Location
Palermo
Start Date
27-6-2025 11:15 AM
End Date
27-6-2025 12:00 PM
Description
Religious tourism, encompassing pilgrimages and spiritual journeys across diverse faith traditions, has emerged as a significant contributor to global tourism. Although exact numbers may vary according to different sources, recognition of its contribution to local development is widely acknowledged, as well as its resilience, even during economic downturns. The Bethlehem Declaration (2015) acknowledges these potentials, encouraging policies that develop religious tourism in ways that ensure community participation, socioeconomic benefits, and balanced visitor experiences. However, while presenting unique opportunities, religious tourism also poses significant challenges to sustainability due to the ecological footprint of mass gatherings, physical degradation of sacred sites, waste management issues, and tensions between preserving authenticity and accommodating growing visitor numbers. Changing visitation patterns further complicates sustainability efforts. Contemporary religious tourism increasingly blends spirituality and sacred motivations with secular recreational activities.
Future sustainability of religious tourism will depend on developing management approaches that adapt to changing visitor patterns while preserving the authentic spiritual experience that draws visitors. Critical to this development is the importance of governance and partnerships in defining sustainable development strategies and policies that encourage participation from all stakeholders involved. Furthermore, knowledge acquisition serves as the foundation for efficient management—understanding the complex dynamics of religious tourism is essential for effective governance. This underscores the importance of monitoring and identifying realistic and measurable indicators, both objective and subjective in nature, to inform policy decisions. By establishing comprehensive monitoring systems that capture quantifiable data alongside qualitative experiences, destinations can develop evidence-based approaches to sustainable religious tourism management that balance visitor needs with community interests and environmental preservation.
The aim of this presentation is to reflect on the circumstances associated with Religious Tourism that hinder or challenge its sustainable development, as well as the framework and principles that frame sustainability. As a final contribution, a Model for the sustainable development of religious tourism will be presented, informed both by a thorough literature review and the author’s empirical experience, which seeks to incorporate all the variables and indicators that are considered as relevant within the scope of sustainable development.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21427/7j84-px20
Included in
Keynote 3: The Future of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage: At the Intersection of Sustainability
Palermo
Religious tourism, encompassing pilgrimages and spiritual journeys across diverse faith traditions, has emerged as a significant contributor to global tourism. Although exact numbers may vary according to different sources, recognition of its contribution to local development is widely acknowledged, as well as its resilience, even during economic downturns. The Bethlehem Declaration (2015) acknowledges these potentials, encouraging policies that develop religious tourism in ways that ensure community participation, socioeconomic benefits, and balanced visitor experiences. However, while presenting unique opportunities, religious tourism also poses significant challenges to sustainability due to the ecological footprint of mass gatherings, physical degradation of sacred sites, waste management issues, and tensions between preserving authenticity and accommodating growing visitor numbers. Changing visitation patterns further complicates sustainability efforts. Contemporary religious tourism increasingly blends spirituality and sacred motivations with secular recreational activities.
Future sustainability of religious tourism will depend on developing management approaches that adapt to changing visitor patterns while preserving the authentic spiritual experience that draws visitors. Critical to this development is the importance of governance and partnerships in defining sustainable development strategies and policies that encourage participation from all stakeholders involved. Furthermore, knowledge acquisition serves as the foundation for efficient management—understanding the complex dynamics of religious tourism is essential for effective governance. This underscores the importance of monitoring and identifying realistic and measurable indicators, both objective and subjective in nature, to inform policy decisions. By establishing comprehensive monitoring systems that capture quantifiable data alongside qualitative experiences, destinations can develop evidence-based approaches to sustainable religious tourism management that balance visitor needs with community interests and environmental preservation.
The aim of this presentation is to reflect on the circumstances associated with Religious Tourism that hinder or challenge its sustainable development, as well as the framework and principles that frame sustainability. As a final contribution, a Model for the sustainable development of religious tourism will be presented, informed both by a thorough literature review and the author’s empirical experience, which seeks to incorporate all the variables and indicators that are considered as relevant within the scope of sustainable development.