Location
Palermo
Start Date
26-6-2025 3:30 PM
End Date
26-6-2025 4:30 PM
Description
The growth in religious tourism, through people of faith and cultural tourism, is in contradistinction with the global decline in religious attendance. While many increasingly secularized individuals are less involved with organized religion, the desire for spiritual experiences has continued. This leads many to travel to sacred sites, valued for their authenticity. This growth necessitates good governance when it comes to sacred destination sites. But what does good governance actually look like when it comes to religious tourism and pilgrimage? How does this occur when the sacred space serves the needs of multiple visitors, including pilgrims, religious tourists, and cultural tourists?
Currently, there is a gap in the literature when it comes to religious tourism governance, particularly when it comes to the logics underlying the existing governance structures. For example, many tourism sites are inherently driven to maximize tourism revenues, a logic referred to as homo economicus. Yet, this logic is less applicable when it comes to cultural tourism sites, and less so when it comes to religious tourism and/or pilgrimage sites. Tourism at these sites is not always driven by a need to maximize revenues. Many of these sacred spaces are the result of decades or centuries of compromise, with not just domestic actors, but also international institutions as well, a logic referred to as homo politicus.
Using the Delphi technique and semi-structured interviews, this project develops a model for religious tourism governance through comparative research of institutional logics via fieldwork at twin monasteries (Sumela/Soumelia) in Turkey and Greece.
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/y32g-sb60
Included in
E3) Developing a Model for Religious Tourism Governance: Comparing the Soumela Monasteries in Turkey and Greece
Palermo
The growth in religious tourism, through people of faith and cultural tourism, is in contradistinction with the global decline in religious attendance. While many increasingly secularized individuals are less involved with organized religion, the desire for spiritual experiences has continued. This leads many to travel to sacred sites, valued for their authenticity. This growth necessitates good governance when it comes to sacred destination sites. But what does good governance actually look like when it comes to religious tourism and pilgrimage? How does this occur when the sacred space serves the needs of multiple visitors, including pilgrims, religious tourists, and cultural tourists?
Currently, there is a gap in the literature when it comes to religious tourism governance, particularly when it comes to the logics underlying the existing governance structures. For example, many tourism sites are inherently driven to maximize tourism revenues, a logic referred to as homo economicus. Yet, this logic is less applicable when it comes to cultural tourism sites, and less so when it comes to religious tourism and/or pilgrimage sites. Tourism at these sites is not always driven by a need to maximize revenues. Many of these sacred spaces are the result of decades or centuries of compromise, with not just domestic actors, but also international institutions as well, a logic referred to as homo politicus.
Using the Delphi technique and semi-structured interviews, this project develops a model for religious tourism governance through comparative research of institutional logics via fieldwork at twin monasteries (Sumela/Soumelia) in Turkey and Greece.