Edinburgh Napier University

  This paper focuses on exploring yoga tourism as an under researched area where little has been written to date (Ali-Knight, 2009; Lehto, Brown, Chen & Morrison, 2006). Yoga tourism is an emergent niche tourism market (Novelli, 2005) that can be viewed as a subset of wellness or holistic tourism. It reflects consumers’ desire for self-improvement and concern for society when choosing a holiday destination (Trauer, 2006) and involves active participation, sharing common functional characteristics in travel motivations and social values related to improving an individual’s quality of life (Lehto et al., 2006).

The research was carried out using an on-line survey to members of UK membership based Yoga Associations including YogaScotland and the British Wheel of Yoga. The initial stages of this research, involved an exploratory on-line web search, which revealed that in terms of supply, there are a great variety of destinations, yoga tourism providers, price ranges and activities that are available. The limited literature on the subject provides some information on the profile of these visitors, however a gap has been identified on how the primary motivation for travel affects the choice of destination, type of accommodation, activities and the overall experience of the yoga traveller. Therefore, the results of this study aim to fill this inherent gap and establish an enhanced visitor profile and explore the motivational factors that affect yoga practitioners to participate in yoga tourism activities.