Challenges, Opportunities, and Limitations of Religious Tourism in the Next Decade

Known as pilgrim tourism, religious tourism is a faith-centered activity, marked by people traveling to holy places and centering around religious observation. In recent years, religious tourism has notably increased, sitting as a dominant niche in the industry and taking on different shapes and forms, not only contributing positively to the local economy but also cementing the cultural identity of tourist-receiving countries (Raj and Griffin, 2015; Rashid 2018; Kim, Kim and King 2020). More importantly, there is an interesting debate revolving around the cultural differences in religious tourism in the West and East. Some voices have focused on the religiosity (as well as spirituality) of Eastern cultures, while others emphasized the exchange of visions facilitated by religious tourism. This means that any pilgrim not only involves a host-guest exchange but also a fluid dialogue among tourism-sending and receiving nations. Religious tourism acts as a vehicle of peace (in the case the cultural values are compatible) or conflict when tourists offend the mainstream cultural values. This happens simply because religion unites humans in equal conditions but also divides those who do not profess their faith (Suleiman and Mohamed, 2011). However, restrictions and travel bans imposed by states to stop the COVID-19 pandemic have affected religious tourism, generating long-lasting and devastating effects on religious tourism globally (Mosier et al. 2020). In the post-normal, religious tourism has recovered to early levels, placing it as a promising service sector worldwide (Mittal and Sinha, 2022; Singh et al. 2022). Some studies have shown how faith renovates hope in times of uncertainty while laying the foundations for a rapid recovery. As Olsen and Timothy (2020) put it, religion operates on many levels, representing a whole portion of the religious population in some way. Over the years, religion has influenced not only modern mobility, but also migrations as well as travel patterns. Further, religious tourism has successfully adapted to new protocols and steps after the pandemic (avoiding mass religious events). In the new normal, religious travel should embrace sustainable ideals giving the initiative to promote carbon-neutral technology. In this book, we have gathered high-quality book chapters that theorize the future of religious tourism in the decades to come. We will discuss the critical next steps, challenges, problems and opportunities for religious tourism to integrate positively into society after the pandemic.…