Community-based tourism engagement and wellbeing from a learning perspective

The aim of this study is to explore how tourism engagement in rural experiences can be relevant to the wellbeing of tourists, tourism providers and host community members, and whether a social experiential learning perspective is a good approach to investigate such a phenomenon. The study is theoretically framed based on scholarly contributions related to social experiential learning and educational tourism. A case study about a tourism event in the Italian rural region of Marche was included. The main findings suggest that the chosen perspective suits the purpose of investigating tourism engagement, especially in the case of small-scale and rural tourism. Some processes through which engagement can be described – participation and communication - are found to be relevant to both hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing, while others – alignment, reflection and imagination- to be particularly relevant to eudaimonic wellbeing and, consequently, to transformative experiences.