Tourism for Welfare, Transformation, and Spiritual Development

Tourism for Welfare, Transformation, and Spiritual Development

Sarang Shirish Nandedkar (Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India)
Copyright: © 2015 |Pages: 12
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-8574-1.ch015
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Abstract

Awareness practices like yoga-spirituality-meditation-wellness and alternative lifestyles have the power to influence the course of tourism in today's world. The Global Vipassana Pagoda (GVP) in Mumbai attracts health and wellness tourists. This chapter looks at the Pagoda's non-commercial spiritual orientation, and the fact that it could be the first consciousness based approach of tourism management in the World. The operations are worth studying in the context of medical tourism as they involves social welfare, travel, conservation, eco-friendliness, voluntourism, and living harmoniously within the laws of nature (dharma). GVP is a living example of how tourists on one hand “WOW” their senses, and on the other, learn life transforming meditation techniques that have potential not only to make them happier, but also to lead them on the path of greatest health and wellness realization, in conjunction with their medical treatment in adjacent hospitals.
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In Support Of The Need

Francesco Frangialli, a Former-Secretary-General of the UN World Tourism Organization emphasized that there is a great need to plan for tourism more carefully where human (society) and environment impacts should be taken into consideration for the overall (holistic) development of that sector (Frangialli, 2008). The Secretary-General at time of writing, Taleb Rifai (2012), in the tradition of his predecessor believes that tourism can be a most effective tool to promote mutual understanding, tolerance and peace. Similarly, the Minister of Industry, Energy and Tourism of Spain, José Manuel Soria López, has expressed hope for the recognition of the tourism sector's crucial economic and social contributions, and the importance of social, economic and environmental sustainability in the industry (Lopez, n.d.; L’Etang, Falkheimer, & Lugo, 2006) emphasized better utilization of tourism phenomena to meet greater goals based on the fact that tourism has a massive social, political and environmental impact on Global, national and local arenas. This immediately raises the relevance of the tourism industry in relation to community and social responsibility.

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