Millennials, Spirituality and Tourism

This book offers a conversant and comprehensive overview of the themes and concepts in spiritual tourism and Millennial tourists. Providing interdisciplinary insights from leading international researchers and academicians, this makes a critical contribution to the knowledge around spiritual tourism.

Organized into four parts, the edited book provides modern and cutting-edge perspectives on important topics like linkages between spirituality and tourism, the predicament of spirituality in tourism among Millennials, anthropological views on spirituality, the work-life-balance, marketing of spiritual tourism destinations and the issues, threats and prospects of spiritual tourism in the emerging era. Part I introduces core concepts, theories on spiritual tourism and links it with the Millennial world. Part II explores the inclinations of millennials towards spirituality and their travel motivations, experiences, behaviours with special reference to spirituality. In Part III, on holistic tourism, the role of digitization in spiritual tourism adoption, marketing and management perspectives with special reference to Millennials are discussed. Part IV examines the issues, threats, policies and practices linked with spiritual tourism. This part also aims to explore the future challenges, opportunities for spiritual tourism development and to propose research-based solutions. Overall, the book will be a suitable means of getting insight into the minds of the diverse, experimental and open-minded generation of millennials.

This book will fill the gap of research on spiritual tourism. As an edited book, it will add on new research and knowledge base with high quality contributions from researchers and practitioners interested in tourism management, hospitality management, business studies regional development and destination management.

Dr. Sandeep K. Walia is presently working as Associate Professor and Head of Desectionment in School of Hotel Management and Tourism at Lovely Professional University, Jalandhar, Punjab, India. He is an alumnus of Himachal Pradesh University Shimla and IGNOU, New Delhi. Dr. Sandeep is associated as Visiting Faculty to School of Tourism, Hospitality and Event Management, Universiti Utara Malaysia Kedah (A QS ranked University), Malaysia and Himalayan Institutes of Alternative Learning (An upcoming Mountain University) in Leh, Laddakh as Curriculum Development / Board of Studies Expert and Visiting Faculty. His areas of interest are community-based tourism, tourism marketing and cultural tourism. He has worked as Program Director/ Paper Coordinator for the subject Aviation Industry - Ticketing and Frontier Formalities and developed E-content under MHRD Sponsored UGC Project titled EPG Pathshala for the online learning of Post Graduate Level. He has also acted as a faculty coordinator for Peer to Peer: Facebook Global Digital Challenge Spring 2017. Dr. Walia is Founder Editor in Chief of Tourism and Hospitality Research Review (International Journal of LPU), Managing Editor & Editor of ’Tourism Dimensions’ & ’Tourism Spectrum’ (International Refereed Journals). He has authored 09 Books with various International Publishers and 18 Research papers in various International Journals. He has recently published The Routledge Handbook of Community-Based Tourism Management -A Taylor & Francis Group. His forthcoming book titles include Social Debates in Tourism with Good fellow publishers, Millennials and Tourism: A New Flanged Trend for the Tourism Industry with Apple Academic Press. Dr. Walia has also Guest Edited the Special Issues of International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage & Journal of Hospitality, Leisure, Sport & Tourism Education. He is currently Guest Editing a Special Issue of Foresight- Emerald and International Journal of Spa and Wellness - Taylor and Francis.

Dr. Aruditya Jasrotia is presently working as an Assistant Professor in Amity Institute of Travel and Tourism at Amity University, Greater Noida, India. He completed his Ph. D. from the Desectionment of Tourism and Travel Management from Central University of Jammu, Jammu and Kashmir, India. His research interests are smart tourism, smart tourism destinations, tourism planning, community-based tourism, technology in tourism and sustainable tourism. He has published 04 research papers and 03 book chapters in various reputed journals and books.