Tourism Vs Religion

Diverse and numerous motives have always driven masses to travel, religious motives were one of the oldest. International statistical defined tourist trips were those made for leisure and recreation in the strict sense, including religious reasons. Some traditionalists believed that the trip which was inspired by spiritual motives was more focused on penance, prayer, and medication whereas tourism was merely just a hedonistic phenomenon. However, there was a consensus that each journey motivated by faith had many characteristics in common with tourism travel, while the most important were the act of consumption. In one classic of tourism theory, which they considered that religious reason as one of the tourist travelling motives. He also differentiated many types of religious tourists based on the strength of their fate. Some people think that travel was a question of fundamental …show more content…
It could be seen as an integral part of religious tourism since people travel by foot, bicycle, car, bus, train or plane to these sites, just because of their underlying motivation in themselves. The religious tourism was concluded to have five characteristics (da Graca Mouga Pocas Santos, 2003): -
• Voluntary, temporary and unpaid travel.
• Motivated by religion.
• Supplemented by other motivations.
• The destination is a religious site (local, regional, national or international status).
• Travel to the destination is not a religious practice.
Pearce (2005) showed that the studies on motivation were of interest to businesses and commercial analyst because sound market analyses could be built on such appraisal. In sum and according to Konu et al. (2009, p.2) motivations of tourists were important in explaining why tourists were travelling and in tourism theory they were considered as a tool for the segmentation of tourism