Facilitating self-development: how tour guides broker spiritual touristexperiences
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[1] University of Otago
University of Otago
Nueva Zelanda
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- Localización: Tourism recreation research, ISSN 0250-8281, Vol. 44, Nº. 2, 2019, págs. 141-152
- Idioma: inglés
- Enlaces
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Resumen
Tourists are increasingly seeking personal development through spiritual, or mystical and divine,tourist experiences. Yet, spiritual tourism research is still largely in its infancy. This paper reportson a research study that aimed to investigate how spiritual tour guides manage and organise, orbroker, spiritual tourists’experiences. To address the aim, research was conducted with elevenspiritual tourism guides via semi-structured, in-depth, interviews. Thematic analysis of theinterview data revealed that spiritual tourism guides broker the experiences of tourists throughprovision of physical access to sites, facilitating encounters within and beyond the travel group,and through facilitating understanding, empathy and self-development. Within the self-development theme, data were further categorised intofive chronological brokering stages,ranging from pre-tour to post-tour. The implications of thesefindings are discussed in relation todeveloping spiritual tourism and tour guiding theory and practice. Suggestions for futureresearch are also proposed
