Tourism, meditation, sustainability

Attila Lengyel

APSTRACT: Applied Studies in Agribusiness and Commerce, 2016, vol. 10, issue 01, 11

Abstract: The economic value of meditation based services is clearly demonstrated by a growing number of companies using such services. In the USA one quarter of the companies offer in-house meditation training to their employees. On the other hand, the number of those who think that the western consumption paradigm in its present form is unsustainable is also increasing. In addition to its business value, meditation and its most popular western form mindfulness is a practical tool that can catalyze a change in our world view and value system. A basic precondition for learning meditation techniques is to have an open, receptive, feminine attitude. As it is revealed in the present research, tourists poses a significantly elevated level of openness to new experience. This increased openness together with an upward trend for spiritual experiences can create a synergy for certain destinations, accommodation types, tourism locations to expand their service portfolio with meditation based services. While favourable physical and psychological effects of traditional tourism services fade within a few weeks, meditation is a portable tourism product which can be taken home and practiced regularly in a virtually cost-free way. By learning and practicing meditation the extremely poor physical and psychological condition of the Hungarian population could be improved in a preventive and cost-effective way. As the level of mindfulness is positively correlated with sustainable behaviour by offering meditation services tourism might take on a new level of significance in the battle for sustainability.

Keywords: Health; Economics; and; Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/244458/files/11_APSTRACT_2016_01_WEB_JAV.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:apstra:244458

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.244458

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in APSTRACT: Applied Studies in Agribusiness and Commerce from AGRIMBA
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().