Spirituality focuses on understanding the purpose of human creation and the ways to make life meaningful. The inner quest combined with travels and experiences motivated by both internal and external factors forms the core of spiritual tourism, setting it apart from religious tourism. The research primarily aims to develop, test, and validate a scale for measuring the spiritual tourism experience. The study utilizes a hypercritical scale development procedure based on the mixed research method. The data collection and processing procedure included 11 face-to-face and 42 asynchronous online interviews, 30 participant observations, a thematic analysis of 2683 tourist statements from 818 reviews, 950 questionnaires conducted on spiritual tourists, and further confirmatory factor analysis performed on PLS. The spiritual tourism experience is ultimately structured into six dimensions: "Transformation, Healing, Atmosphere, Transcendence, Escape, Divine Connectedness." The findings confirm that the 31-item "Spiritual Tourism Experience Scale (STES)" is both statistically valid and reliable. Based on the research findings, the paper presents the most comprehensive definition of spiritual tourism. The findings contradict the view that spiritual tourism is merely a subset of religious tourism. The psychometric properties of STES along with its practical and theoretical implications are discussed within the tourism industry and destination marketing framework.

中文翻译：

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旅游中的灵性维度：开发灵性旅游体验量表 （STES）


灵性侧重于理解人类创造的目的以及使生活有意义的方法。内心的追求与由内部和外部因素驱动的旅行和体验相结合，构成了精神旅游的核心，使其有别于宗教旅游。该研究的主要目的是开发、测试和验证用于衡量精神旅游体验的量表。该研究利用了基于混合研究方法的超临界尺度开发程序。数据收集和处理程序包括 11 次面对面和 42 次异步在线访谈、30 次参与者观察、对 818 条评论中的 2683 条旅游陈述进行主题分析、对精神游客进行的 950 份问卷，以及对 PLS 进行的进一步验证性因素分析。精神旅游体验最终分为六个维度：“转变、治愈、氛围、超越、逃离、神圣联系”。研究结果证实，包含 31 个项目的“精神旅游体验量表 （STES）”在统计上既有效又可靠。基于研究结果，本文提出了精神旅游最全面的定义。这些发现反驳了精神旅游只是宗教旅游的一个子集的观点。在旅游业和目的地营销框架中讨论了 STES 的心理测量特性及其实践和理论意义。