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The purpose of this research is to empirically examine the critical factors that are influencing international students’ perception in the selection of a destination for education tourism.

This research seeks to develop a comprehensive framework embedded with service quality, destination image and spirituality behavior. The data were collected by administering a self-administered questionnaire to a sample of 220 respondents who were studying at the universities in Peninsular Malaysia. The constructs and items used in the questionnaire were adapted from the literature review. This research applied confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling to test the proposed hypotheses.

The outcome of this research indicated that there is a substantial relationship between service quality and the choice of a destination for education tourism. This research also explored that destination brand image significantly relates to the selection of a destination for education, tourism when the destination loyalty variable plays a strong mediation role. Interestingly, the direct relationship between spirituality behavior and selection of destination was not significant. On the other hand, a significant relationship was discovered between spirituality behavior and choice of destination when the tourists’ intention plays as a mediating function.

First, the limitation is in the scope of this study, as only five constructs were examined. Future research may include other types of variables in exploring the antecedents of destination selection for education tourism. Second, the sample size was only 220 and respondents were restricted to only a few universities. Future research should be done on a bigger sample size and on more diverse sample.

Managers of the respective higher learning institutions need to focus on tourists’ satisfaction by providing a memorable experience. International students who have satisfactory experience with the respective higher learning institutions will spread a positive word of mouth about the destinations to other prospective foreign students. Today, tourists have a strong urge to see the spiritual side of their liveliness. Policymakers need to offer services with the comportment of the spiritual settings in their respective educational environment to extend the spiritual experience toward international students.

There is a need for more research on how to build a comprehensive model for selection of a destination in educational tourism. The results of this empirical research are of particular significance to policymakers, as it better informs them as to how best to use the antecedents in designing the destination choice for education tourism to establish it as more practical regardless of the diverse spiritual beliefs.

This research is one of the initial attempts on part of the researchers in Malaysian education tourism context where spirituality has been taken into consideration.

A growing number of people are using tourism as an escape from the fiction of their daily lives. The purpose of this chapter is to explore a dimension of tourism where the outer search is the vehicle for an inner journey of spiritual development. The chapter introduces a novel concept, tourism of spiritual growth, which it perceives as a variety of spiritual tourism with an esoteric motivation. In this regard, the individual undertakes an intentional “voyage of discovery” for inner awareness and transformation. The term is conceptualized, and its central dimensions—meaning, transcendence, and connectedness—analyzed in relation to the motivations it involves.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced us not only to think but also to pause and objectively reflect on how to deal with the situation that has arisen and how to develop well-being and resilience strategies for the welfare of humanity at large. We long to be in those vicinities where we want to calm our minds in the quest for a deeper meaning of one existence. It can be a nature-based destination, a pilgrim destination or a part of a religious tour depending on one's faith, belief and orientation towards spirituality and bliss. The abundance of natural resources available in nature is the prime source of overall wellness in all parts of the world, as are the traditional Indian practices of Yoga, Ayurveda and the practices suggested by traditional holy scriptures. This chapter attempts to see the wave of spiritual gurus boosting the wellness sector associated with travelling. Gurus like Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Sadguru Vasudev Jaggi and HH Dalai Lama are some of the international gurus who have influenced spiritual and wellness tourism to a large extent. The discourse analysis revealed that people long for spirituality for peace and wellness. It also reveals being spiritual has no fixed dimension; it varies from person to person.

This study aims to examine how life events, philosophy and spirituality contribute to the development of gastronomy experiences for competitive advantage.

Drawing on a qualitative case study approach, interviews were conducted with the owner/chef, employees and customers of Moksa – a plant-based restaurant in Bali, Indonesia.

The integration of life events (change in health, relationship journey and residential relocation), life philosophy (healthy lifestyle, sustainability and cuisine for the soul) and spirituality (religious values and spiritual fulfillment of life purpose) can facilitate the creation and management of an improved gastronomy experience.

There are key elements of life that can help in the creation of a unique, memorable and holistic gastronomy experience. Restaurant owners and managers should embed these elements in their strategy.

This research adds to the scant knowledge on life courses and gastronomy experiences in the hospitality sector. It also contributes to enhancing understanding of the psychological factors that lead to better experiences.

Spiritual tourism is becoming a significant growth area of the Indian travel market, with more Indians opting to go on pilgrimage to popular religious cities. There are many spiritual destinations where some of this life's essences can be sought to enjoy harmony and peace. The study aims to prioritize motivators driving the intentions of the tourists to visit the spiritual destination.

The current study applied the analytical hierarchical process, a multi-criteria decision-making technique, on the sample of visitors from all the six spiritual destinations to rank the motivational factors that drive the intentions of the tourist to visit a spiritual destination.

The study's results postulated that spiritual fulfillment motives and destination atmosphere are the top prioritized motivations, while destination attributes and secular motives emerged as the least prioritized.

The research study provides valuable insights to the spiritual tourism industry stakeholders to target the tourists' highly prioritized motivations to augment the visits to a particular spiritual destination.

Previous research has explored the motivations and modeled their relationships with tourists' satisfaction and intentions. But, the present study has applied a multi-criteria decision-making technique to add value to the existing knowledge base.

The purpose of this paper is to advocate the emerging trend of wellness tourism in an urban setting. Cities, with dense population and hectic pace of living, pose some challenges on mental health to dwellers. Meanwhile, the populated characteristic of cities opens up opportunities for economic activity, in particular wellness tourism. To comply with the “travel to feel ‘well” trend, product offerings and demand of wellness tourism in urban tourism destinations are yet to be enumerated. The trend paper offers research insights for future investigation.

The ideas presented in the trend paper are inspired by the personal observation of the author from both scholarly and grey literature.

The research directions are delineated in the supply and demand facets. In the demand side, the motivations and behaviors of wellness tourist exerted rooms for examination. Their experiences on wellness tourism could possibly extend to the long-term influence on the cognitive, affective and behavioral changes of individuals. From the supply perspective, the current demarcation of wellness tourism is yet to be explored. Intangible supply associated with wellness tourism, namely, event and dining experiences have been ignored in scholarly studies. A fresh review of the topic from socio-cultural perspective is also viable.

The rise of urbanization and visitor arrivals to cities is expected in foreseeable future. To the best of the author’s knowledge, research insights on wellness tourism in the urban context are still at infancy. The insights on the trend paper are consolidated from a wide range of scholarly and grey literature in a holistic manner.

This chapter introduces the specifics of spirituality-centric management practices in service and operation focused industries. Strategic management practices are often challenged by the human factor of businesses. Consequently, businesses often waver with the fulfillment of their strategic goals and face harmful repercussions. Subsequently, strategic leadership plays a crucial role in the advancement of incorporating spirituality in the workplace and cultivating a perception of the spiritual domain at the individual, team, and organizational levels. To succeed, organizations need to overcome the challenges pertaining their members' retainment and wellness. This is because members often act on their emotional, moral, and ethical concerns that are pillared by their spirituality-centric views on colleagues and management. As the overarching term, workplace spirituality has been linked with organizational learning, togetherness, sense of nurturement, and interpersonal fulfillment with tasks and often coincidences with managerial application of strategic approaches. For the synthesis of service focused businesses, authors exemplify studies within tourism and hospitality industries.

This chapter introduces and discusses spirituality in the workplace from the lens of corporate culture. Organizational members represent the core embodiment of businesses, while their performance signifies vitalization of strategic goals that heavily depends on their sense of wellbeing and belonging to their organizations. In that sense, organizations must indulge on positive cycles to comprehend, tune, and affix on members' well-being for sustainable longevity and profitability. For this chapter, strategic management capsulates implementation of premeditated objectives via systematic establishment of agendas and deployment of assets. In the same vein, spirituality is centered around the self-induced nature of organizational member behaviors. Elaboratively, authors provide a condensed corpus of research to identify and touch base with the multidisciplinary nature of spirituality in differentiating business types. Accordingly, select constructs are exemplified within the general and sub-fields of management to characterize the linkages of spirituality spanning across service and production focused industries. Based on their expertise, authors exemplify tourism and hospitality literature for the representation of service-focused businesses and provide mini-review of the housed organizational spirituality literature. As a secondary focus, authors discuss the employee, management, and organizational level similarities of spirituality by largely focusing on organizational member perceptions. Distinctively, this work exemplifies the prolific studies to help distinguish longstanding “belief-centric” devotions from organizational spirituality of exemplified industries. The chapter finishes with suggestions for future studies.