درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Arguably, all people are spiritual. We will, at different stages, seek meaning and connection, and seek transcendence through self-improvement. Often, this personal quest will begin or resume, or be addressed more fervently after a personal event that leads to an awakening of one’s spirituality. This paper considers how transformative life experiences lead people to engage their spiritual side, and specifically how they may seek to do so through their experience of travel. Through 18 months of in-depth phenomenological data collection, this paper analyses the personal narratives of 11 tourists who experienced volunteer tourism after experiencing life events that facilitated a spiritual awakening. This paper finds that experiences such as the death of a close family member, the facing of mortality, or existential crisis can lead to a motivation to travel, and that travel can be deeply spiritual. It posits the question: In the year 2017, with great global and personal uncertainty, is the desire for spiritual growth through travel becoming more mainstream and urgent?

Supposing that today’s growing range of human needs with the increasing growth of technology is not only limited to material dimensions but non-material aspects are of an undeniable role in the human self-actualization. In this regard, the concept of spirituality dramatically manifests itself in different aspects of human life, even though the technological evolutions and tourism can be an important lever in this area. In this study, using content analysis techniques and using ideas of experts, we assessed the components of ‘styling the future’, ‘tourism’, and ‘spirituality’ comparing elements of these variables such that the relationship between tourism and spirituality was extracted in the form of ‘a sense of excellence’, ‘a sense of meaning’, ‘human values’ and ‘interaction with existence’. Also, the relationship between tourism and futures studies (futurology) was defined using the extracted parameters including ‘consultation prior to social and cultural reforms’, ‘future analysis and alert against challenges’, and ‘determining strategic priorities’. Eventually, in relation to these three components, the obtained results emphasized the need for taking the advantage of spirituality in the study of the tourism industry.

Tourism development is considered an important tool in promoting economic growth, alleviating poverty, and advancing spirituality development. This paper aims to review the relationship between tourism and spirituality and to explain how tourism development could contribute to spirituality development goals. The paper provides an analysis of the relationship between tourism and spirituality development. It explores definitions and constructs of spirituality and reviews experiences and practices in relation to spiritual resources. However, by looking at a brief history of human intelligence we learned that there is a low agreement today upon the spirituality definition. In order to reach a broad agreement, the paper was divided into two sections. The first section explains the importance of tourism and spirituality as components of life success while the second section discusses some important issues regarding the development of spirituality through tourism activities by presenting a model that provides clarification, definition, and relations to the terms of faith, spirituality, religion and tourism. The model can serve as a means to begin the dialogue needed to increase understanding of this important concept. The paper also suggests that the ability to effectively develop tourism can strongly and positively influence spiritual principles and practices.

Spirituality is a universal and human phenomenon which is not restricted to any religions or religious groups. In fact, spiritual experiences are thought of as special human experiences which give meaning to life. Such enlightening experiences make man connect to a higher being. Therefore, spiritual tourism is a journey on which a traveller achieves a perception of spiritual experiences. Such experiences can be gained on a long walk with a group of sympathetic fellow travelers towards religious destinations. They may also be achieved while watching a pristine view of the nature which enables the viewer to understand the creator of the scene and reach deep meanings through a creative insight. Creative tourism is mostly manifested as a form of inner expression and discovery, a tool of improvement in identity and distinction or a search for the expansion of capabilities and experiences as well as an ability to reflect the life purposefully. This type of tourism belongs to self-actualizing individuals. In fact, they are educated people who seek to give meaning to life. Therefore, the creative tourism theory is the closest approach to tourism combined with spirituality. These two categories overlap with each other significantly. In this qualitative study, the two-stage Delphi technique and desk research method were used to verify this hypothesis. Creative tourism can be thought of as a new paradigm of tourism or the third generation after coastal tourism and cultural tourism. It can also be considered an evolved type of cultural tourism which pays more attention to the intangible heritage rather than the tangible one. In either case, it is a form of network tourism in which values are created collectively through available relationships and the flow of social relationships and capital in networks. Therefore, its new management models and strategies should be identified and applied. In the current study, the desk research method was used to identify such models. Then the two-stage Delphi technique was employed to verify them.

Although today it is common to categorize spiritual tourism separately as a type of tourism, spirituality can be found at the heart of any travel. What might be taken as granted is that the tourist is going to add something to his/her self and, in this respect, some degree of spirituality can be sought in every type of tourism. Therefore, through entrepreneurship and innovation it would be possible to focus on the development of businesses which are able to offer some degree of spirituality to tourists according to their needs. This paper seeks to provide a deeper view of the relationship between authentic experiences and spiritual tourism and the role of entrepreneurship in utilizing this relationship in order to enrich tourists’ experiences. In other words, the spiritual dimension of every type of tourism is discussed and the necessity of its reinforcement through entrepreneurship in tourism and a systematic approach towards the issue is considered.