Facilitating self-development: how tour guides broker spiritual tourist experiences

Tourists are increasingly seeking personal development through spiritual, or mystical and divine, tourist experiences. Yet, spiritual tourism research is still largely in its infancy. This paper reports on a research study that aimed to investigate how spiritual tour guides manage and organise, or broker, spiritual tourists’ experiences. To address the aim, research was conducted with eleven spiritual tourism guides via semi-structured, in-depth, interviews. Thematic analysis of the interview data revealed that spiritual tourism guides broker the experiences of tourists through provision of physical access to sites, facilitating encounters within and beyond the travel group, and through facilitating understanding, empathy and self-development. Within the self-development theme, data were further categorised into five chronological brokering stages, ranging from pre-tour to post-tour. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to developing spiritual tourism and tour guiding theory and practice. Suggestions for future research are also proposed.