Tourism is often viewed as a phenomenon that brings out the worst in human nature. Self-interest, overuse of resources, injustice and cultural erosion are but a few examples. This book explores the contrasting view that tourism can be a pathway to hope and happiness. The chapters address areas including wellbeing, positive psychology, hopeful tourism, mindfulness, peace, responsible tourism and spirituality. The volume examines the role of tourism in preserving natural wonders and architectural masterpieces, bringing out the best in tourists and locals and adding economic value if planned, developed and managed sustainably. It will be a useful resource for students and researchers in tourism, psychology and philosophy.

Interdisciplinary and multidimensional in its approach, this insightful Research Agenda critically analyses the principal issues that have emerged in recent years from tourism and wellbeing studies. It provides a detailed analysis of definitions and key concepts and explores the research agenda related to product and service development, motivation, segmentation and management using established as well as experimental methodologies.

The Creative Tourist offers novelty in this field in that it discusses the creative tourism experience through a relational eudaimonic perspective, thus extending current knowledge and bringing fresh insights from new materialist philosophy into creative tourism research.

This book proposes that sustainable marketing should be founded on a higher level of consciousness, governed by the Eastern ethical principles of dharma and karma. It suggests a socially responsible, integrated marketing strategy to boost transformational heritage tourism. The book puts forward a framework to promote and inspire transformative heritage tourism from a sustainable marketing perspective. Drawing on examples from different parts of the world such as Thailand, China, the USA, India, Australia, the United Kingdom, Spain, and Hong Kong, it takes a unique approach by integrating elements associated with distributive justice, procedural justice, morally motivated existentialist authentic experiences and the well-being of visited and visiting environments. The book pivots on the planning and marketing of heritage of communities such as local, descendent and indigenous across eight broad themes: (1) promotion and sustainable branding of heritage tourism; (2) empowerment of indigenous communities; (3) authenticity and conservation of heritage; (4) safeguarding of art, culture and cultural landscapes; (5) economic viability for the host communities; (6) interpretation and resolution of dissonant heritage representations; (7) stimulating audience engagement and co-created mindful spaces and; (8) facilitating moral consciousness and stimulating lasting inner transformation in guests and hosts. Scholars can replicate and/or test the proposed guided sustainable marketing model, referred to as the transformative heritage tourism pathway, which is adapted from a) the needs, activities and well-being sequential path of transformation and, b) the socially responsible sustainable marketing doctrine guided by the principles of 'dharma' and 'karma'. This book is unique as it stresses eudaimonia as the ultimate goal of well-being and argues that its pursuit can steer the sustained transformation route toward a higher sense of consciousness and responsible production and consumption of heritage resources. In summary, this book contributes toward advancing the dialogue on sustainable marketing and transformative heritage tourism. It will appeal to researchers, undergraduates and practitioners interested in sustainable marketing, transformative heritage tourism and social, ecological, cultural and economic welfare of visited and visiting destinations.

This volume considers world-making as the intersection of the fan pilgrimage experience and the responses of destinations. It critically examines the emerging field of popular culture tourism and its close connection with fan studies and placemaking. The chapters illustrate how different destinations capitalise on expressive cultural practices to attract fan tourists, the processes involved in their tourismification, and the outcomes for both visitors and local communities. The book establishes a common ground for the comprehensive and critical study of popular culture tourism development and fandom. It integrates theory and practice and provides evidence-based recommendations for popular culture destinations. It is a useful resource for researchers in tourism management, fandom, pop culture and media studies, as well as for those working in the tourism industry.

Tourism generates intense atmospheric relations between people and places. Exploring the complex nature of these relations, Bloom Spaces considers the experiences of women who travel to Costa Rica in search of health and wellness, and find that it leads to unexpected pregnancy. The book probes the ways that the reproductive experience resonates with powerful tourist imaginaries of the Caribbean and multisensory environments of culture and place. Inviting readers into a world of yoga studios, beaches, and rainforests, Susan Frohlick investigates how atmosphere can create “bloom spaces” that lead tourists down reproductive paths. Through an experimental approach that combines creative nonfiction, poetry, photography, and narrative ethnographic writing, this book seeks to capture the feelings and sensations that influence reproduction in tourist destinations. Ultimately, the book urges a rethinking of tourism that takes reproduction into consideration, highlighting the multiple actors involved and the inequities that are reproduced.

A forward looking book on sustainable design that describes problems and then, by providing a different way to conceptualise design and development, leads on to examples of regenerative solutions. Its aim is to move the discussion away from doing less, but still detracting from our ecological capital, to positively contributing and adding to this capital. This book offers a hopeful response to the often frightening changes and challenges we face; arguing that we can actively create a positive and abundant future through mindful, contributive engagement that is rooted in a living systems based worldview. Concepts and practices such as Regenerative Development, Biophilic Design, Biomimicry, Permaculture and Positive Development are explored through interviews and case studies from the built environment to try and answer questions such as: ‘How can projects focus on creating a positive ecological footprint and contribute to community?’; How can we as practitioners restore and enrich the relationships in our projects?; and ‘How does design focus hope and create a positive legacy?’

An eye-opening investigation of America’s rural and suburban housing crisis, told through a searing portrait of precarious living in Disney World's backyard. Today, a minimum-wage earner can afford a one-bedroom apartment in only 145 out of 3,143 counties in America. One of the very worst places in the United States to look for affordable housing is Osceola County, Florida. Once the main approach to Disney World, where vacationers found lodging on their way to the Magic Kingdom, the fifteen-mile Route 192 corridor in Osceola has become a site of shocking contrasts. At one end, global investors snatch up foreclosed properties and park their capital in extravagant vacation homes for affluent visitors, eliminating the county’s affordable housing in the process. At the other, underpaid tourist industry workers, displaced families, and disabled and elderly people subsisting on government checks cram themselves into dilapidated, roach-infested motels, or move into tent camps in the woods. Through visceral, frontline reporting from the motels and encampments dotting central Florida, renowned social analyst Andrew Ross exposes the overlooked housing crisis sweeping America’s suburbs and rural areas, where residents suffer ongoing trauma, poverty, and nihilism. As millions of renters face down evictions and foreclosures in the midst of the COVID-19 recession, Andrew Ross reveals how ineffective government planning, property market speculation, and poverty wages have combined to create this catastrophe. Urgent and incisive, Sunbelt Blues offers original insight into what is quickly becoming a full-blown national emergency.

Positive psychology focuses on finding the best one has to offer and repairing the worst to such a degree that one becomes a more responsible, nurturing, and altruistic citizen. However, since businesses are composed of groups and networks, using positive psychology in the workplace requires applications at both the individual and the group levels. There is a need for current studies that examine the practices and efficacy of positive psychology in creating organizational harmony by increasing an individual’s wellbeing. The Handbook of Research on Positive Organizational Behavior for Improved Workplace Performance is a collection of innovative research that combines the theory and practice of positive psychology as a means of ensuring happier employees and higher productivity within an organization. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as team building, spirituality, and ethical leadership, this publication is ideally designed for human resources professionals, psychologists, entrepreneurs, executives, managers, organizational leaders, researchers, academicians, and students seeking current research on methods of nurturing talent and empowering individuals to lead more fulfilled, constructive lives within the workplace.

The Routledge Handbook of Health Tourism provides a comprehensive and cutting-edge overview of the philosophical, conceptual and managerial issues in the field of health tourism with contributions from more than 30 expert academics and practitioners from around the world. Terms that are used frequently when defining health tourism, such as wellbeing, wellness, holistic, medical and spiritual, are analysed and explored, as is the role that health and health tourism play in quality-of-life enhancement, wellbeing, life satisfaction and happiness. An overview is provided of health tourism facilities such as thermal waters, spas, retreats and wellness hotels and the various challenges inherent in managing these profitably and sustainably. Typologies are given not only of subsectors of health tourism and related activities but also of destinations, such as natural landscapes, historic townscapes or individual resources or attractions around which whole infrastructures have been developed. Attention is paid to some of the lifestyle changes that are taking place in societies which influence consumer behaviour, motivations and demand for health tourism, including government policies, regulations and ethical considerations. This significant volume offers the reader a comprehensive synthesis of this field, conveying the latest thinking and research. The text is international in focus, encouraging dialogue across disciplinary boundaries and areas of study and will be an invaluable resource for all those with an interest in health tourism.