Religious Tourism and Spaces

Religious tourism and pilgrimage draw millions of people each year to sites ranging from Mecca and the Camino de Santiago to Lourdes and Bodh Gaya, making the movement of people for sacred purposes one of the most consequential intersections of faith, space, and economy in the contemporary world. Geographers and planners who study these phenomena examine how sacred spaces are produced, contested, and transformed when they become destinations — asking, for instance, how a site retains spiritual meaning when it is simultaneously managed as heritage infrastructure or marketed to secular visitors. A central tension in the literature concerns the blurring boundary between religious and spiritual motivation: as institutional religion declines in many societies, growing numbers of travelers seek experiences that are harder to categorize, prompting researchers to develop postsecular frameworks that move beyond a simple sacred-versus-secular divide. Open questions include how host communities negotiate authority over sacred landscapes amid rising tourist flows, and how digital media and mobility are reshaping the spatial and temporal rhythms of pilgrimage itself.

Works

95,524

Total citations

211,818

Keywords

Religious TourismPilgrimageSacred SpacesSecularismSpiritual TourismPostsecular Geographies