Emergence of Spiritual Tourism in India

Spirituality, in general, has recently become an important subject of research in social and business areas. This has added a new dimension to the tourism industry, called ‘spiritual tourism‘. Consequently, there has been an increase in the awareness and research interest in the thematic field of spiritual tourism. Tourism is an age old activity associated with civilized nations. Thus, tourism literature too has a long history. However, there are few areas in tourism which have come to the domain of scientific investigation only recently. Spiritual tourism is one such area in which only a few researchers have started their work in a systematic way. This paper emphasizes on the emergence of spiritual tourism oriented research activities and explores the potentials for future work in tourism research. A model depicting a general Classification of tourism literature in the context of increasing research interests in the spiritual tourism has been presented in the form of a model. Research publications on spiritual/pilgrimage tourism appeared in five different journals and a few major conference proceedings since the year 1992 have been analysed. This paper presents an analysis of the available and relevant literatures in the field of spiritual tourism with special emphasis on the Uttarakhand state of India.