Destination Branding: Perceived Sacredness and Spiritual Tourism in Indonesia Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

All industrial sectors such as tourism have been affected by the outbreak of COVID-19. Struggling with the current crisis, spiritual tourism that is inseparable with physical experience, cultural, and religious practices should re-manage their destination branding activity through an intensive communication process. This research aimed to update the destination branding literature by applying a qualitative research method. It explored the concept of perceived sacredness as the basic element of spiritual tourism, which has an important role in retaining the existence of spiritual destination. Narratives from the visitors of spiritual destinations who were involved in the focus group discussions were interpreted by generating the meanings of the perspectives while using the context of recent communication and management research. The study identified eight criteria of perceived sacredness. Physical entities of spiritual destination included area, building, location, and tangible artefacts or objects which are dominantly considered to define sacredness in Indonesian spiritual tourism. Furthermore, this research elaborated on the perceived sacredness criteria with the current destination brand communication to deliver an adaptation strategy for spiritual tourism in the time of COVID-19.
 Keywords: Destination Branding, Tourism Communication, Generating of Meaning, Spiritual Tourism

Sustainable or a Butterfly Effect in Global Tourism? Nexus of Pandemic Fatigue, COVID-19-Branded Destination Safety, Travel Stimulus Incentives, and Post-Pandemic Revenge Travel

“…Especially in a time of crisis, such as the current COVID-19 pandemic, health, safety, and security are always among the top priorities of tourists. Hence, destinations should emphasize their highly advanced health infrastructures and precautions while promoting themselves to the next wave of tourism demand [22,109]. The present study can help destinations to familiarize themselves with changing tourism trends, behaviors, and tourists' motivations so as to effectively manage the anticipated tourist influx after the pandemic [6,22].…”

“…Hence, destinations should emphasize their highly advanced health infrastructures and precautions while promoting themselves to the next wave of tourism demand [22,109]. The present study can help destinations to familiarize themselves with changing tourism trends, behaviors, and tourists' motivations so as to effectively manage the anticipated tourist influx after the pandemic [6,22]. As another major contribution, the present study has developed new scales (revenge travel, pandemic fatigue, and CBDS) and checked their validity on expats (culturally diverse sample) residing in Pakistan.…”

“…Although a plethora of research has recently approached post-pandemic tourism from different angles [2,21,22], more research on tourism is needed to unveil tourists' complex decision-making and behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic [3,22]. Thus, the aim of this study was to make a novel contribution to the COVID-19 tourism literature by empirically assessing the interrelationships between the most recent trends (i.e., pandemic fatigue, travel incentives, revenge travel, and CBDS) that can potentially predict the future of global tourism [3].…”

Sustainability and Consumer Behaviour

“…Once the initial determination is achieved, the research hypotheses can be tested. Tourists' trust in destination brands arises primarily from subjective feelings [171,172], and religious-themed tourist destinations are no exception [173,174]. Important branding tourist destination factors include the source accessibility of the scenic spot's information, the spiritual experience, and the unique commercial activity [175]; all of these factors indicate that visit motivation and perception depend on several uncontrollable factors [49,176].…”

“…Under the low-carbon tourism transformation, general green hotels started low-carbon management in the past ten years, mainly focusing on general low-carbon behaviors, such as garbage classification, energysaving, and low-carbon technique [19]. Although Li [173] and Han [174] mentioned some positive low-carbon behaviors, such as management behaviors, investment behaviors, and marketing behaviors, they lack features. It is difficult for a hotel without characteristics to attract loyal guests [175,176].…”