specific. This research traces critical developments in religious-spiritual-wellness tourism and their relationship with community by reviewing published literature in the Scopus database from 1990 to 2020 using bibliometric analysis. The literature review includes three sub-areas: descriptive analysis, reference publication year spectroscopy, and network analysis. In demonstrating the trends and evolution, the study focuses on the social, conceptual, and intellectual structures in religious-spiritual-wellness tourism (RSWT) and community. The key findings indicate that the RSWT community is heterogeneous, and each group of the RSWT community perceives different tourism impacts, requirements, and expectations. The study also reveals a significant relationship between the impacts of external factors like religious factors, political issues, social media, COVID-19 and environmental conditions prevailing in the society and the RSWT community. The diversity and complexity of the RSWT community are recognised as a gap in literature. The present study attempts to enquire how a holistic approach towards the RSWT community should be integrated with other tourism sectors for sustainability in tourism destinations, promoting the community’s quality of life.

Keywords

• spiritual tourism
• wellness tourism
• destination
• community
• impact