Prioritizing motivators influencing intentions to visit spiritual destinations in India: an application of analytical hierarchical process (AHP) approach

Abstract

PurposeSpiritual tourism is becoming a significant growth area of the Indian travel market, with more Indians opting to go on pilgrimage to popular religious cities. There are many spiritual destinations where some of this life's essences can be sought to enjoy harmony and peace. The study aims to prioritize motivators driving the intentions of the tourists to visit the spiritual destination.Design/methodology/approachThe current study applied the analytical hierarchical process, a multi-criteria decision-making technique, on the sample of visitors from all the six spiritual destinations to rank the motivational factors that drive the intentions of the tourist to visit a spiritual destination.FindingsThe study's results postulated that spiritual fulfillment motives and destination atmosphere are the top prioritized motivations, while destination attributes and secular motives emerged as the least prioritized.Practical implicationsThe research study provides valuable insights to the spiritual tourism industry stakeholders to target the tourists' highly prioritized motivations to augment the visits to a particular spiritual destination.Originality/valuePrevious research has explored the motivations and modeled their relationships with tourists' satisfaction and intentions. But, the present study has applied a multi-criteria decision-making technique to add value to the existing knowledge base.

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The "Melukat" Tradition As Millennial Religious Tourism In Badung, Bali

“…The internal factor that encourages tourists to travel is to fulfill their spiritual needs by visiting the holy places of their religion. (Garg et al, 2021) applied the analytical hierarchical process (AHP), a multi-criteria decisionmaking technique, to determine the motivation of tourists to travel spiritually. The results obtained are as follows:…”