Spiritual Tourism

The Routledge Handbook of Religious and Spiritual Tourism provides a robust and comprehensive state-of-the-art review of the literature in this growing sub-field of tourism. This handbook is split into five distinct sections. The first section covers past and present debates regarding definitions, theories, and concepts related to religious and spiritual tourism. Subsequent sections focus on the supply and demand aspects of religious and spiritual tourism markets, and examine issues related to the management side of these markets around the world. Areas under examination include religious theme parks, the UNESCO branding of religious heritage, gender and performance, popular culture, pilgrimage, environmental impacts, and fear and terrorism, among many others. The final section explores emerging and future directions in religious and spiritual tourism, and proposes an agenda for further research. Interdisciplinary in coverage and international in scope through its authorship and content, this will be essential reading for all students, researchers, and academics interested in Tourism, Religion, Cultural Studies, and Heritage Studies.

This book investigates spiritual tourism - tourism characterised by an intentional search for spiritual benefit - from a contemporary religious studies perspective. Using field research gathered from spiritual tourism locations in Asia and Europe, and utilizing contemporary scholarship on practices concerned with meaning and identity, it explores the phenomena of journeys that are taken for self transformation, tracing the history of transformative ideas in Western cultures of travel, and including the modes in which the travel experience has been communicated. Spiritual Tourism provides an important opportunity to comment on the role of tourism in contemporary conceptions of spirituality and spiritual practice in Western society.

This book reviews tourist motivations for making religious or spiritual journeys, and the management aspects related to them. It explores sacred journeys across both traditional religions such as Christianity and Islam, and newer forms of pilgrimage, faith systems and quasi-religious activities such as sport, music and food. Demonstrating to the reader the intrinsic elements and events that play a crucial role within the destination management process, it provides a timely re-assessment of the increasing interconnections between religion and spirituality as a motivation for travel. Providing researchers and students of tourism, religious studies, anthropology and related subjects with an important review of the topic, this book aims to bridge the ever-widening gap between specialists within the religious, tourism, management and education sectors.

This book investigates spiritual tourism - tourism characterised by an intentional search for spiritual benefit - from a contemporary religious studies perspective. Using field research gathered from spiritual tourism locations in Asia and Europe, and utilizing contemporary scholarship on practices concerned with meaning and identity, it explores the phenomena of journeys that are taken for self transformation, tracing the history of transformative ideas in Western cultures of travel, and including the modes in which the travel experience has been communicated. Spiritual Tourism provides an important opportunity to comment on the role of tourism in contemporary conceptions of spirituality and spiritual practice in Western society.

Religion and spirituality are still among the most common motivations for travel - many major tourism destinations have developed largely as a result of their connections to sacred people, places and events. Providing a comprehensive assessment of the primary issues and concepts related to this intersection of tourism and religion, this revealing book gives a balanced discussion of both the theoretical and applied subjects that destination planners, religious organizations, scholars, and tourism service providers must deal with on a daily basis. Bringing together a distinguished list of contributors, this volume takes a global approach and incorporates substantial empirical cases from Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Roman Catholicism, Mormonism, New Ageism, Sikhism, Buddhism, and the spiritual philosophies of East Asia. On a conceptual level, it considers, amongst other topics: contested heritage the pilgrim-tourist dichotomy secularization of pilgrimage experiences religious humanism educational aspects of religious tourism commodification of religious icons and services. A vibrant collection of essays, this outstanding book discusses many important practices, paradigms, and problems that are currently being examined and debated. It raises an array of significant and interesting questions and as such is a valuable resource for students, scholars and researchers of tourism, religion and cultural studies.

This is a narrative recounting a spiritual voyage taking the author around the world in a quest for the divine. A trail of chance, synchronicity, divine providence and the occasional railway and airline schedule, leads Brown from the extraordinary figure of the 19th-century occult adventuress Madame Blavatsky, via the philosopher Krishnamurti, to the genial Scottish clairvoyant who claims that the Christ of the age is alive and well and living in London. In India, he encounters the miracle-working Sai Baba, and discusses reincarnation with the world's most revered spiritual figure, the Dalai Lama. In Germany, he joins the pilgrims who kneel at the feet of the young Indian Woman, Mother Meera, believing she is divine. In a tiny backwoods church in Tennessee, he examines the "Crosses of Light" which are held as evidence of Christ's imminent return to Earth.;Mick Brown is the author of "Richard Branson, The Inside Story" and "American Heartbeat: Travels from Woodstock to San Jose by Song Title".

Temples are everywhere in Chiang Mai, filled with tourists as well as saffron-robed monks of all ages. The monks participate in daily urban life here as elsewhere in Thailand, where Buddhism is promoted, protected, and valued as a tourist attraction. Yet this mountain city offers more than a fleeting, commodified tourist experience, as the encounters between foreign visitors and Buddhist monks can have long-lasting effects on both parties. These religious contacts take place where economic motives, missionary zeal, and opportunities for cultural exchange coincide. Brooke Schedneck incorporates fieldwork and interviews with student monks and tourists to examine the innovative ways that Thai Buddhist temples offer foreign visitors spaces for religious instruction and popular in-person Monk Chat sessions in which tourists ask questions about Buddhism. Religious Tourism in Northern Thailand also considers how Thai monks perceive other religions and cultures and how they represent their own religion when interacting with tourists, resulting in a revealing study of how religious traditions adapt to an era of globalization.

The remarkable growth in religious tourism across the world has generated considerable interest in the impacts of this type of tourism. Focusing here on environmental issues, this book moves beyond the documentation of environmental impacts to examine in greater depth the intersections between religious tourism and the environment. Beginning with an in-depth introduction that highlights the intersections between religion, tourism, and the environment, the book then focuses on the environment as a resource or generator for religious tourism and as a recipient of the impacts of religious tourism. Chapters included discuss such important areas as theological views, environmental responsibility, and host perspectives.