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February 28, 2019

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Religious Tourism: What is it and why is it so important?

Religious tourism is one of the earliest forms of tourism and is a fast growing market. Here, Peter Wiltshier, Consultant Researcher Community & Tourism Development NZ at Research Consultancy NZ, New Zealand , explains what it is and why it is so important.

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What is religious tourism?

Religious tourism has taken place since the dawn of civilisation. Pilgrims travelled to pay homage to the sacred places and their guardians throughout the world. Tourism to sacred sites has merged with pilgrimage in the past 2,000 years. More recently, in the past 200 years wealthy Europeans visited special sites of sacred ritual in both the New World and throughout Europe.

Why is it so important?

Sites of special sacred significance have been visited for millennia. What is now important is that these sites need protection, conservation and interpretation. There are few guardians of these special places of worship and visitation and even fewer sources of funds to maintain and manage sites for visitors and worshippers. We do make a distinction between worshippers and visitors, as the religious sites cater for both in roughly equal amounts at some very special places like Lourdes in France and Fatima in Portugal.

Religious tourism in history

The management of religious tourism presents many challenges that are unique in both breadth and application. Sites of religious significance have existed since biblical times and pilgrimage in the Judeo-Christian context is mentioned in the Old Testament of the Bible, for example, in the story of Elkanah, who travels annually to Shiloh to worship and sacrifice (1 Samuel 1:1-28). It is also present in the New Testament Pentecost story, when Jews from all over the world went to Jerusalem for the Passover (Acts 2: 1-12). Many of these sites still exist and other sites, although not as old, have considerable heritage value. The management of heritage sites present particular problems, one of which relates to the cost of maintenance.

Managing sites of religious tourism

Most religious sites are owned by religious organisations, and this may cause challenges for their management, as they must balance the needs of worshippers with those of their visitors. Mosques are at the centre of Islamic tourism and are visited by both Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Muslims may visit mosques while travelling as a tourist attraction or as a place of worship. Many mosques have a dual role, functioning as both a place of worship and as a community centre. The role of community centre means that the mosque will be open for functions and festivities that are not strictly religious in nature and may include non-Muslims.

Muslim countries, such as those in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) welcome tourism, especially religious tourism. But they make a distinction between pilgrimage, the most well know being the Hajj, and other forms of religious tourism. While non-Muslims are welcome at sites such as mosques, they are not welcome at the Hajj. The Hajj is one of the most important forms of pilgrimage today with millions of Muslims travelling to Makkah (Mecca) in Saudi Arabia and, without question, the most important Muslim pilgrimage. It is therefore important to distinguish between Muslim travellers to Muslim sites and non-Muslim visitors to these sites. For example, it is not acceptable for non-Muslims to enter the region of Hejaz where the cities of Mecca and Medina are located. There is some conflict related to ‘ownership’ of these sites, and this is discussed below. Other religions have similar problems in relation to conflicting motivations.

Visitors and worshippers

One of the conflicts that has been noted is between visitors to religious sites and worshippers. While many visitors see worshippers as part of the experience, some worshippers do not like the feeling of being observed. Worshippers do not want to feel that they are part of a ‘show’, but are happy to share their religious space, and are proud of the architecture and history that attracts visitors to the site. Sacredness does not readily cross cultural boundaries. What is viewed as sacred by one group, such as congregants, may be seen as culturally interesting by another visitor group. Given that some visitors may wish to engage in worship, Church authorities may need to determine when a request to participate in a service should be accepted as an expression of genuine interest and/or intention.

Developing sites of special significance requires the dissemination and sharing of both intellectual and practical contributions to meet those needs in a planned and stakeholder-driven approach. Traditional approaches to development emerged half a century ago with a focus on core competencies and the agreed understanding that open and fair competition would raise quality and assure reasonable profit margins. It is important to create awareness of services and products and map those to marketing practices.

Analysis and synthesis through primary research enable cleric and manager to grasp visitors’ and worshippers’ needs and develop audiences for sites. In the book, we present the importance of maintenance and plans for developing sites to accommodate factors in both internal and external environments that acknowledge the requirement to remain competitive.

How can religious tourism sites stay competitive?

The importance of networks, grappling with the wider community and perhaps establishing a wider, even global, reach, is appraised as important. In seeking to tap into resources traditionally not employed in managing religious and pilgrimage sites, we elevate the need for an enterprise culture.

Our book features great practices for supporting tourism to sites of worship and pilgrimage from China and Nepal through to Salt Lake City, Australia and diverse but important sites in England, Hungary, Spain, and Ireland. Emerging practices in festival and event management at these sites are coupled with new interpretation through the use of virtual reality technology. Emerging good practices for emulation come with sites that are now employing funding managers prepared to manage the risks of increased visitation against the pressures to conserve and protect the ancient sites at the centre of the visitor experience.

This post also appears on the University of Derby blog .

Managing Religious Tourism is now available from the CABI Bookshop.

You might also be interested in reading From too many to too few: the impact of COVID-19 on overtourism

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Buddhism and Religious Tourism by Courtney Bruntz LAST REVIEWED: 28 July 2015 LAST MODIFIED: 28 July 2015 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195393521-0133

The relationship between Buddhism and religious tourism has increasingly become an important topic with diverse academic fields. Across Asia, locations and physical sites associated with Buddhism or the historical Buddha are now part of tourism circuits, and early-21st-century tourism developments have contributed to the revitalization of Buddhist sites. Traditional models of tourism and pilgrimage have separated the pilgrim from the tourist, with pilgrimage referring to explicit religious activities and tourism meaning nonreligious secular ones. Early-21st-century works have included studies merging the two categories, arguing that in modern settings, pilgrims are becoming more like tourists and tourists are becoming more like pilgrims. This has resulted in studies on religious tourism, sometimes called “spiritual tourism,” that refer to any travel motivated by religion, where the site at one point was associated with a religion. Religious tourism in this manner encompasses activities both associated and not associated with pilgrimage to a sacred site, including sightseeing, cultivation, and recreation. Religious tourism has also come to include activities related to culture consumption that occur at religious sites. Because of these diverse activities associated with religious tourism, literature is increasingly amalgamating the tourist and the pilgrim, and ethnographic studies are prevalent.

Introductory Works

The topic of religious tourism has long been a contested issue, and works since the end of the 20th century have been published regarding the settings in which tourists and pilgrims become like one another and the situations that separate the tourist from the pilgrim. The rise of anthropology of tourism has helped these efforts, with initiating studies that place tourists within the realm of pilgrims. Smith 1989 showcases anthropologists looking seriously at tourism and the movements of tourists, which has helped initiate studies comparing tourism and pilgrimage by identifying tourism as a form of sacred journey. Badone and Roseman 2004 , as well as Morinis 1992 , contributes to the anthropological analysis of pilgrimage and tourism by looking at case studies and theories to decipher diverse meanings of religious tourism. These efforts have also been taken up by sociologists, who have added insight into the economic and sociocultural aspects affecting the movements of tourists. Sociological studies have taken different approaches, with MacCannell 1999 and Sharpley 2008 looking at theoretical matters regarding tourism and Cohen 2004 writing about case studies. Read together, these works contextualize theories of religiously motivated travel, the reasons why people undertake it, attached meanings and values, and its role in diverse societies. Works such as Smith, et al. 2010 and Timothy 2011 aid the sociological perspective by incorporating cultural studies. Both of these consider tourism from the standpoint of heritage, which contributes to understanding how religious tourism relates to broader conceptions of culture. Founded in 2013, the International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage is dedicated to interdisciplinary and international studies of religious tourism and provides a significant resource for scholars. These sources aid studies on Buddhism and religious tourism by offering ways of conceptualizing motivated travel, and anthropological and sociological theories regarding the motivations of tourists provide initial frameworks for investigating relationships between Buddhism and tourism.

Badone, Ellen, and Sharon R. Roseman, eds. Intersecting Journeys: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage and Tourism . Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004.

A collection of papers that evaluates the connections between pilgrimage and tourism, as well as considering debates regarding movement, social identities, and the negotiation of meanings.

Cohen, Erik. Contemporary Tourism: Diversity and Change . Oxford: Elsevier, 2004.

Bringing together Cohen’s works from the previous three decades, this collection provides articles on the sociology of tourism. Cohen’s work interfaces tourism and religion, and provides several case studies for considering tourism’s future developments.

MacCannell, Dean. The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class . Tourism Social Science. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.

A sociological evaluation of tourism as a modern substitute for religion, and tourism as the pilgrimage of modern times.

Morinis, Alan, ed. Sacred Journeys: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage . Contributions to the Study of Anthropology 7. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1992.

Combines theoretical issues with case studies to represent a broad selection of pilgrimage traditions. Contributes to the analysis of pilgrimage in general, as well as discussions of pilgrimage and tourism.

Sharpley, Richard. Tourism, Tourists and Society . Huntingdon, UK: Elm, 2008.

Introduces basic sociological theories and their relevance to tourism and examines the major themes and issues concerning the social nature of tourism. It explores the relationship between tourism and society from two perspectives: the influence of society on tourism and the influence of tourism on society.

Smith, Valene L., ed. Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism . 2d ed. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989.

DOI: 10.9783/9780812208016

This major anthropological work consists of papers considering tourism from multiple angles. It is one of the first anthologies to theorize tourist activities, laying the framework for later works regarding anthropology and tourism.

Smith, Melanie, Nicola MacLeod, and Margaret Hart Robertson. Key Concepts in Tourist Studies . SAGE Key Concepts. London: SAGE, 2010.

Tackles diverse topics, including anthropology of tourism, cultural tourism, heritage tourism, festivals and events tourism, religious and spiritual tourism, and sociology of tourism. Presents key concepts within the field of tourist studies.

Timothy, Dallen J. Cultural Heritage and Tourism: An Introduction . Aspects of Tourism Texts. Tonawanda, NY: Channel View, 2011.

Divided between broad conceptions of heritage tourism in the beginning, and research experience in the second half, this work details consuming culture as heritage and the positions of museums, archaeological sites, landscapes, and religious places. It is useful for placing religious tourism within other currents of tourism research.

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Tourism and Religion: Spiritual Journeys and Their Consequences

• First Online: 21 November 2014

Cite this chapter

• Noga Collins-Kreiner 2 &
• Geoffrey Wall 3  

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Religion and tourism are inextricably linked. There are also many implications for the sites themselves and those who visit and are visited. We provide a comprehensive assessment of the primary issues and concepts related to tourism-religion intersections and discuss them from theoretical and applied perspectives. Empirical cases are from Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Baha’ism. Scholarly research has barely touched upon these relationships, although interest is growing. We delineate the category of religious tourists and other types of religiously-motivated tourists, identify holy sites and draw attention to numerous contemporary issues requiring additional research. And we address both sides of the religion-tourism connection: supply, stemming from the large number of major tourist destinations, places, and events; and demand, fuelled by visitors, who embody the intersection of spirituality, religiosity, and tourism. Thus far the conceptualization of the connection between religion and mobility is weak, especially within the new mobility paradigm, which is a reflection of the relative neglect of the relationships between tourism and religion. The connection between religion and tourism transcends geographical and sociological emphases and involves an interpretative approach seeking alternative and multiple meanings. Mobilities are products of the norms and values of disparate social traditions and order and also create and modify culture and its expressions.

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Collins-Kreiner, N., Wall, G. (2015). Tourism and Religion: Spiritual Journeys and Their Consequences. In: Brunn, S. (eds) The Changing World Religion Map. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9376-6_34

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Under the title ‘Religious Heritage and Tourism,’ Utrech in the Netherlands hosted a 2-day UNWTO Conference on 5-7 October to underline the potential of this segment to promote the growth of the sector while fostering cultural understanding. The Conference was held in cooperation with the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, the Museum Catharijneconvent, the Centre for Religious Art and Culture (Flanders) and the Dutch Future for Religious Heritage Program Future for Religious Heritage. 

“We suffer from deficits of different kind, being the lack of tolerance and understanding, a major one. Religious tourism is one of the driving forces to bring people from varied backgrounds together under a common cause: the admiration and protection of heritage of tangible and intangible nature,” said UNWTO Secretary-General, Taleb Rifai, at the inauguration of the event.

The issues of heritage conservation were a major topic of discussion, particularly in those cases where congestion constitutes a key challenge.

The Conference underlined the contribution of religious tourism to economic prosperity and the role of religious tourism as an added value to the offer of cities, villages and regions. In this respect, the event focused on developing methodologies to assess the social and economic impact of religious heritage tourism and strategies to develop these sites as authentic travel destinations. 

Other topics discussed included marketing strategies to improve access to information related to religious heritage tourism, the role of religious communities to promote religious heritage, the importance of investing in new technologies and capacity building and the role of historic commemorations in promoting religious tourism.

Additional information:

Website of the Conference

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Tel: (+34) 91 567 81 60 / [email protected]

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Pilgrimage tourism-past, present and future rejuvenation: a perspective article

Tourism Review

ISSN : 1660-5373

Article publication date: 25 November 2019

Issue publication date: 20 February 2020

This paper aims to analyse the development of the pilgrimage phenomenon over the past few decades. Pilgrimage was the first tourism mobility to come into existence thousands of years ago. In recent decades, its significance has decreased, as other tourism segments have gained prominence. Although modern tourism is regarded as a relatively new phenomenon, its origins are clearly rooted in the age-old practice of pilgrimage. Indeed, the development of tourism is difficult to understand without a thorough comprehension of the practice of pilgrimage in ancient times.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper analyses the development of the pilgrimage phenomenon over the past few decades. The phenomenon of Pilgrimage Tourism and the nexus between the two mobilities has been experiencing tremendous changes over the past few decades and is still in the midst of an on-going process of transformation.

This paper concludes with the prediction that pilgrimage will re-emerge when the many similar segments – particularly, spiritual tourism, heritage tourism, religious tourism, dark tourism and secular pilgrimage – are re-identified as pilgrimage: a mobility for the search for meaning that contains an element of transformation that is often deep and enduring (as they were viewed at the dawn of humanity and for thousands of years).

Originality/value

This review has examined the development of pilgrimage tourism as a research topic, highlighting the importance of re-examining our contemporary usage of terms in order to allow for broader interpretations of different phenomena in the field of tourism. These conclusions are consistent with the current calls for a fundamental rethinking of the paradigms and the norms shaping scholarship on pilgrimage, dark tourism and tourism as a whole from a post-disciplinary perspective based on synthesis and synergy.

• Dark tourism
• Pilgrimage tourism
• Religious tourism
• Secular pilgrimage

Collins-Kreiner, N. (2020), "Pilgrimage tourism-past, present and future rejuvenation: a perspective article", Tourism Review , Vol. 75 No. 1, pp. 145-148. https://doi.org/10.1108/TR-04-2019-0130

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2019, Noga Collins-Kreiner.

Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

Introduction

Pilgrimage was the first tourism mobility to come into existence thousands of years ago ( Timothy and Olsen, 2006 ). Although modern tourism is regarded as a relatively new phenomenon, its origins are clearly rooted in the age-old practice of pilgrimage. Indeed, the development of tourism is difficult to understand without a thorough comprehension of the practice of pilgrimage in ancient times.

This brief piece analyses the development of the pilgrimage phenomenon over the past few decades and concludes with the prediction that pilgrimage will re-emerge when the many similar segments – particularly, spiritual tourism, heritage tourism, religious tourism, dark tourism, and secular pilgrimage – are re-identified as pilgrimage: a mobility for the search for meaning that contains an element of transformation that is often deep and enduring (as they were viewed at the dawn of humanity and for thousands of years).

The phenomenon of Pilgrimage Tourism and the nexus between the two mobilities has been experiencing tremendous changes over the past few decades and is still in the midst of an on-going process of transformation.

A past perspective on pilgrimage tourism research: from the 1960s through the 2010s

Pilgrimage as a research concept, as distinct from a market segment, hardly existed before the 1990s. Its roots, however, reach back to concepts and theories – developed primarily by sociologists and anthropologists – that were analysed in the tourism literature of the 1970s and the 1980s and that focussed on the “visitor experience” and the psychosocial dynamics that drive different kinds of tourism, including pilgrimage ( Cohen, 1979 ; 1992a , 1992b ; 1998 ; Jackson and Hudman, 1995 ; MacCannell, 1973 ; Turner and Turner, 1969 , 1978 ).

Several fundamental social ideas that featured in the study of pilgrimage in those years were: the “ritual process” ( Turner and Turner, 1969 ); the holy site as the centre of the world ( Eliade, 1969 ); “liminality”, a transitory stage between two established social statuses ( Turner and Turner, 1969 ); “Communitas”, a specific kind of group dynamics that are characteristic of assemblies of pilgrims ( Turner and Turner, 1978 ); tourism as a quest for the “authentic”, representing the pilgrimage of modern man ( MacCannell, 1973 ); tourism as a “sacred journey” ( Graburn, 1977 ) ; and five main modes of tourist experience based on the location and significance of the given experience within the tourist’s overall worldview ( Cohen, 1979 ).

In the 1990s, new ideas and concepts were incorporated into pilgrimage research, including: a continuum of travel from “pilgrim as a religious traveller” to “tourist” as a vacationer ( Smith, 1992 ); the heterogeneity of pilgrimage and pilgrimage as an arena for competing religious and secular discourses ( Eade and Sallnow, 1991 ); two different types of pilgrimage centres – the formal and the popular ( Cohen, 1992a ); the complex relationship between pilgrimage and tourism and the similarities and differences between the tourist and the pilgrim ( Cohen, 1998 ; Digance, 2003 ; Shinde, 2015 ); the relationship among religion, pilgrimage, and tourism ( Timothy and Olsen, 2006 ); and de-differentiation ( Collins-Kreiner, 2010 , 2016 ).

Beginning in the 2000s, the definition of pilgrimage has come to accommodate both traditional religious and modern secular journeys, as researchers began to discuss the modern ideas of pilgrimage in the context of spiritual rather than religious motivations and actions. As more and more research has shown, large numbers of tourists are seeking a variety of experiences, including enlightenment, knowledge, improved spiritual and physical well-being and challenge. During this period, scholars have generated new knowledge about secular pilgrimage sites and secular aspects of pilgrimage research ( Hyde and Harman, 2011 ). The current literature understands pilgrimage as a holistic phenomenon with religious and secular foundations ( Collins-Kreiner, 2016 ) that encompasses sites that can emerge from both religious and secular contexts.

A future perspective: the rejuvenation of pilgrimage tourism

Based on the above analysis, it appears that pilgrimage is currently in a stage of rejuvenation and is therefore in the process of losing some of its unique attributes – in our case, its religious attributes, which constituted the original basis of its identity as a distinct type of tourism – and is simultaneously developing new identities, such as secular pilgrimage, spiritual tourism, religious tourism, church tourism, dark tourism and transformational tourism ( Collins-Kreiner, 2016 ; Kiely, 2013 ).

Over the past decade, the word “pilgrimage” has become widely used in broad secular contexts. Scholars have begun to think about other forms of pilgrimage, such as spiritual tourists; “New Age” spiritual travel for pilgrimage, personal growth, and non-traditional spiritual practices; and increasing research on modern secular pilgrimage, in which the search for the miraculous is a trait shared by religious and secular pilgrims alike ( Digance, 2003 ). All pilgrims are engaged in a quest for a mystical or magical religious experience – a moment when they experience something out of the ordinary that marks a transition from the mundane secular world of their everyday existence to a special and sacred state. These experiences can be described as transformation, enlightenment and life-changing or consciousness-changing events, although words appear to be inadequate to truly describe such experiences, which often defy reason ( Kim and Kim, 2018 ; Liutikas, 2015 ).

Thus, in the past few years, new identities and concepts such as dark-tourism, spiritual tourism, and other market segments have developed and a number of sources have noted an increasing interest in tourism focussing on death, disaster and horror ( Stone, 2012 ; Lennon and Foley, 2000 ; Stone and Sharpley, 2008 ). Dark tourism, for example, is part of the rejuvenation of pilgrimage, as they both emerge from the same milieu to include the sites of dramatic historic events that hold extra meaning ( Collins-Kreiner, 2016 ).

Also noteworthy is the fact that the current literature is finding it increasingly difficult to differentiate among religious pilgrims, secular pilgrims, dark tourists, heritage tourists and pilgrimage, as they all are recognised as part of the growing phenomenon of tourist interest in sites that add meaning to life ( Amaro et al. , 2018 ; Collins-Kreiner, 2016 ; Terzidou et al. , 2017 ).

Conclusions

This review has examined the development of pilgrimage tourism as a research topic, highlighting the importance of re-examining our contemporary usage of terms in order to allow for broader interpretations of different phenomena in the field of tourism. These conclusions are consistent with the current calls for a fundamental rethinking of the paradigms and the norms shaping scholarship on pilgrimage ( Eade and Albera, 2015 ), dark tourism ( Stone, 2012 ) and tourism as a whole ( Winter, 2009 ) from a post-disciplinary perspective based on synthesis and synergy.

Amaro , S. , Antunes , A. and Henriques , C. ( 2018 ), “ A closer look at Santiago de compostela's pilgrims through the lens of motivations ”, Tourism Management , Vol. 64 , pp. 271 - 280 .

Cohen , E. ( 1979 ), “ Rethinking the sociology of tourism ”, Annals of Tourism Research , Vol. 6 No. 1 , pp. 18 - 35 .

Cohen , E. ( 1992a ), “ Pilgrimage centers: concentric and excentric ”, Annals of Tourism Research , Vol. 19 No. 1 , pp. 33 - 50 .

Cohen , E. ( 1992b ), “ Pilgrimage and tourism: convergence and divergence ”, in Morinis , A. (Ed.), Sacred Journeys: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage , Greenwood Press , New York, NY , pp. 47 - 61 .

Cohen , E. ( 1998 ), “ Tourism and religion: a comparative perspective ”, Pacific Tourism Review , Vol. 2 , pp. 1 - 10 .

Collins-Kreiner , N. ( 2010 ), “ Researching pilgrimage: continuity and transformations ”, Annals of Tourism Research , Vol. 37 No. 2 , pp. 440 - 456 .

Collins-Kreiner , N. ( 2016 ), “ Life cycle of concepts: the case of pilgrimage tourism ”, Tourism Geographies , Vol. 18 No. 3 , pp. 322 - 334 .

Digance , J. ( 2003 ), “ Pilgrimage at contested sites ”, Annals of Tourism Research , Vol. 30 No. 1 , pp. 143 - 159 .

Eade , J. and Albera , D. (Eds) ( 2015 ), International Perspectives on Pilgrimage Studies: Itineraries, Gaps and Obstacles , Routledge , New York, NY .

Eade , J. and Sallnow , M.J. (Eds) ( 1991 ), Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage , Routledge , London .

Eliade , M. ( 1969 ), The Quest: History and Meaning in Religion , University of Chicago Press , Chicago, IL .

Graburn , N.H.H. ( 1977 ), “ Tourism: the sacred journey ”, in Smith , V.L. (Ed.), Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism , University of Pennsylvania Press , Philadelphia , pp. 17 - 31 .

Hyde , K.F. and Harman , S. ( 2011 ), “ Motives for a secular pilgrimage to the gallipoli battlefields ”, Tourism Management , Vol. 32 No. 6 , pp. 1343 - 1351 .

Jackson , R.H. and Hudman , L. ( 1995 ), “ Pilgrimage tourism and english cathedrals: the role of religion in travel ”, The Tourist Review , Vol. 50 No. 4 , pp. 40 - 48 .

Kiely , T. ( 2013 ), “ Tapping into mammon: stakeholder perspectives on developing church tourism in Dublin's liberties ”, Tourism Review , Vol. 68 No. 2 , pp. 31 - 43 .

Kim , B. and Kim , S. ( 2018 ), “ Hierarchical value map of religious tourists visiting the vatican city/rome ”, Tourism Geographies , pp. 1 - 22 .

Lennon , J. and Foley , M. ( 2000 ), Dark Tourism the Attraction of Death and Disaster , Cengage learning EMEA , London .

Liutikas , D. ( 2015 ), “ In search of miracles: pilgrimage to the miraculous places ”, Tourism Review , Vol. 70 No. 3 , pp. 197 - 213 .

MacCannell , D. ( 1973 ), “ Staged authenticity: arrangements of social space in tourist settings ”, American Journal of Sociology , Vol. 793 , pp. 589 - 603 .

Shinde , K.A. ( 2015 ), “ Religious tourism and religious tolerance: insights from pilgrimage sites in India ”, Tourism Review , Vol. 70 No. 3 , pp. 179 - 196 .

Smith , V.L. ( 1992 ), “ Introduction: the quest in guest ”, Annals of Tourism Research , Vol. 19 No. 1 , pp. 1 - 17 .

Stone , P.R. ( 2012 ), “ Dark tourism and significant other death: towards a model of mortality mediation ”, Annals of Tourism Research , Vol. 39 No. 3 , pp. 1565 - 1587 .

Stone , P. and Sharpley , R. ( 2008 ), “ Consuming dark tourism: a thanatolological perspective ”, Annals of Tourism Research , Vol. 35 No. 2 , pp. 574 - 595 .

Terzidou , M. , Scarles , C. and Saunders , M.N. ( 2017 ), “ Religiousness as tourist performances: a case study of Greek orthodox pilgrimage ”, Annals of Tourism Research , Vol. 66 , pp. 116 - 129 .

Timothy , D.J. and Olsen , D.H. (Eds) ( 2006 ), Tourism, Religion and Spiritual Journeys , Routledge , London and New York, NY .

Turner , V. and Turner , E. ( 1969 ), The Ritual Process , Routledge , London .

Turner , V. and Turner , E. ( 1978 ), Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture , Colombia University Press , New York, NY .

Winter , T. ( 2009 ), “ Asian tourism and the retreat of Anglo-Western centrism in tourism theory ”, Current Issues in Tourism , Vol. 12 No. 1 , pp. 21 - 31 .

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Noga Collins-Kreiner is based at the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel.

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Religious Tourism, Pilgrimage, and Cultural Tourism

2016, Silpakorn University

Abstract The aim of this study is to provide a critical review of the literature in the following areas: concepts related to the intersection of tourism and religion, religion and spirituality are still among the most common motivations for travel, religious tourism and pilgrimage, sacred motivations for pilgrimage, development of tourism destination for pilgrimage route, and challenges for pilgrimage route in cultural tourism. Religious Tourism, so-called “Faith Tourism”, is a form of tourism, whereby people of faith travel individually or in groups for reasons related to religion or spirituality in their quest for meaning. It could be under pilgrimage, missionary, or leisure purposes. Many of today's most popular tourist destinations are related to ancient places of worship or to the site of apparent miracles. In addition, Pilgrimage, as a part of religious tourism, is the act of moving from one place to another, often traveling through foreign lands; an ordered march of a group of people, usually with religious connotation. It is a ritual journey with a hallowed purpose; every step along the way has meaning; the pilgrim knows that the journey will be difficult and that life-giving challenges will emerge. Basically, sacred destinations and places of pilgrimage associate with the mainstream faiths: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Sikhism. Nowadays, at least three hundred million pilgrims visit the world's key religious sites every year. The study also presents an implication to distinct pilgrimage from religious tourism. In term of pilgrimage, its incorporation conveys religious involvement into the journey. Motivations for pilgrimage will differ from those of religious tourism. The pilgrimage has a mediation function between the natural and the cultural world & between the natural and the supernatural world. It is not a vacation, but a transformational journey during which significant change takes place; new insights are given, deeper understanding is attained, new and old places in the heart are visited, blessings are received, healing takes place, and on return from the pilgrimage, life is seen with different eyes and nothing will ever be quite the same again. While pilgrimage has ultimate spiritual goal, the search for eternal truth and becoming one with God, it is a journey resulting from religious causes, externally to a holy site, and internationally for spiritual purposes and internal understanding. Sacred site that houses holy artifacts promotes ritual practice and attracts religious travelers or pilgrims, who often mark the time and extend the space of the journey by returning home with mementos. The review includes the development of tourism destination for pilgrimage route. Pilgrimage is as the ancient forerunner and analogue of modern tourism. At the same time, tourism is as a kind of pilgrimage of modern civilization. Tourist is half a pilgrim, if a pilgrim is half a tourist. Indeed, tourism and pilgrimage can be identified as opposite end points on a continuum of travel. While changing motivations of the traveler, whose interests and activities may switch from tourism to pilgrimage and vice versa, even without the individual being aware of the change. The study also found valid connections between sacred people, places, and events. Challenge for pilgrimage route in cultural tourism has been finally discussed. Tourist attractions are symbols of modern consciousness, the modern cathedrals of consumption, and venerated through sight sacralization. Sightseeing becomes a modern ritual. New means of consumption can be seen as cathedrals of consumption. Must-see attractions replace the must-see religious sites. There is an emergence of experience industry from the pilgrimage route, as cultural heritage attraction, in view of cultural tourism, aimed at consuming experiences and engaging in enchantment. The study found that religious-based experiences could provide experienced-based economies. Religion, as a tourist experience, becomes part of the symbolic economy. In conclusion, the experience industry with tourist attractions derived from the pilgrimage routes has been broadly developed in form of cultural tourism in our time. These tourist attractions are also known as cultural heritage attractions, functioning as the travel motivations of tourist.

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