Religious tourism, spiritual tourism, sacred tourism, or faith tourism, is a type of tourism with two main subtypes: pilgrimage, meaning travel for religious or spiritual purposes, and the viewing of religious monuments and artefacts, a branch of sightseeing.
By analogy, spiritual tourism refers to tourism undertaken for spiritual purposes; this can be a form of religious tourism, but can also go beyond the realm of religion
Types
Religious tourism has been characterised in different ways by researchers. Gisbert Rinschede distinguishes these by duration, by group size, and by social structure. Juli Gevorgian proposes two categories that differ in their motivation, namely “pilgrimage tourism” for spiritual reasons or to participate in religious rites, and “church tourism” to view monuments such as cathedrals. The Christian priest Frank Fahey writes that a pilgrim is “always in danger of becoming a tourist”, and vice versa since travel always in his view upsets the fixed order of life at home, and identifies eight differences between the two:
| Element | Pilgrimage | Tourism |
|---|---|---|
| Faith | always contains “faith expectancy” | not required |
| Penance | search for wholeness | not required |
| Community | often solitary, but should be open to all | often with friends and family, or a chosen interest group |
| Sacred space | silence to create an internal sacred space | not present |
| Ritual | externalizes the change within | not present |
| Votive offering | leaving behind a part of oneself, letting go, in search of a better life | not present; the travel is the good life |
| Celebration | “victory over self”, celebrating to remember | drinking to forget |
| Perseverance | commitment; “pilgrimage is never over” | holidays soon end |
Pilgrimage
Tibetans on a pilgrimage to Lhasa, doing full-body prostrations, often for the entire length of the journey
Pilgrimage is spiritually- or religiously-motivated travel, sometimes over long distances; it has been practised since antiquity and in several of the world’s religions. The world’s largest mass religious assemblage takes place in India at the Kumbh Mela, which attracts over 120 million pilgrims. Other major pilgrimages include the annual Hajj to Mecca, required once in a Muslim’s life.
Religious sightseeing
Tourists and pilgrims in front of the Sanctuary of Fátima in Portugal
Religious sightseeing can be motivated by any of several kinds of interest, such as religion, art, architecture, history, and personal ancestry. People can find holy places interesting and moving, whether they personally are religious or not. Some, such as the churches of Italy, offer fine architecture and major artworks. Portugal, for example, has as its main religious tourism attraction the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fátima, internationally known by the phenomenon of Marian apparitions. Others are important to world religions: Jerusalem holds a central place in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Others again may be both scenic and important to one religion, like the Way of Saint James in Spain, but have been adopted by non-religious people as a personal challenge and indeed as a journey of self-discovery. Religious tourism in India can take many forms, including yoga tourism; the country has sites important to Buddhism, Islam, Sikhism and Hinduism, as well as magnificent architecture and, for some travellers, the attraction of orientalism. Japan too offers beautiful religious places from Buddhist temples to Shinto shrines.
Secular pilgrimage
A category intermediate between pilgrims belonging to a major world religion and pure tourism is the modern concept of secular pilgrimage to places such as the Himalayas felt to be in some way special or even sacred, and where the travel is neither purely pious, nor purely for pleasure, but is to some degree “compromised”. For example, New Age believers may travel to such “spiritual hotspots” with the intention of healing themselves and the world. They may practise rituals involving (supposedly) leaving their bodies, possession by spirits (channelling), and recovery of past life memories. The travel is considered by many scholars as transcendental, a life learning process or even a self-realization metaphor.