Pilgrim-Tourists: Tourism and the Spiritual Experience
Pilgrim-Tourists: Tourism and the Spiritual Experience

Summary/Abstract: There have been pilgrimages to sacred sites since the beginning of human history. These geo-spiritual movements have only recently become commercialized and marketed as forms of spiritual tourism. Spiritual tourism is a uniquely contemporary phenomenon, conditioned by modern advancements in transportation and access to information. The spiritual experience itself, a psychologically transformative event, remains implicit in the terms of exchange and subject to questions of authenticity. The pilgrim-tourist completes a circuit, returning home potentially changed by this experience, instigating a dramatic reinterpretation of both the object and the culture that “produces” it. There are tensions at sites of pilgrimage and within belief systems that are resolved in the creation of new interpretive paradigms to accommodate the modern pilgrim-tourist. This article examines the role of those who participate in the exchange facilitated by spiritual tourism, as well as the object of their exchange: the spiritual experience itself.

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