More than sense of place? Exploring the emotional dimension of rural tourism experiences

It is widely suggested that participation in rural tourism is underpinned by a sense of rural place or “rurality”. However, although nature and the countryside have long been recognised as a source of spiritual or emotional fulfilment, few have explored the extent to which tourism, itself often claimed to be a sacred experience, offers an emotional/spiritual dimension in the rural context. This paper addresses that literature gap. Using in-depth interviews with rural tourists in the English Lake District, it explores the extent to which, within respondents’ individual understanding of spirituality, a relationship exists between sense of place and deeper, emotional experiences and, especially, whether participation in rural tourism may induce spiritual or emotional responses. The research revealed that all respondents felt a strong attachment to the Lake District; similarly, and irrespective of their openness to spirituality, engaging in rural tourism activities resulted in highly emotive experiences for all respondents, the description/interpretation of such experiences being determined by individual “beliefs”. However, sense of place was not a prerequisite to emotional or spiritual experiences. Being in and engaging with the landscape � effectively becoming part of it � especially through physical activity is fundamental to emotional responses

Towards a sustainability\u2010oriented religious tourism

Religious tourism and pilgrimages increasingly contribute to developing the social and economic growth of local economies and communities over time. The aim of the present study is to analyse the role of religious touristic routes as sites of pilgrimages and an opportunity to drive a pathway for sustainable tourism development. The study relies on analysing qualitative and quantitative data, through a questionnaire distributed in late 2018; the questionnaire relates to pilgrimages concerning the Camino de Santiago de Compostela and Via Francigena as religious touristic destinations that contribute to the social and economic sustainability of local economies. Indeed, these pilgrimages strengthen the importance of building collaborative processes by enabling religious touristic destinations to open up to better managing and by driving sustainability\u2010oriented policies, thus enhancing social and economic growth within local communities

Sähköinen työajanseuranta julkisivusaneeraus yhtiössä

Journeys to battlefields or war-related sites are categorised as dark tourism. Dark tourism is travelling to sites associated with death, disasters or atrocities and has emerged as a major tourist attraction (Sharpley, 2009; Lennon and Foley, 2000). As it deals with a wide range of travel related to death and disaster, definitions and descriptions of dark tourism have been eclectic and fuzzy (Sharpley and Stone, 2009). It involves visiting concentration camps, war memorials, cemeteries, scenes of mass murder, horror museums, fields of fatality, sites of natural disasters and perilous places (Dann, 1998, Sharpley, 2005), and has been varyingly described as ‘morbid tourism’ (Blom, 2000), ‘milking the macabre’ (Dann, 1998), thanatourism (Seaton, 1999) ‘black spots tourism’ or ‘sensation sights tourism’ (Rojek, 1993; Rojek, 1997) and ‘the heritage of atrocity tourism’ (Tunbridge and Ashworth, 1996). Battlefield tourism can be defined as travelling to war-related sites to remember and commemorate the fallen focusing on spiritual and emotional experience (Baldwin and Sharpley, 2009). The battlefields and other artefacts associated with warfare have been drawing visitors for many centuries (Kang, et. al., 2012). A trip to war-related sites could take many different forms, and visitor backgrounds, attitudes and their reasons for visiting war-related sites could also vary. This paper reports findings of a study examining motivations of visitors to major battlefield destinations related to the ‘1916 Easter Rising Rebellion’. This study employed quantitative research methods with a questionnaire survey at two different sites and a tour associated with Easter Rising rebellion in Dublin, Ireland