Footsteps of Faith - Destinations of the World News

Destinations of the World News
April 2008
by Leah Larkin
Website link: Footsteps of faith

Don Ferris of Fairview Heights, Illinois, travelled to Nevers, France, to see Saint Bernadette in her glass coffin. “She was stunningly beautiful. You think the body must be wax. It was so awe-inspiring,” said the 62-year-old civil engineer.

John Kulton and his wife Mickey of Wadsworth, Ohio, joined a group on a trip to the holy site of Medjugorje in Bosnia Herzegovina where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared. “I saw crutches, walkers and wheelchairs left by people who struggled and in some cases were carried up Apparition Hill and were cured. I heard and saw enough to be convinced that even the most hardened sceptic should believe that God is intervening in that place,” said Kulton, 70.

Harold Cornelius, 55, of Bakersfield, California, accompanied 400 Christians on a Spirit Cruise from Los Angeles to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. “I felt more comfortable knowing that the people I was travelling with believe the same way I do,” he said.

There are 330 million religious travellers generating US$18 billion annually, with US$10 billion generated in the United States alone. More than 50,000 church travel programmes are sponsored nationwide in America, an increase of 20 per cent in the past five years. In 2006, the Travel Industry Association of America issued survey findings that revealed “25 per cent of travellers said they were interested in taking a spiritual vacation”. The survey said the appeal spans ages, with one-third of each age group (18-34 years old, 35-54 years old and 55+) expressing an interest in embarking on such a holiday.

The National Tour Association in the US says more than a third of its 600 members offer religious tours, up nine per cent from 2003. “Travel is often a barometer of social change,” says the organisation’s president Lisa Simon. “For example, we’ve seen an increase in family travel since September 11 and people have become more focused on matters of spirituality. People are travelling more in groups and visiting more religious destinations.”

Robert Lanquar, a tourism and environment expert who wrote the report following the United Nations Conference on Tourism, Religions and Dialogue of Cultures held in Spain recently said a study on the impact of religious tourism for the World Tourism Organisation found “that around 600 million trips are linked with religious tourism: pilgrimages, visits to sanctuaries, religious gatherings. We ask the national tourism administrations to put more emphasis on religious tourism statistics.” The conference in Spain was the first time the UNWTO met to “advance the importance of inter-religious dialogue as one of the major aims of tourism”.

National tourist boards are recognising the potential of religious travel and appointing officials – even departments – whose objective is to focus on the market. From the canyons of Arizona to the mountains of Bhutan, from Argentina to Ohio, more religious attractions are in the pipeline. Religious travellers follow in the footsteps of St Thomas in India, St Paul in Greece and Turkey, Pope Benedict XVI in Bavaria. On their knees, they climb the 28 marble steps of The Holy Stairs in Rome.

“Religious travel accounts for one of the fastest growing sectors of the tourism market. It has grown from a niche market to a full-blown multi-billion dollar industry,” says Kevin Wright, a noted authority on religious travel who is the founder and president of the World Religious Travel Association.

The report on the UNWTO conference states that religious travel is becoming internationalised. “This kind of tourism was previously largely a domestic phenomenon,” the reports states. “But now it involves different nationalities and even – in certain destinations – different spiritualities and religions.”

Thanks to globalisation, lower transport costs, group rates and online information, destinations have become internationalised, with some destinations receiving more foreigners than nationals. Pilgrimages were found to be the most common form of religious and spiritual travel, but religious gatherings were also recognised as attracting hundreds of thousands of participants.

The “realisation of the potential of religious tourism is recent, as is its ‘launching into the market,” says the UNWTO report. In the United States, however, religious travel seems firmly entrenched already. In addition to an increase in religious cruises and trips to holy sites, more church groups are travelling together – not necessarily to religious destinations. “They just want to be together as a group. They even go on shopping trips,” said Matt Poe,of Package Travel Insider magazine.“There are 10 million more Christians in the US than there were a decade ago,” says Wright. “We’ve seen people finding new ways to get faith involved in their daily lives.” He mentions the growth in sales of religious books, movies and music in the past 20 years. “Travel is newer,” he says, but there is a mushrooming trend to integrate travel with faith.

Honnie Korngold, founder of the California-based Christian Travel Finder says: “We find that if Christians are given the opportunity to choose a cruise or other vacation that’s family-oriented and enriches faith, they’ll choose that alternative.”

Korngold expects an explosion in the next few years as more travel products come on the market from suppliers aimed at the religious market. “It makes good business sense for travel suppliers to develop and provide these products to the interest and values of the religious traveller,” she says.

“They realise how lucrative it is.” In the US much of the marketing of religious travel is directed at seniors and baby boomers. “They are thinking in a more spiritual way after 9/11 and what’s happened in the world,” says Poe. “Boomers don’t want to be told about faith, they want to experience it for themselves,” Cindi Brodhecker of MTS Travel in Pennsylvania, which focuses on the religious non-profit market, told Time: “They want to explore where their ancestors might have worshipped or better understand their religious background.”
Marzia Bortolin with the Italian Government Tourist Board notes that as people get older they get closer to religion. “Religion is an alternative to the world situation,” she says. “People are grasping for something. They need spirituality.