Spiritual Tourism: Religion and Spirituality in Contemporary Travel

Abstract

Tourism and pilgrimage have been said to be closely related1. However, the relationship between tourists and the religions and religious contexts they visit has been neglected. Why tourists travel to places of religious significance and how they conceive of their travels are important questions to both the study of tourism and of religion. This thesis is particularly concerned with those tourists who engage in religious practice or have some form of spiritual experience in a religious context. These I am tentatively calling ‘spiritual tourists’. What the study of their experiences can yield is information on the nature of touristic experiences and the position of religion within society. These patterns are conspicuously played out in the context of travel writing, where stories of personal transformation and self discovery can often seem the standard.