Spiritual tourism as a quest

The academic literature on spiritual tourism is often limited to taxonomies of travel, and reasons for spiritually oriented tourism are analysed largely according to their economic, social and historical aspects. Despite the recent growth in interest in spiritually oriented tourism it has become increasingly apparent that to fully understand the practical implication for the field of spiritual tourism, a theoretical discussion on the discursive shift from a ‘religious’ to ‘spiritual’ experience of travel needs to be addressed. Although these concepts have only recently been touched upon in academic travel literature, they have been richly explored in literary travel-focused memoirs.