Kailasam Thirumaran

In the context of sustainability, culture is a core area for addressing development issues. Based on the importance of culture and significant inheritance challenges in contemporary society, many scholars have researched and debated cultural sustainability by examining different aspects such as tangible and intangible cultural heritage. Within this discourse, folk dance plays a crucial role in cultural transmission through presentation of customs, costume, and music. These features that capture the aspects of folk dance, present crucial value in discussions of cultural sustainability. However, the exposition of folk dance and the concept of cultural sustainability continues to require contextual clarity and scrutiny. Therefore, this study adopted Arksey and O’Malley’s scoping review protocol to explore the definition and nexus between knowledge of folk dance and cultural sustainability. The research drew data from Scopus, ProQuest platform, Web of Science, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) in English and Chinese. Out of 12,797 articles, 72 articles were identified as relevant to the research question. A thematic analysis resulted in three main themes: (1) digitalization, (2) education and reform, and (3) inheritance, protection, and development. The results demonstrate differentiation in the positioning of cultural sustainability and folk dance and of the connections with similar terminologies such as “folkloric dance” and “cultural continuity.” Hence, this paper makes valuable contributions by unraveling the interplay of stakeholders in cultural sustainability and folk dance. Further, the paper suggests four sustainable directions for future studies, especially in developing evaluation and monitoring indicators.

Transformational tourism experiences can lead to acquiring life-changing knowledge, practices or beliefs. However, tourism scholars and suppliers have not fully exploited the concepts and opportunities that deeper transformational tourism brings to support mentally vulnerable tourists (with mental health conditions) since most studies focus on tourist experiences of typical travellers; there exists a knowledge gap on tourism service suppliers’ adequacy and preparedness to facilitate the provision and design of deeper transformational experiences. This article contributes to existing studies on transformational tourism and transformative experience design by shifting focus to a specialized community of unconventional travel suppliers as key contributors for deeper transformational travel experiences. It also considers the relationship of key stakeholders necessary for effective intervention in forming deeper transformational experiences. The latter calls for further studies to operationalize a conceptual framework and future study to assess the outcome of the transformation post-trip. This study also supports the need for collaboration beyond travel service suppliers to facilitate transformational tourism services.