The “Jomo Hangover”: Sustaining the Joy of Missing Out Post-Spiritual Travel

Contemporary tourism increasingly extends beyond sightseeing and entertainment toward experiences of reflection, restoration, spirituality, mindfulness, and temporary disconnection from digitally saturated everyday life. Within this context, the concept of the Joy of Missing Out (JOMO) offers an alternative to the widely studied phenomenon of the Fear of Missing Out (FoMO). Whereas FoMO reflects anxiety associated with being excluded from desirable social or digital experiences, JOMO describes the positive experience of deliberately disengaging from continuous connectivity and becoming comfortable with not participating in every available activity. This conceptual article introduces the term “JOMO Hangover” to describe the post-travel tension that may emerge when individuals return from a spiritual or digitally restorative journey to an everyday environment characterized by constant notifications, social comparison, work demands, information overload, and expectations of online availability. The article argues that the benefits of JOMO should not be understood as ending when the traveller leaves the destination. Instead, spiritual travel can potentially create psychological resources, reflective practices, and behavioural intentions that may be carried into everyday life. Drawing upon Self-Determination Theory, the Broaden-and-Build Theory of Positive Emotions, Attention Restoration Theory, mindfulness perspectives, memorable tourism experience theory, and literature on spiritual and digital-detox tourism, the article develops a conceptual framework explaining how spiritual travel may generate temporary disconnection, mindfulness, perceived autonomy, meaningfulness, psychological restoration, and positive affect. These outcomes may subsequently influence the individual's ability to sustain JOMO after returning home. However, the transition from a spiritually restorative environment to an hyperconnected everyday environment may create a “JOMO Hangover,” characterized by nostalgia for silence, discomfort with digital overload, renewed awareness of unnecessary connectivity, and difficulty maintaining intentional disengagement. The article proposes that sustainable JOMO requires deliberate post-travel practices, destination-supported transition mechanisms, digital boundary management, reflective routines, and social reinforcement. The study contributes theoretically by connecting spiritual tourism, digital detox, JOMO, post-travel well-being, and behavioural sustainability within a single conceptual framework. It also proposes avenues for empirical research, including longitudinal studies, mixed-method approaches, cross-cultural comparisons, and destination-specific investigations.