Marian Tourism: Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic pilgrimage

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to make a conceptual contribution to the literature pertaining to Marian religious tourism pilgrimages by briefly discussing Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic religious tourism and suggesting what the tourism market could do to further promote this type of tourism and more successfully meet the realistic expectations of tourists. There are many destinations and sites that are by their very nature of great religious, cultural, architectural or historical value and thus of great interest to both domestic and foreign tourists. If there are deficits in marketing communication, poor infrastructure and other areas, this could hinder the development of pilgrimage and religious tourism which is a huge sector and niche market. Changes will invariably arise from the need to meet and exceed the requirements of travellers to holy sites as consumers. Religious pilgrimage tourism is designed to meet the need for spirituality arising out of a highly secular global society and is laden with great personal spiritual and also figurative meanings. Religious pilgrimage tourism has fortunately provoked the interest of many researchers and tourism practitioners and bodes well for the further development of this sector, especially where Marian pilgrimage is concerned.