From Ritual to Renewal: Templestays as a Cross-Cultural Model of Sustainable Wellness Tourism in South Korea
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThis manuscript presents a timely and meaningful exploration of Templestay programs in South Korea as a model of sustainable wellness tourism. The triangulated methodology—integrating Grounded Theory, Symbolic Interactionism, and the Wellness Tourism Model—provides a solid analytical foundation and yields valuable insights into the psychological, spiritual, and cultural impacts of temple retreat experiences. The narrative data collected from diverse sources, including online reviews and handwritten guestbook entries, effectively illustrates the transformative experiences of both Korean and international participants. The cross-cultural comparison is especially commendable, as it highlights distinct yet overlapping interpretations of ritual, healing, and cultural identity.
To strengthen the manuscript, I suggest further clarifying the concept of “ritual-mediated intercultural wellness,” particularly in relation to existing frameworks in transformational and spiritual tourism. While the findings are rich, greater methodological transparency—such as elaborating on coding procedures or including a sample coding structure—would enhance the study's rigor. A more explicit discussion of the limitations of self-reported narratives and the potential for positivity bias would also be beneficial. Finally, expanding on the implications of Templestays in the post-pandemic context—especially regarding mental health and resilience—could make the paper even more relevant for contemporary tourism scholarship and practice.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Please see the attached document(Reviewer 1: pages 1–7). Thank you again for your insightful feedback and thoughtful suggestions.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe paper From Ritual to Renewal: Templestays as a Cross-Cultural Model of Sustainable Wellness Tourism in South Korea is interesting and the topic covers gap in tourism and wellness literature by examining Templestays as intentional, tranfromative wellness tourism models with sustainable dimensions. The cross cultural focus in comapring Korean and non-Koran participants adds additional value to the results.
It would be good to additionally elaborate coding process. Also, more detailed demografic description of paricipants would vbe beneficial.
More expicit comparison with other global wellness tourism models should be added.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Please see the attached document(Reviewer 2: pages 7–10). Thank you again for your insightful feedback and thoughtful suggestions.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear Authors,
The paper’s aim to explore the connection between wellness tourism development and templestay is relevant to the scope of this journal. The abstract clearly outlines the study’s objectives, provides a brief overview of the methodology, and highlights the key findings. The approach of using user-generated content (UGC) from three different sources alongside primary qualitative data is very promising.
The literature review appears to be both relevant and comprehensive, as it is structured into seven sub-chapters. However, it needs improvement in the following areas:
Wellness tourism is a significant and expansive topic, and addressing it in only 13 lines with 6 references weakens this section of your article. For instance, expanding the discussion on wellness tourism, well-being, and sustainability—supported by relevant references—would strengthen the manuscript. You may consider using sources from journals dedicated to this topic, such as the Journal of Tourism, Sustainability and Well-being (https://www.jsod-cieo.net/journal-tsw/index.php/jtsw/issue/archive).
Sub-chapter 2.7 should be moved to the end of the Introduction, as the study's contribution is more appropriately positioned there than in the Literature Review.
Given that UGC is the primary source of data analyzed, a dedicated sub-chapter about the role of visitor online reviews in decoding the wellness tourism experience is recommended to better contextualize the data and support the research framework.
The first two paragraphs on page 5 need to be explained in more detail. For example, the decision to select only 200 reviews from a corpus of over 4,000 requires a more thorough methodological justification. Additionally, Figure 1 refers to “the study’s research questions,” but these are not clearly formulated in the text. It is advisable to clearly state the research question(s) at the end of the Literature Review section, as this section is intended to clarify what is already known about the topic. Moreover, the research question(s) should be explicitly justified in relation to the existing literature.
Table 1, which presents the eight themes and their corresponding sub-themes, is a valuable contribution and is highly appreciated. However, the process by which these themes were structure, particularly how the coding was conducted using NVivo 14 software, requires further clarification. Including a word cloud or one to two additional figures could enhance the connection between the Methodology and Findings chapters and provide greater transparency in how the data was analyzed.
Although sub-chapters 4.2 to 4.5 mistakenly share the same title as sub-chapter 4.1 (Cultural Immersion and Learning), the content clearly indicates that the authors discussed distinct findings corresponding to the eight themes presented in Table 1.
There is a minor typographical error on line 369: (Turner, 2017, 1969). The sentence on lines 730–731 should be reformulated for better clarity.
The paragraph on lines 783–787, which introduces Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions, appears disconnected from the surrounding content. This further supports the earlier suggestion that Table 1 could be complemented by an additional figure (such as a word cloud) to strengthen the link between the Literature Review and the Findings. Alternatively, one of the research questions could be explicitly connected to relevant literature, such as Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions, to ensure better integration and coherence.
Line 854 – It is not appropriate to include a sub-chapter titled Conclusions within the Conclusions chapter itself.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Please see the attached document（Reviewer 3: pages 10–20）. Thank you again for your insightful feedback and thoughtful suggestions.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear Authors,
You have successfully addressed all the observations from the first round. Along with the improvements made in response to the comments of the other two reviewers, the paper is now significantly more structured.
