Editorial: Transformative Experiences and Well-being of Tourism, Hospitality, and Events Stakeholders

Sandhiya Goolaup¹Haywantee Ramkissoon^2,3,4,5,6*

• ¹Department of Business Administration and Textile Management, University of Borås, Sweden, Boras, Sweden
• ²Professor, School of Management, Faculty of Business & Law, Adelaide University, Adelaide, Australia
• ³Fellow of the Peer Review College, British Academy of Management, London, United Kingdom
• ⁴Professor, UniSA Business, University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia
• ⁵Distinguished Visiting Professor, College of Tourism & Hospitality, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa
• ⁶Visiting Professor, Centre for Innovation in Tourism, Taylor's University, Subang Jaya, Malaysia

Tourism, hospitality, and events play a significant role in providing transformative experiences that have the potential to positively impact the well-being of individuals and communities. Transformative experiences are meaningful encounters that have the potential to change the attitude and behavior of the participants and enhance their wellbeing (Goolaup 2023;Reisinger 2013). Research has shown that transformative experiences can lead to profound changes in individuals' worldviews, values, and behaviors, promoting personal growth and contributing to a more sustainable society (Ramkissoon, 2023;Sheldon 2020;Teoh et al. 2021). Despite their significance, research linking transformative experiences, behavior change and the well-being of stakeholders in tourism, hospitality and events are still limited. In an attempt to close this gap, the editors compiled this research topic comprising of seven articles. The studies are contextualized within polar tourism, therapeutic landscapes, music festivals, rural tourism setting and communist heritage tourism. These studies show how various tourism sites have the potential to offer a positive pathway to transformation, where coherence and fascination in the environment, combined with cultural narratives, promote self-reflection, belonging, and purpose.Reas, Leung and Cajiao (2023) provide a synthesized review of the terminology related to ambassadorship within polar tourism research. They position polar tourism as a potential catalyst for transformative experiences that foster environmental responsibility and personal growth contributing to well-being. Another review paper by Godovykh (2024), explores how travel experiences can lead to profound personal changes in tourists. Using a multidisciplinary perspective, it introduces the Transformative Experience Diagram as a conceptual framework to address four key questions: where, when, with whom, and how transformation occurs. It provides initial data on triggers, timing, and traveler characteristics associated with transformative experiences.Majeed and Ramkissoon (2020), explore the concept of therapeutic landscapes, place attachment, and revisitation intentions in health and wellness tourism. The review emphasizes how therapeutic landscapes contribute to physical, mental, and spiritual well-being through restorative experiences, holistic medicine, and social interactions. They contribute to the literature on transformative experience by framing therapeutic landscapes as catalysts for personal renewal and identity shifts. They showed how interactions with natural and built healing environments, combined with holistic treatments, can foster deep psychological restoration, enhanced well-being, and lifestyle changes, therefore positioning wellness tourism as a context for transformative journeys rather than mere leisure.Zhu, Xu, Zhang and Lu ( 2025) explore what drives tourist loyalty to outdoor music festivals in China after COVID-19. Their findings suggest that existential authenticity and experience quality strongly influence emotions, perceived value and satisfaction which are critical for long-term behavioral outcomes. These findings align with the notion of transformative experience, emphasizing that festivals serve as spaces for identity affirmation, stress relief, and cognitive reframing, particularly in the post-pandemic context where the need for renewal and resilience is heightened. The research underscores that transformation is not solely affective but also mediated by reflective appraisal, offering a nuanced understanding of how immersive cultural events contribute to psychological well-being and personal growth.Zhu, Xu, Zhang and Chen (2025), investigate how perceived destination restorative qualities in rural tourism influence tourists' hedonic and eudaimonic experiences, destination image and loyalty. It demonstrates that natural and social elements such as tranquility, cultural interaction, and community warmth act as stimuli that foster psychological recovery, pleasure, and self-reflection. These experiences not only enhance short-term happiness but also promote deeper meaning-making and personal growth, aligning with the notion of transformative experience. Importantly, the research highlights that hedonic experiences exert a stronger direct effect on loyalty,The study by Chen, Lai and Huo (2025) draws on environmental psychology and heritage tourism, offering a nuanced understanding of how ideologically themed destinations can catalyze personal growth and psychological resilience. They examine how red tourism experiences influence post-visit behavioral intentions through environmental restorativeness, perception and cultural identity. The authors argue that red tourism fosters psychological recovery through attention restoration, stress reduction, and emotional activation, while simultaneously reinforcing cultural identity and collective memory. This study contributes to the literature on transformative experiences and wellbeing by positioning red tourism as a unique restorative environment that integrates cultural identity and environmental design. These dual processes enable visitors to achieve cognitive restoration and spiritual elevation by transforming ordinary travel into meaningful experiences that enhance well-being.Li, Mei and Huang (2025) study advances the understanding of transformative experiences and well-being by demonstrating how red tourism site development fosters cognitive and emotional engagement through cultural depth. Unlike traditional servicequality frameworks that emphasize functional attributes, their study highlights the role of narrative authenticity, ideological expression, and immersive cultural atmospheres in triggering reflection and emotional resonance, which are central to transformative experiences. By clarifying how site design and management can guide visitors from passive sightseeing toward value identification and inner transformation, the research bridges experiential design with well-being theory. It underscores that satisfaction in red tourism is not merely a function of infrastructure but a product of cultural meaningmaking, offering actionable insights for creating tourism environments that promote psychological enrichment and cultural identity reinforcement.By integrating the different contributions from these papers, it is clear that various tourism, hospitality and event contexts have the potential to trigger personal growth and psychological enrichment. It highlights how different contextual catalysts such as polar tourism, therapeutic landscapes, music festivals, rural tourism, and red tourism initiate transformation. These experiences often operate through key mechanisms such as environmental restorativeness, authenticity, narrative immersion, social interaction and belonging which foster reflection and meaning-making. These mechanisms can promote psychological well-being, behavioral intentions (e.g., loyalty, advocacy), and personal growth, hence positioning tourism activities not merely as leisure but as a pathway to identity shifts and sustainable behaviors. The emphasis in this collection is on the interplay between setting, experience quality, and cultural depth in shaping transformative journeys.