Emergence of Spiritual Tourism and its Impact on Hospitality Industry with Special Reference to Uttarakhand Region

Abstract

Spirituality, in general, has recently emerged as an important subject of research in social and business areas. This has given birth to a new dimension to the tourism industry, called ‘Spiritual tourism’. It has been observed that there has been an increase in the awareness and research interest in the thematic field of spiritual tourism. Tourism is an age old activity associated with civilized nations around the world. Thus, tourism literature too carries a long history along with it. However, there are very few areas in tourism which has been taken through the domain of scientific investigation only recently. Spiritual tourism is one such area in which only a few researchers had carried out their work in a systematic and scientific way. Uttarakhand is a state located in the Northern Himalayan Region in India and it has been a prime spot of tourism due to its magnificently diverse landscapes, high biodiversity enough religious tourist potential and rich cultural heritage. Tourism has also generated a good source of income and employment to youths and rural masses. Tourism is one of the fastest-growing economic sectors in the global economy. Tourism has significant environmental, cultural, social, and economic effects, both in positive and negative terms. Tourism has been noted as the world’s largest and fastest growing industry. Tourism, as a major service sector industry in state’s economy, has multi-dimensional impacts on the society such as Economic, Social and Cultural, Environmental, Crowding and congestion, Community attitudes, Services and Taxes. The emergence of Spiritual tourism has given a boost to the tourism industry when we talk about the tourism trends in Uttarakhand region. Although, people used to travel to satisfy their religious beliefs since ages but the concept of Spiritual Tourism is bit different from pilgrimage or religious tourism and can be promoted well as a tremendous tourism product to yield better results in Uttarakhand. Presence of some amazing and unmatched spiritual destination in Uttarakhand, aids to the enhancement and promotion of Spiritual tourism in the state. The main objectives of the paper is to focus on emerging trends and other aspects of Spiritual tourism that has a direct or indirect impact on Hospitality Industry operating in the region. This paper focuses on the emerging trends of spiritual tourism oriented research activities and explores the potentials for future work in tourism research. This paper is an analysis of the available and relevant literatures in the field of spiritual tourism with special emphasis on the Uttarakhand state of India.This paper will also discuss the challenges and problems that comes in the way in order to introduce new trends to the field of Tourism and Hospitality industry.

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