Faith Tourism: for a Healthy Environment and a More Sensitive World

The domain of the ‘religious' / ‘spiritual' has become a significant source of revenue production for the tourism industry . Faith-based tourism seems to draw increasing numbers of people who wish to travel not just for leisure, or pleasure, but in search of personal meaning and fulfilment...

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Auteur principal: Sharma, Veena 1941- (Auteur)
Type de support: Électronique Article
Langue:Anglais
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Publié: Dublin Institute of Technology [2014]
Dans: The international journal of religious tourism and pilgrimage
Année: 2013, Volume: 1, Numéro: 1, Pages: 15-23
Sujets non-standardisés:B sacred time
B Spirituality
B faith tourism
B Environnement (art)
B Pilgrimage
B Sacred Space
B Bonding
B Transformation (motif)
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Résumé:The domain of the ‘religious' / ‘spiritual' has become a significant source of revenue production for the tourism industry . Faith-based tourism seems to draw increasing numbers of people who wish to travel not just for leisure, or pleasure, but in search of personal meaning and fulfilment in a postmodern capitalist world. Though undertaken as a physical journey, pilgrimage seems to be embedded in the traveller's wish for some kind of personal transformation. The journey is often distinguished from regular travel through its inherent call for a letting-go, be it of mental constructs, pathologies, personal and social conditioning, artefacts, logic or behaviour. Perhaps the faith-based ‘tourist' sustains an attitude of veneration to the place and the path, and becomes sensitive to the environment as well as its inhabitants. One could then ask: does the commercial appropriation of faith-based journeys by the tourism industry contribute positively to the industry and, in larger terms, to humanity in general? Can faith-based tourism lead to a crucial, empathetic shift in awareness, enabling humans to accept one another without prejudice? Can faith-based tourism help to build deeper and permanent trans-class, trans-racial, trans-ethnic and trans-religious connections? Can it transform the tourist from a consumer-voyeur to a responsible participant in the larger ideals of social equality and cultural / environmental preservation? This paper suggests that pilgrimage tourism could in different ways sensitize pilgrim-tourists to ongoing social and environmental crises, and how tour organisers and administrators could promote this wider consciousness by illustrating the religious beliefs and sentiments of faith-based tourists.
ISSN:2009-7379
Contient:Enthalten in: The international journal of religious tourism and pilgrimage
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.21427/D7772J