‘I had more time to listen to my inner voice’: Zen meditation tourism for Generation Z

After returning from Zen meditation tourism, Generation Z participants experience long-term benefits that evolve in their daily secular lives. Zen practices fade but remain abiding, continuing sporadically into everyday routines. Socialization progressively improves, while self-growth is complicated and unstable. These findings emerge from six rounds of interviews with 12 informants traced after attending a Zen camp.

Study at a glance

Abstract

With much academic attention to experiential learning in on-site tourism experiences, the benefits of Zen meditation tourism on Generation Z after their re-entry into daily secular life remains largely unexplored. Drawing on experiential learning theory, this study explores the benefits experienced by participants after Zen meditation tourism in three stages including reflection, learning results, and active experimentation. Employing phenomenology-based ethnography, six consecutive rounds of online face-to-face interviews were conducted with 12 informants who were continuously traced after attending a Zen camp. The study findings revealed long-term positive benefits in three aspects of this generational cohort. First, Zen practices tend to be fading yet abiding after the Zen camp which continues sporadically into daily life. Second, socialisation is continuously progressive; but self-growth is complicated and unstable. Theoretical and practical implications of these novel findings are discussed.