Segmenting spiritual tourists and their search for meaningful experiences

Abstract

The past decades witnessed the emergence of new tourism practices that generated a shift of tourists’ focus from mostly economic travel motivations to internal factors, such as the search for meaning and self-development. One of the most prominent forms of tourism, focused on internal-driven motivations, is represented by spiritual tourism, revolving around activities and experiences leading to individual growth and transformation. Based on a survey on 351 spiritual tourists, and using a TwoStep Cluster Analysis, this paper aims to provide a tourist segmentation based on favoured attractions, group size, frequency of spiritual travel, the diversity of destinations chosen, and the presence or absence of life-changing experiences. The paper aims to approach the complexity of spiritual tourism and has, therefore, also covered distinct features such as tourists’ life-changing experiences and interaction with already acknowledged spiritual attractions. The results show that, despite the general tendency of being considered a homogenous group, spiritual tourists actually tend to separate in clusters induced by the variables measured. The most important ones were the type of attraction visited, the frequency of visits, the size of the group, and expected travel experiences. Following the analyses, four main classes were identified: Soul trailblazers - predilection for religious and historical attractions, Kinship wanderers - preference for couple or family travels, Nature wanderers - who have experienced life-changing events and mostly visit natural attractions, Tribe seekers - preference for shared spiritual experiences within large groups. These findings contribute to expanding the taxonomy of spiritual tourism experiences advanced by Norman (2012) and provide practical solutions for the stakeholders in the field.