Factors influencing the need for wellness tourism
•Obsession with the self and celebrity
▫Obsession with the self is reaching an all-time high thanks to new media, technology and consumer-orientated services.
▫This is often played out in terms of fixations on body image, clothing, consumerism, and a growing fascination with celebrity and its supposed set of ideal existence characteristics.
One-third of Americans are suffering from ‘celebrity-worship syndrome’ or CWS.
•Toward a new spirituality
▫In addition to taking better care of their bodies, many people are searching for new ways to make themselves healthier by paying more attention to their emotional and spiritual lives.
▫Many of them using tourism as a means of visiting locations which are viewed are more spiritual than home (e.g. India or Thailand)
▫These ‘spiritual tourists’ appear to find what they are looking for, and many find themselves staying longer than they intended to or returning periodically throughout their lives.