Hedonic and Eudaimonic Experiences among Wellness Tourists: An exploratory enquiry

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Hedonic and EudaimonicExperiences among WellnessTourists: An exploratory enquiryCornelia Voigt a , Gary Howat a & Graham Brown aa School of Management, University of South Australia,Adelaide

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To cite this article: Cornelia Voigt, Gary Howat & Graham Brown (2010): Hedonic andEudaimonic Experiences among Wellness Tourists: An exploratory enquiry, Annals of LeisureResearch, 13:3, 541-562

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hEdONIC ANd EUdAIMONIC ExpERIENCES AMONg WELLNESS TOURISTS • 541

Hedonic and Eudaimonic Experiences among Wellness Tourists: An exploratory enquiry

Cornelia Voigt, Gary Howat and Graham Brown, School of Management, University of South Australia, Adelaide

ABSTRACT • This paper contends that recent developments in the field of posi-tive psychology, particularly in the area of psychological well-being, in combi-nation with Stebbins’s framework of casual versus serious leisure, may provide a new perspective for the understanding of tourism experiences. Based on the experience accounts of three different groups of wellness tourists (i.e., visitors to beauty spas, lifestyle resorts, and spiritual retreats), the aim of this paper is to explore whether tourism experiences can be classified into hedonic or eudai-monic experiences. Aggregated experience accounts were collected through individual, semi-structured interviews with 27 wellness tourists. Thematic anal-ysis deductively applied Stebbins’s characteristics of casual/hedonic and serious/eudaimonic experiences to the data. The results found that the three wellness tourism experiences can be placed along a continuum between hedonic and eudaimonic end-points. Accordingly, beauty spa visitation was perceived as a purely hedonic tourism activity and spiritual retreat experiences were consid-ered as almost purely eudaimonic. Lifestyle resort experiences were also seen predominantly as eudaimonic, however they sit more towards the middle of the continuum because hedonic outcomes can sometimes be recognised as impor-tant ‘by-products’ of eudaimonic experiences.

KEY WORDS • positive psychology, psychological well-being, hedonic well-being, eudaimonic well-being, wellness tourism, casual leisure, serious leisure

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542 • hEdONIC ANd EUdAIMONIC ExpERIENCES AMONg WELLNESS TOURISTS

IntroductionThere is a widely held belief that being on holiday enhances tourists’ well-being and contributes to their psychological health. Leisure, of which tour-ism is a subset, is regarded as one of the most ‘free’ contexts in people’s lives because people are generally able to determine what they would like to do and as a result can choose activities they find inherently interesting, enjoy-able, and satisfying (Caldwell, 2005). In this sense, a vacation has the poten-tial to lift one’s mood, or to provide a time of pleasure, fun, and relaxation. A vacation may also lead to personal growth, self-development, dramatic life changes, or the discovery of one’s ‘true self’. Surprisingly, however, academic research exploring the links between tourism and well-being has generally focused on tourism’s negative impacts on physical well-being, rather than on its potential positive relationship with psychological well-being (Hunter-Jones, 2003; Sönmez & Apostolopoulos, 2009). The field of ‘travel medicine’ has produced a plethora of articles and handbooks in which infections and non-infectious health hazards associated with travel (e.g., sunburn, jetlag, motion sickness, the spread of bird flu and SARS) are discussed (e.g., DeHart, 2003; McKendrick, 2003; Peattie, Clarke, & Peattie, 2005; Shickle, Evans, & Morgan, 2001; Wilks, Pendergast, & Leggat, 2006; Wilson, 1995), but there has been little evidence of an interest in more positive outcomes associated with tourism, and a lack of empirical research examining the relationship between tourism and well-being (Gilbert & Abdullah, 2002).

One exception is the small body of literature about the field of ‘wellness tourism’ which can be defined as the sum of all the relationships resulting from a journey by people whose primary motive is to maintain or promote their health and well-being and who stay at least one night at a facility that is specifically designed to enable and enhance people’s physical, psychological, spiritual, and/or social well-being (Voigt, 2008). Researchers have argued that wellness tourism deliberately contributes to tourists’ well-being (c.f. Smith & Kelly, 2006a; Smith & Puczkó, 2008), however there is little empirical evidence supporting this claim. Wellness tourism is an under-researched area of study (Bennet, King, & Milner, 2004; Steiner & Reisinger, 2006), although it has recently attracted a number of book publications devoted to this theme (Bushell & Sheldon, 2009; Erfurt-Cooper & Cooper, 2009; Smith & Puczkó, 2008).

Developments in the field of ‘positive psychology’ are consistent with the growing interest in wellness tourism. In 2000 Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi edited a special issue of the journal American Psychologist and started the positive psychology movement by recognising an imbalance in psychology where most research was focused on mental illnesses or negative human

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traits. Rather than examining the factors that caused psychological disorders, individual suffering, or asocial behaviours, positive psychologists strive to understand what makes life worth living and what fosters human well-being. Recently Pearce (2009) argued that tourism researchers and positive psychologists would benefit substantially by connecting their knowledge and ideas. Similarly Carruthers and Hood (2004) suggested that positive psychology is a unifying framework of major importance for the leisure discipline, particularly the field of therapeutic recreation. Within this framework the authors specifically referred to the concepts of hedonic and eudaimonic well-being, which are also the two major concepts discussed in this study.

Literature reviewHedonic and eudaimonic well-beingCurrent research on psychological well-being has been based on two broad philosophical traditions concerned with the meaning and achievement of a ‘good life’ (Keyes, 2002; Ryan & Deci, 2001). One philosophical approach to the good life is the pursuit of ‘happiness’ which is the hedonic view, while the second approach is focused on meaning, personal growth, and one’s virtues which equates to the eudaimonic principle.

The tradition of hedonism can be traced back to the Greek philosopher Aristippus of Cyrene (435–366 BCE) who taught that feelings of ‘hedone’ (Greek for ‘pleasure’) are the ultimate goal of life; that everything in life is but a means to securing one’s own pleasure and avoiding pain. Hedonic well-being (also often referred to as ‘subjective well-being’) is commonly measured by three indicators: frequent positive affect, infrequent negative affect, and life satisfaction (Diener, 1984, 1994; Diener, Suh, Lucas, & Smith, 1999); or, alternatively, by a scale assessing people’s subjective happiness (Lyubomirsky & Lepper, 1999). Current estimates suggest that genetic predisposition explains around 50 per cent and circumstantial factors eight to 15 per cent of the variation in people’s happiness (Lyubomirsky, Sheldon, & Schkade, 2005). The significant remaining percentage which can potentially increase one’s happiness consists of intentional activity (Lyubomirsky et al., 2005), which is crucial in the contexts of tourism and leisure.

Supporters of eudaimonic well-being see that there is more to well-being than just purely happiness. Whereas the Cyrenaics have laid emphasis on ‘present’ pleasures, others focused on long-term happiness and posited that pleasure should not be one’s ultimate goal in order to be truly happy in life. ‘Eudaimonia’ is a concept introduced by Aristotle (384–322 BCE) and is also sometimes translated as ‘happiness’. However, for Aristotle happiness had little

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in common with the hedonic understanding of the term. Aristotle regarded hedonic happiness as vulgar, making human beings slavish followers of gratification of their desires (Waterman, 1993). Aristotle regarded eudaimonia as the highest of all good which can be understood as the realisation of one’s true potential (Ryff, 1989). The central task of life is to recognise and realise one’s ‘daimon’, or ‘true self’ (Waterman, 1993). Eudaimonic well-being focuses on one’s potential and unique capacities which give meaning and direction to one’s life and make life fulfilling and worthwhile (Ryff, 1989). In contrast to hedonic well-being, eudaimonic well-being does not necessarily exclude negative emotion (Ryff & Singer, 1998). In fact, research has shown that people experience positive psychological growth even when they encounter serious life challenges, such as the death of a spouse or the loss of a job (Ryff & Singer, 2003; Wethington, 2003). Although there is not yet a standard set of psychological indicators to measure eudaimonic well-being, Ryff’s scale of ‘Psychological Well-Being’ is most commonly employed (Ryff & Keyes, 1995; Ryff & Singer, 2008). This scale assesses six dimensions of eudaimonic well-being: purpose in life, personal growth, self-acceptance, environmental mastery, autonomy, and positive relations with others.

Importantly, contemporary psychologists now acknowledge that optimal positive psychological well-being consists of high levels of both hedonic and eudaimonic well-being, and that while these two approaches are related they are also conceptually distinct (Keyes, 2002, 2005; King, Hicks, Krull, & Del Gaiso, 2006; Ryan & Deci, 2001; Ryan & Huta, 2009; Ryan, Huta, & Deci, 2008). So far, positive psychological well-being has been discussed as an out-come which is assessed on a global level (i.e., a person’s overall well-being) by scales such as Ryff’s (Ryff & Keyes, 1995) ‘Positive Psychological Well-Being’ or Lyubomirsky and Lepper’s (1999) ‘Subjective Happiness Scale’. A few researchers, however, have also explored how the concepts of hedonia and eudaimonia are relevant at the experiential or activity level.

Assessing hedonia and eudaimonia at the experiential or activity levelClearly not all tourism or leisure experiences and activities are equally suit-able to produce healthy outcomes and positive psychological well-being (Caldwell & Smith, 2006). However, there has been a paucity of research that has empirically examined the extent to which different tourism experiences have contributed to positive hedonic or eudaimonic outcomes.

Outside the tourism and leisure context, psychologists have examined how hedonic and eudaimonic aspects relate to the concept of intrinsic motiva-tion at the experiential level (Waterman, 2005, 2009; Waterman, Schwartz, & Conti, 2008; Waterman et al., 2003). Waterman criticised the central opera-

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tional definition of hedonic enjoyment as an indicator for intrinsic motivation as it does not consider the two different conceptions of well-being, hedonia and eudaimonia (Waterman, 2005). Therefore Waterman and colleagues pro-posed a new set of indicators for intrinsic motivation that takes eudaimonic aspects into account. For predictors of intrinsic motivation, they suggested self-determination, balance of challenge and skills, effort, and self-realisation values (i.e., whether one promotes one’s best potentials). Furthermore, they recommended employing two hedonic outcomes of intrinsic motivation (enjoyment and interest), and two eudaimonic outcomes (flow and ‘personal expressiveness’ which is an embodiment of one’s personal identity).

In a series of studies they found that the outcome of hedonic enjoyment correlated more strongly with self-determination, whereas the eudaimonic outcomes had stronger correlations with balance of challenge and skills, effort, and self-realisation values (Waterman, 2005; Waterman et al., 2003, 2008). According to their research, there are two broad classes of activities — those that give rise only to hedonic enjoyment, and those that give rise to both hedonic enjoyment and eudaimonia (Waterman et al., 2008). Activities that lead only to eudaimonia are considered to be a ‘theoretical null’, because activities leading to flow and personal expressiveness should also be enjoyed (Waterman, 2005: 166). Furthermore, Waterman and colleagues suggested that the term ‘intrinsic motivation’ should be used only for activities where both hedonic enjoyment and eudaimonia are present, whereas the term ‘hedonic motivation’ should be employed only when hedonic enjoyment is present (Waterman et al., 2008).

Some psychologists have criticised Waterman and other supporters of eudaimonic well-being for introducing an elitist view of eudaimonic well-being as a ‘better’ form of happiness than hedonic well-being (Kashdan, Biswas-Diener, & King, 2008). While it was stated earlier that researchers have generally agreed that hedonic and eudaimonic well-being are equally important in creating a state of optimal psychological well-being, it appears that Waterman and colleagues actually devalued those experiences that led ‘only’ to hedonic outcomes. This view could be potentially problematic in tourism and leisure contexts where a vast array of activities might be ‘merely’ hedonically motivated. The application of Stebbins’s theory of casual versus serious leisure may be able to provide a less biased, more neutral way to dis-tinguish between hedonic and eudaimonic tourism and leisure experiences.

Stebbins’s theory of casual versus serious leisureStebbins (1997a) considered casual leisure to be an immediately rewarding, enjoyable experience that requires very little training and for which posi-

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tive rewards are relatively short-lived. He originally proposed six types of casual activities: relaxation (e.g., strolling, napping); passive entertainment (e.g., watching television); active entertainment (e.g., party games); sensory stimulation (e.g., eating); sociable conversation; and play (e.g., dabbling around an activity that is pursued as serious leisure by others, such as stamp-collecting) (Stebbins, 1997a, 2001). Notably Stebbins pointed out that all these types of casual leisure experiences can be pursued in combination with each other; for instance, all these activities can be seen as relaxing, either in a passive or active way, or social conversation can accompany sensory stimula-tion (Stebbins, 2008: 38). Importantly Stebbins (1997a) further argued that the central characteristic that these casual leisure activities have in common is that they are all hedonic. Consequently, experience characteristics such as relaxation, sensory stimulation, fun, or pleasure and the fact that these experiences are short-lived could be considered as indicators or outcomes of hedonic leisure and tourism activities.

Casual leisure has been contrasted with serious leisure which is defined as the systematic and committed pursuit of activities or hobbies, which typi-cally encompasses acquiring and expressing special skills and knowledge (Stebbins, 1997b). There are several qualities that help to distinguish seri-ous leisure from casual leisure. First, serious leisure participants generally make a significant effort that results in attaining special knowledge, training or skills associated with the chosen leisure pursuit. Second, serious leisure results in a number of durable benefits, for example, self-actualisation, self-enrichment, a feeling of accomplishment, or belongingness (Stebbins, 2004b, 2008). Importantly, this description implies that the beneficial outcomes of serious leisure activities are long-lived in contrast to the benefits of casual leisure, which are supposed to be short-lived.

Stebbins (1997b) pointed out that pleasure, fun, and relaxation can also be beneficial outcomes of serious leisure pursuits but they are not as pro-nounced. Accordingly, pleasure and enjoyment can also be regarded as ‘by-products’ of serious leisure (Ragheb, 1996). Stebbins also asserted that seri-ous leisure experiences might not always be pleasurable and they may some-times involve danger, fright, or embarrassment (Stebbins, 1999, 2008). An important quality of serious leisure is that leisure participants persevere and continue to be involved in a particular activity despite experiencing adversity. Another characteristic of serious leisure is that it provides a strong source of identity. Furthermore, serious leisure participants tend to follow a career path in their chosen pursuit that is shaped by the stages of increasing involvement and achievement. The final quality of serious leisure is unique ethos, which mostly refers to a special social world in which one becomes entrenched when

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being engaged in a particular activity for an extended period of time. Although Stebbins appears to have never connected serious leisure with the concept of eudaimonia, the qualities of serious leisure he described are in many ways similar to the previously discussed description of Ryff’s and Waterman’s indi-cators and outcomes of eudaimonic well-being. Consequently, the major pur-pose of this paper is to explore whether tourism experiences can be classified as hedonic or eudaimonic, consistent with Stebbins’s criteria for casual and serious leisure. Thus throughout this paper we will refer to a combination of casual/hedonic and serious/eudaimonic tourism experiences.

MethodsThe study described in this paper is part of a larger research project which examined the experiences and outcomes attained by wellness tourists. Due to the expected variability among the total population, it was decided to select three different types of wellness tourists: visitors to beauty spas, life-style resorts, and spiritual retreats. These groups conformed to the definition of wellness tourists applied in the overall project (Voigt, 2010) but offered different characteristics, making it possible to examine the issues of inter-est in this study. The main focus of beauty spa experiences is on body and beauty treatments such as massages and facials. Visitors to lifestyle resorts are typically enrolled in a comprehensive program which concentrates on the facilitation of health-promoting behaviour changes in areas such as exercise, nutrition, personal goal-finding, and stress management. Spiritual retreats can be non-religious or religious but always include meditation in their vari-ous forms and focus on spiritual development or enlightenment.

Data were collected by conducting individual semi-structured inter-views which asked participants about their experiences as wellness tourists. Employing an interview guide allowed for consistency across the samples but did not impose a rigid structure as to how a person should respond. This approach makes it possible to generate rich data about participants’ personal experiences (Patton, 2002). The opening question in the interview guide relevant to this study was ‘Please tell me of your experiences as a well-ness tourist’ and research prompts were used, such as questions in regard to where they went, with whom they went, how long they went, and what ben-efits they sought from their experiences. During the interviews every attempt was made not to ask participants directly for any casual/hedonic or serious/eudaimonic characteristics. For instance, we did not ask whether participants perceived their experiences as relaxing, challenging, pleasurable, or identity-building. In other words we avoided any ‘leading’ interview questions that were linked to the experience characteristics in question. However, if partici-

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pants described positive outcomes, we sometimes asked them how long these positive experiences had lasted.

Suitable lists and consequently sample frames for Australian wellness tourists are not readily available; therefore, snowball sampling was consid-ered to be the most effective technique to obtain the purposive sample. The start of the referral chain was personal contacts as well as help from one of the directors of the Australasian Spa Association (ASPA) who enabled addi-tional meetings with potential interview participants. Those people who were willing to be interviewed were then asked if they knew other individuals who had a wellness tourism experience and might be willing to participate in this research. The recruitment of participants ended at 27 interviews when simi-larities in responses became apparent and theoretical saturation was reached. The final sample comprised 12 beauty spa visitors, six lifestyle resort visitors, and nine spiritual retreat visitors. An attempt was made to achieve a hetero-geneous sample in regard to the length of experience as wellness tourists, age, and background. However, females were overrepresented (n = 22) in contrast to only five males, reflecting what other researchers have found, that well-ness tourists are predominantly female (Smith & Puczkó, 2008; Verschuren, 2004). The final sample was found to be highly educated, with 18 out of 27 participants holding at least an undergraduate university degree.

The 27 digitally recorded interviews were transcribed verbatim by the first researcher and then subjected to thematic analysis (Boyatzis, 1998), or ‘qualitative content analysis’ (Cavanagh, 1997; Mayring, 2000). In respect to the specific aim of this paper, the themes were based on an a priori estab-lished theory; thus a coding frame already existed and codes were developed deductively rather than inductively (Boyatzis, 1998; Braun & Clarke, 2006; Miles & Huberman, 1994). Casual/hedonic characteristics included pleas-ure, relaxation, and sensory stimulation, all of which are short-lived. Serious/eudaimonic characteristics included belongingness to a special social world, career development, effort/perseverance, knowledge, training and skills, and fulfilling and identity-building outcomes, with a longer-lasting effect of these positive outcomes.

Moreover, this research was underpinned by an essentially realist frame-work which endorses the assumption that there is a largely unidirectional relationship ‘between meaning and experience and language’ (Braun & Clarke, 2006: 85). Therefore the focus was only on what was actually articu-lated by the interview participants (the ‘manifest level’) (Boyatzis, 1998). The qualitative analysis software NVivo 7 was used to facilitate data analysis and code recognition by visually organising the data through matrices and fre-quency of occurrences of codes within and across cases (Miles & Huberman,

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1994). A codebook, which underwent several stages of refinement as well as ‘diachronic reliability’ (Boyatzis, 1998: 148), peer debriefing, and inter-coder reliability testings, was developed. Cohen’s kappa was calculated to establish inter-coder reliability with one external assessor. Cohen’s kappa is preferable to simple percentage agreement calculations because it does take chance agreements into account that occur from guessing (Neuendorf, 2002). Inter-coder reliability in this research was 83 per cent (κ = .834), suggesting substantial reliability (Hruschka, Schwartz, St John, Picone-Decaro, & Carey, 2004; Neuendorf, 2002).

Results The experience accounts of the three wellness tourist groups collectively comprised all of Stebbins’s serious/eudaimonic and most casual/hedonic lei-sure characteristics. Table 1 depicts how often each of the casual/hedonic or serious/eudaimonic characteristics was discussed by each wellness tourist group. It can be seen that there are distinct differences between these three groups. Beauty spa visitation was solely associated with casual/hedonic char-acteristics, whereas spiritual retreat visitors made references almost exclu-sively to serious/eudaimonic qualities in their experience accounts. Before discussing these differences in greater detail, each of the themes is presented below, supported by verbatim quotes from the interview participants.

Casual/hedonic characteristicsThe casual/hedonic characteristics of ‘Relaxation’ and ‘Pleasure’ were predom-inantly mentioned by beauty spa visitors. Fourteen out of 15 beauty spa visi-tors explained that their spa experiences made them feel relaxed:

I’d go there for relaxation, I mean, um, physically you are relaxed and also mentally. You can sort of unwind and relax your mind because you can’t really do anything when you are there. (‘Kate’, beauty spa visitor)

This quote also implies a more passive form of relaxation of not ‘really doing anything’ which is also similar to Stebbins’s casual leisure characteristic of ‘passive entertainment’. ‘Molly’, who had mostly spiritual retreat experiences, as well as a few beauty spa experiences, explained the difference between pas-sive involvement and relaxation in beauty spas compared to spiritual retreats as follows:

The meditation [retreats are] something, I suppose, I am actively involved in getting the benefit out of it. So it doesn’t involve another person working on

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my body somewhere . . . So you are able to work truly on yourself. Whereas . . . a spa and other experiences are pleasant! Again, if you lie flat on your back, you are not doing anything, so you might get some of that feeling like you are letting go and relaxing. But you are getting, I suppose, the benefit of having somebody forcing you to relax or making you feel nice.

The close relation between relaxation and pleasure in regard to beauty spa experiences is also exemplified in the following quote:

With the spa in England, that was mainly for me, just a treat for myself. I didn’t really go with any other purpose in mind, other than just to relax and enjoy it. And I did, it was very nice . . . And I did that mainly for relaxation, just for my own pleasure. There was no particular aim involved other than must have a good time. (‘Amy’)

Table 1. Casual/hedonic versus serious/eudaimonic experience characteristics across three groups of wellness tourists

Beauty Spa Visitors

(out of 15) (*)

Lifestyle Resort Visitors

(out of 6)

Spiritual Retreat Visitors

(out of 10)

Casual/Hedonic Experience Characteristics

Pleasure 6 2 0

Relaxation 14 1 1

Sensory Stimulation 5 0 0

Short-lived 11 0 0

Serious/Eudaimonic Experience Characteristics

Belongingness to Special Social World

0 0 1

Career Development 0 0 5

E�ort & Perseverance 0 3 4

Knowledge, Training & Skills 0 4 8

Ful�lling & Identity-building 0 4 7

Long-lived 0 4 7

(*) Note: Four interview participants engaged in two of the tourism activities of beauty spa, lifestyle resort, or spiritual retreat visitation and described the two types of their experiences in very di�erent ways according to Stebbins’s characteristics. This procedure raised the sample of beauty spa visitors to 15 and the spiritual retreat sample to 10 interviewees, with an overall total of 31 interview participants.

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In contrast to beauty spa visitors, lifestyle resorts but spiritual retreat visitors rarely mentioned the beneficial hedonic outcomes of relaxation and pleasure. ‘Sensory Stimulation’ was a casual/hedonic characteristic that was mentioned only by beauty spa tourists in this sample. Beauty spa tourists explained that the multi-sensory nature of their experiences contributed to their enjoyment. Specifically, they referred to pleasant smells of aromatic oils, relaxing, medita-tive music, warm room temperatures that make people feel cocooned, and the enjoyable touch of spa therapists particularly in the form of massages.

Only beauty spa visitors referred to the ‘Short-Lived’ nature of the positive outcomes of their experiences. For instance ‘Rose’ elaborated on how long her positive feeling of relaxation lasted:

I think for two days. For the rest of the day it was a quite um strong feeling . . . The second day you still feel quite relaxed but apart from that I wouldn’t say it had a long-lasting effect.

Serious/eudaimonic characteristicsIn regard to the serious/eudaimonic characteristics, ‘Belongingness to a Special Social World’ and ‘Career Development’ were referred to the least often. ‘Belongingness to a Special Social World’ was only mentioned by one spiritual retreat visitor. ‘Dominic’ explained that he feels to some extent part of the ‘New Age, touchy-feely, tree hugger’ world. One explanation for this was that leisure experiences often involve interaction with a regular social group where a unique ethos of a special social world can develop. In contrast, in a tourism context, people tend to interact with others only at a special time and place, without having any type of contact or ongoing relationship after the vacation. A recent survey revealed that the majority of all wellness tourists take wellness tourism vacations alone and tend to focus on themselves, rather than on others (Voigt, Brown, & Howat, under review).

The serious/eudaimonic experience attribute ‘Career Development’ was implied by half of the spiritual retreat interviewees. Career development can refer to a progression of skill development which leads people to seek increas-ingly challenging experiences (Stebbins, 1997b). The tendency to seek greater challenges, or to strive for higher levels of accomplishment, has also been described as the ‘eudaimonic staircase’ (Waterman, 2007). In this research, spiritual retreat visitors often described their spiritual progress in a way that could be seen as ‘career development’. In this way, tourists generally started this career by being involved in a formal religion. Often in their late teenage years, they then began to question organised religion and to become anti-reli-gious for a while before discovering that they still needed spiritual meaning

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in their lives. This is when participants started to read books, attend spiritual or meditation courses, and visit spiritual retreats. One interviewee explained that this spiritual career development had an influence on his professional career. When dissatisfied with his life and feeling unfulfilled in his job as a financial consultant, ‘Isaac’ joined a Buddhist meditation group and subse-quently visited several spiritual retreats where he learned more about medita-tion, Buddhism, and spirituality. Consequently he decided to quit his job and stayed at home taking care of his children, feeling more fulfilled as a result. Hence, the visitation to spiritual retreats often represented the culmination of a career which commences with a liberalisation from organised religion and progresses more and a more towards a ‘self-spirituality’ (Heelas, 1996: 24–26), where the self becomes the source of guidance and where people choose what they believe and what decisions they make.

Related to the serious/eudaimonic characteristic of career development is the characteristic ‘Knowledge Training & Skills’, which was the most fre-quently mentioned eudaimonic attribute overall. It was discussed by the majority of lifestyle resort visitors (4 out of 6), as well as spiritual retreat visitors (8 out of 10). Lifestyle resort and spiritual retreat visitors may gain knowledge in different areas. On the one hand, they may learn about spe-cific therapies and techniques (e.g., meditation, yoga, rebirthing, tai chi), or study a specific religious/spiritual orientation or philosophy (e.g., Buddhism, Findhorn Community). On the other hand, they can focus on learning more about health-promoting behaviours such as nutrition, exercise, sleep, and stress management:

For your knowledge you can learn how to eat better, you can learn what stresses you and the things that will help it, around food, around meditation and relaxa-tion. Other physical things like, you know, exercises to help stress, like breath-ing; there are lots of stress techniques. (‘Laura’, spiritual retreat visitor)

Lifestyle resort interviewees, and even more so spiritual retreat participants, tended to learn a lot about themselves, which is closely related to the seri-ous/eudaimonic leisure characteristic of ‘Fulfilling & Identity-Building’. In this sense, lifestyle resort and spiritual retreat visitation experiences support some tourists in constructing their identity, to help find their authentic ‘true self’, or as ‘Josie’ (spiritual retreat visitor) put it:

. . . and really a retreat is all about the self, finding the self, finding what’s inside you and what is your best attribute to the world, to everything, to your-self. So it’s all about, you know, getting to know who you are as a human being

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. . . So obviously, it is my time to reunite with that energy and go back into myself again and look at me.

Another serious/eudaimonic characteristic which was referred to by lifestyle resort and spiritual retreat visitors, but not by beauty spa visitors, was linked to ‘Effort & Perseverance’. Interviewees described some of their experiences as ‘tough’, ‘hard’, ‘demanding’, or something one has to ‘put a lot of effort’ into. Lifestyle resort and spiritual retreat visitation can encompass ‘effort’ in the sense that some participants were confronted with uncomfortable feelings or realisations of what has been going wrong in their lives. Some tourists also visited lifestyle resorts or spiritual retreats because they had to deal with and seek to overcome major negative life events, such as a death of a loved one, a failed marriage, or a serious illness (Voigt, 2008). Persevering helps them transcend these problems and negative feelings, thus evoking deeper feelings of fulfilment and satisfaction:

A program that says, ‘Okay, so how are you gonna live in balance?’ would mean that you have to address some of the things that are keeping you out of balance and so you kind of felt like slightly uncomfortable, so like ‘Uuuuh, oh my goodness, I have to think about this’, it is a bit anxious. But those feelings were never something that stayed with you in a sense that it then robbed you of the positive feelings. And the other thing, too, the negative feelings, because of what happened after them . . . I had a sense that I was working through stuff, so I felt really satisfied as well. Like I was making progress . . . So I felt a lot of deep satisfaction. (‘Katia’, lifestyle resort visitor)

The tools and techniques that lifestyle resort and spiritual retreat visitors learnt, and the adversities they dealt with, may change tourists’ everyday lives or their personal identity of who they are. Thus the results from these kinds of experiences are an example of being a ‘Long-Lived’ serious/eudaimonic lei-sure characteristic. The following quotes exemplify this:

It may be what you have set up at the spa visit, you may actually continue on a day-to-day basis . . . You try and bring it into your everyday life. And I think it becomes part of you and not something separate from you. (‘Veronica’, life-style retreat visitor)

. . . the things that I learnt there [in the retreats] have come and gone through my life . . . and it can blend into daily life in so many different ways, um, so yeah, I think that stayed with me until today. (‘Amy’, spiritual retreat visitor)

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DiscussionThe results from the accounts of interviewees revealed a clear pattern in regard to the hedonic or eudaimonic nature of experiences of the three groups of wellness tourists. The interviewees indicated that beauty spa visitation was perceived as a purely casual/hedonic tourism activity. In this respect, beauty spa experiences produced pleasure, relaxation, and fun, and involved intense pleasurable gratification that engaged all the senses (touch, sight, smell, and hearing). However, those pleasant positive feelings tended to be short-lived.

In contrast, spiritual retreat visitation was described as an almost pure serious/eudaimonic tourism experience. Similar to the course of a career, spiritual retreat visitors progressed through certain stages of their spiritual journey; most often through a progression from their religious background, to becoming anti-religious, to becoming spiritual in a non-theological sense. They also acquired new knowledge, skills or training, frequently in the form of philosophical or religious teachings, or in the form of learning or improv-ing certain techniques such as meditation, yoga, or reiki. Spiritual retreat visitors considered their experiences as deeply fulfilling, and for some these experiences helped in their search for self-identity and getting to know who they really were. Spiritual retreat experiences can also involve negative emo-tions from adversities, such as a major illness, that require perseverance to overcome. However, as discussed in the literature review, negative emotions due to a major life challenge do not exclude a person experiencing eudai-monic well-being. In fact, major negative life events may even be the catalyst for positive psychological growth (Ryff & Singer, 1998, 2003; Wethington, 2003). While spiritual retreat visitors did not discuss their experiences as pleasurable or relaxing, this does not necessarily mean that a spiritual retreat visitation cannot be enjoyable or relaxing. Rather, eudaimonic outcomes were much more pronounced for spiritual retreat visitors, and consequently positive hedonic leisure outcomes did not come readily to mind when they recalled their experiences.

Lifestyle resort experiences were described with mixed characteristics, although eudaimonic attributes outweighed the hedonic ones. This find-ing supports Ragheb’s (1996) and Stebbins’s (1997b) notion that pleasure or enjoyment may be outcomes of serious leisure pursuits, but more in the form of ‘by-products’ than as the major positive outcome. Otherwise, lifestyle resort tourists described their experiences in a similar way to spiritual retreat visi-tors, but without reference to career development or a special social world. Like spiritual retreat visitors, lifestyle resort visitors attained new skills and knowledge, particularly in the area of health behaviour changes in relation to nutrition, exercise, and stress management. This group of wellness tour-

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ists also considered their experiences to be fulfilling, with enduring positive effects.

In summary it is argued that wellness tourism experiences can be classi-fied along a continuum from pure hedonic experiences to eudaimonic experi-ences. On this continuum, beauty spa visitation is located alongside hedonic experiences, whereas spiritual retreat visitation is alongside eudaimonic experiences. Lifestyle resort experiences would be placed more in the middle of the continuum but more toward the eudaimonic end.

The results of this research partially confirm how wellness tourists have been described in the literature. Spa visitors are often described as pleas-ure-seeking, hedonistic individuals, but often in a rather negative manner. For instance, Sheldon and Bushell (2009: 4) specifically nominated ‘hedon-ism’ as a motivator for visiting spa resorts and lamented that because of the ‘overindulgent and consumerism-oriented’ nature of those resorts, well-ness tourism is not taken seriously as an academic field. Similarly Dann and Nordstrand (2009: 127) argued that spa visitation appeals to ‘hedonistic sybarites’ and Steiner and Reisinger (2006: 12) asserted that many well-ness tourists including spa visitors are focused on the ‘superficial quest for merely feeling “well” rather than on “true” well-being’. In contrast, spiritual retreat visitors were often portrayed as pursuing more meaningful and more worthy experiences and some argued that they should therefore be regarded as the ‘true’ wellness tourists (Smith, 2003; Smith & Kelly, 2006b; Steiner & Reisinger, 2006).

We propose, however, that from a positive well-being point of view, it is too simplistic to view hedonic tourism experiences as shallow, or to equate spa visitors with unhealthful, overindulgent individuals who seek meaningless pleasures. While positive psychologists contend that hedonism in its extreme forms may have a well-earned negative reputation, hedonic well-being or pos-itive affect should not be regarded as inconsequential, meaningless, or even destructive (King et al., 2006). Moreover, the literature review showed that positive psychologists regard hedonic and eudaimonic well-being as equally important in achieving a state of optimal positive psychological well-being. In the leisure context, Stebbins (2004a) similarly asserted that in order to have an optimal leisure lifestyle, both serious and casual leisure activities should be pursued. The experiences of the spa visitors in this research could not be linked to unhealthful or deviant leisure behaviour. Thus, it appears that spa visitation may be a legitimate way to increase hedonic well-being, even though the positive feelings may not be long-lasting.

Finally, it is contended that this research extends our understanding of serious leisure experiences. Previous research analysing serious leisure expe-

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riences has focused on competitive or non-competitive sports such as white-water rafting, rock climbing, or running where achievement and a mastery of challenge is emphasised; or alternatively, on highly social activities, such as volunteering which emphasise bonding and qualitative relations with others. In contrast, other leisure researchers have argued that more solitary leisure pursuits that focus on contemplation, serenity, peacefulness, and the ‘inner self’ are neglected in the leisure research (Caldwell, 2005; Kleiber, 1999, 2000). The results of this research indicate that solitary leisure pursuits such as visiting a spiritual retreat or a lifestyle resort can be considered as seri-ous/eudaimonic experiences that support Stebbins’s (2009) recent notion that contemplation can be considered as a form of serious leisure.

Conclusion and future researchThis paper has explored whether tourism experiences could be classified into hedonic or eudaimonic activities, using Stebbins’s theoretical framework of casual/hedonic versus serious/eudaimonic leisure experience characteristics and based on the aggregated experience accounts of three different groups of wellness tourists. By attributing these characteristics to experience descrip-tions of 27 wellness tourists, the results showed that beauty spa visitation is considered as a purely hedonic activity and lifestyle resort and spiritual retreat visitation predominantly as eudaimonic activities. This demonstrates that certain tourism experiences can be linked differently to hedonic and eudaimonic well-being.

Although the generalisability of this result must be treated with caution due to the qualitative nature of the study, we tentatively conclude that Stebbins’s framework supports the placing of tourism or leisure experiences along a continuum with hedonic and eudaimonic experiences as the two extremes. In some ways, Stebbins’s framework is similar to Waterman and colleagues’ approach which also assessed how different activities are linked to hedonia and eudaimonia at the experiential level. Both approaches include pleasure or enjoyment as a hedonic outcome and emphasise the importance of realising one’s identity for eudaimonic well-being. However, Stebbins’s theory seems to be more inclusive and less biased in favouring eudaimonic experiences over hedonic ones.

The outcome that different tourism or leisure experiences appear to be differently linked to the two approaches of psychological well-being has important practical implications, in particular for tourism operators. This can be illustrated by examples from this particular research context. Based on these findings, wellness tourism operators targeting different groups of wellness tourists (i.e., beauty spa, lifestyle resort, or spiritual retreat tourists)

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should emphasise different positive outcomes in their communication mate-rial and service/product offerings. For instance, operators targeting beauty spa tourists should design facilities geared towards maximising tourists’ hedonic relaxation, pleasure, and sensory stimulation. In contrast, spiritual retreat operators should emphasise the opportunity for eudaimonic personal growth, self-actualisation, and finding one’s true or spiritual self. Both life-style resort and spiritual retreat operators need to be aware that some of their guests may suffer from serious negative life events and should have necessary procedures in place that help them to transcend these negative emotions.

Future research could further examine the links between tourism and positive psychological well-being, while other research could apply Stebbins’s framework to tourism or leisure experiences outside the wellness tourism context. Moreover, a scale could be developed based on Stebbins’s framework to quantitatively assess where particular leisure or tourism experiences could be placed on the hedonic-eudaimonic experience continuum. Future research could explore if and how hedonic or eudaimonic characteristics and out-comes at the experiential level are linked to general hedonic and eudaimonic well-being at the global level. In this way it might be shown, for instance, that those individuals who are engaged in an optimal leisure lifestyle are also more likely to be happy and fulfilled individuals. Additional studies could consider the influences of personality traits in choosing to pursue hedonic or eudaimonic leisure and tourism experiences.

This research is only one piece of a puzzle that helps us to comprehend the complex relationship between tourism and positive psychological well-being. However, it supports Pearce’s (2009) proposition that knowledge in this area can be advanced by interconnecting theory and knowledge from the fields of positive psychology and tourism/leisure, and we look forward to more researchers following this path in the future.

AcknowledgementsThis research is an outcome of a PhD project partially funded by the Sustainable Tourism Cooperative Research Centre, established by the Australian Commonwealth Government. The authors would like to acknowledge the anonymous reviewers for their insightful and constructive comments.

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Hedonic and Eudaimonic Experiences among Wellness Tourists: An exploratory enquiry

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