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This study was to explore the templestay experience from the hermeneutic phenomenological perspective invented by van Manen (1990). Also, four fundamental lifeworld themes (or existentials) were used as heuristic guides for reflecting on the experience of templestays: lived body, lived space, lived human relation, and lived time. From the four heuristic guides, four central themes were developed and a total of fifteen sub-themes emerged to fully explicate the tourist experience from the interviews and participant observation. Next, the templestay participants’ perception of authenticity was discussed. The study suggested a Templestay Authentic Experience Design Wheel model to understand experience and authenticity. This study applied the naturalistic inquiry method, which has been neglected in the field of tourism, through hermeneutic phenomenological gaze to find meaningful and essential phenomena of the templestay experience.

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This study delineated the templestay experience in the context of the authenticity of tourism. To understand the phenomenon of templestay experience, the study applied the hermeneutic phenomenology method. Furthermore, the researcher tried to approach the experience with an open perspective in observing essential meanings and lived phenomena. From the hermeneutic guide, the study discovered “structure of perceptions (situation, emotion, thought, action),” “perceptual experiences (rational experience, sentimental experience, judgmental experience, experimental experience),” and “experiential authenticity (superficial authenticity, situational authenticity, relational authenticity, space-time authenticity, existential authenticity)” from the lived templestay experience and developed a “descriptive model of the integrative phenomenon of templestay experience.” This study suggests the possibility of discovering new phenomena by expanding the boundaries of the perceptions of the authentic experience of tourism.

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