ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused large-scale damage across the globe. There is no field of human activity that has remained unaffected due to the pandemic. Lockdowns, curfews and restrictions on international as well as domestic travel have emerged as the biggest stress-causing factors in the field of tourism. Millennial tourists have been severely affected by heavy financial and other losses. Understandably, revenue generation through millennials’ tourist activities decreased significantly during 2020 owing to COVID-19. However, being true seekers/questers, millennials devised several ways to take a break from desolation, gloom, despair and drudgery caused by the pandemic despite travelling and other restrictions. This chapter explores millennials’ quests for spirituality and spiritual well-being in the main, besides taking into account their interest in religious tourism, which at times could lead them to mystical experiences as well. We have employed qualitative methodology and used NVivo software to analyse public sentiments through tweets extracted through NCapture concerning terms such as ‘millennials’, ‘travel’, ‘spirituality’ and ‘COVID-19’, to conceptually analyse how millennials have been seeking spirituality and a holistic sense of well-being as a defence mechanism to fight against the crisis caused by COVID-19 pandemic.
