Guides must mediate slow adventures to enhance clients’ psychological well-being and connection to natureSlow adventures have emerged as a form of nature-based tourism with the potential to improve people’s psychological well-being. Consisting of activities like stargazing, canoeing, and foraging, slow adventures refer to immersive nature experiences in which people slow down to disconnect from the modern world and connect with nature. This study interviewed slow adventure guides to understand how they facilitated tourists’ psychological well-being and connection to nature. This knowledge can broaden the researchers' focus beyond more thrill-oriented outdoor adventures and also inform practitioners' guiding practices and ecotourism experiences.
Conducted in the Scottish Highlands and Islands, this qualitative study consisted of semi-structured interviews with ten guides who provide slow adventure experiences, including hiking, canoeing, and sea kayaking trips. The interviews were then analyzed inductively to highlight patterns in the data which related their guided slow adventures with tourists’ well-being. The study drew upon previous research on adventure travel and the field of positive psychology to help interpret how slow adventure guides choreograph and facilitate clients’ psychological well-being in wild and unfettered landscapes.
The article highlighted three key themes in the interview data: quality time, flourishing through meaningful moments, and a sense of togetherness. The first cluster of qualitative data converged around the importance of slowing down and savoring moments in nature as an antidote to modern experiences of quantitative time. According to interviews, guides could help facilitate this quality time by helping tourists slow down, respect the natural environment, and focus on nature, thus helping them to de-stress, connect to nature, and see themselves as stewards of nature. Second, guides fostered positive changes and human flourishing by mediating meaningful moments in nature. Using their roles to influence the physical and mental landscapes of slow adventures, guides believed they reduced clients’ stress and anxiety, helped them understand and act responsibly toward wild nature, encouraged spiritual connections with nature, and improved their happiness and overall psychological well-being. Third, it was not only immersing oneself in the wild but also experiencing the wild with others that seemingly contributed to participants’ wellbeing and connections to nature. Guides stressed the social dynamics of the guide experience—shared experiences and challenges, communal spaces, stories, and memories—as vital to the power of the slow adventure experience. Making modest but meaningful contributions to others’ psychological well-being also contributed to guides’ professional satisfaction.
This study shifted the focus of outdoor adventures away from risk and thrill-seeking activities toward slower experiences that immersed travelers in wild ocean and mountain environments. From guides’ perspectives, slow adventures enhanced participants’ mental and spiritual health, reduced stress and anxiety, formed positive social connections, and helped tourists connect with nature and practice environmental stewardship. Importantly, guides often needed to mediate slow adventures, especially for affluent travelers, to help them slow down, deepen their multisensory engagement, and immerse themselves in meaningful moments with nature and other travelers. Further, guides also assumed roles as spiritual advisors, environmental stewards, and social facilitators to help enact meaningful moments in nature which minimized tourists’ anxieties and fears and maximized their sense of security, wellbeing, and flourishing. These findings are relevant to tourism, wellbeing, and sustainability studies and have implications for guide training programs. With growing interest in the health benefits of slow adventure travel, there’s a need to develop outdoor guides and tour operators with the empathy and relational skillsets necessary to facilitate healthy, if not transformative, slow adventure experiences for travelers who struggle to be still in time and place and savor immersive outdoor experiences.
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