Systemic crisis, weltschmerz and tourism: meaning without incense during vacations

The present global economic crisis is revealing manifold fissures in the economic/social/value/sense-making system and that inevitably has an effect on people’s psyche, on their beliefs and desires, even on their perception of needs. Many effects of the present situation are symptoms of a broader type of crisis. The economic crisis may have acted as a catalyst for increasing (social, political, and spiritual) awareness, and it could be paradoxically a landmark and a far-reaching impetus to renewal and awakening of humanity, to build a sounder and more sustainable (social, educational, political, and economic) system. At this crossroad, the reappearance in the last decade of the term weltschmerz is not coincidental. Whereas the extent to which the current economic crisis has produced a personal or integral crisis remains to be measured, it is clear that concepts such as meaning or transcendence – to combat meaninglessness and weltschmerz – have become central in the discussion on qualitative implications in tourism. The paper suggests a meaningful learning framework to identify required elements for a particular, desired outcome (coping with the second domain of existential pain/ weltschmerz), whose empirical relevance and practical developments are examined in this piece of research on tourism experience.