3: Mindfulness and Tourism

The current drivers of the popularity of mindfulness are diverse. They include a variety of drivers from the wider socio-economic environment (Kristeller, 2007) and drivers that pertain to consumers’ needs, wants, and values (cognitive, physical, emotional, behavioural, relational to self/others, and spiritual). Thus, all the factors that fuel the growing mindfulness trend can be classified as external drivers influenced by economic, political, environmental, technological, and social forces, and internal drivers emerging from within individual consumers.

Major external drivers include scientific and multi-domain endorsement of mindfulness, societal acceptance of the phenomenon, growing health consciousness and emerging lifestyles, socio-economic and environmental pressures that boost the need for mindfulness, institutional recognition of the trend together with the technological advancements that promote the use of mindfulness.