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Project properties |
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| Title | Tourism and the pursuit of wellness |
| Group | Cultural Geography Group |
| Project type | thesis |
| Credits | 36 (MSc) |
| Supervisor(s) | Karolina Doughty |
| Examiner(s) | Prof. dr Edward Huijbens |
| Contact info | GEO thesis contact person Chih-Chen Trista Lin: chihchentrista.lin@wur.nl |
| Begin date | 2020/01/01 |
| End date | 2022/12/31 |
| Description | Wellness tourism may be considered one of the most ancient forms of tourism, if one thinks back to the importance of health and wellbeing in the leisure activities of the ancient Romans and Greeks; the quests for spiritual enlightenment by Medieval pilgrims; and more recently the medical seaside and spa tourism of the 19th and early 20th century European elite. Although the pursuit of physical, mental, and spiritual wellbeing has long had a place in tourism, it may be argued that there has been an intensification in the pursuit of wellness in the history of tourism in recent years. The proliferation of wellness centres, holistic retreats, spas, spiritual pilgrimages, and places to receive complementary and alternative therapies, points to an unprecedented rise in wellness-themed touristic spaces. There are a great many theories grappling with explanations for why this development has taken place. For students interested in wellbeing/wellness within the context of tourism, there are a broad range of potential topics that could be explored.
One potential thesis topic would be to explore curative practices associated with water, connecting to the emerging research on ‘therapeutic blue spaces’; engagements with water that can be related to self-care and everyday wellbeing practices feature prominently in contemporary leisure pursuits. A thesis could explore the role of engagements with water within particular health-promoting leisurescapes, for example for people with physical or intellectual disabilities (perhaps combined with the topic on accessible watersports holidays). Much of the richness of therapeutic place-engagements are expressed through the affective and sensory registers of experience, thus theses may explore the role of the bodily senses and/or the emotions in particular health-related activities or environments. Projects can deal with the diversity of experiences, capacities, positionalities, and power relations of different bodies within touristic spaces of wellness, and that places the phenomenon of wellness tourism within a critical framework; exemplified in the book ‘The Wellness Syndrome’ by Carl Cederström and André Spicer (2015), where the authors warn that wellness has become an ideology that demonizes those who cannot live up to its ideals. |
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