Religious Experiences of Travellers Visiting the Royal Monastery of Santa María de Guadalupe (Spain)

Abstract

The Royal Monastery of Guadalupe has been one of the most important religious destinations in Spain since the 14th century, when the black wooden sculpture of the Virgin Mary (sculpted in the 1st century AD) was found. It was declared a World Heritage Site by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural organization (UNESCO) in 1993 and is presently a tourism attraction of international interest. It is visited by more than 60,000 tourists annually, including pilgrims and other people interested in the cultural and natural heritage of the area. The aim of this study was to decipher ways that religiousness is experienced by tourists with different motivations, i.e., to better understand how religion is linked to tourism through embodied notions of godliness in different modalities of tourism. A total of 242 visitors were interviewed in the summer of 2017. They were asked about the main motivations for their visits, which were classified into five groups (religious, cultural, environmental, social, and educational reasons) and used as latent variables in a path structural equation model (SEM). The model showed strong predictive power (R 2 = 87.5%) reporting a significant positive influence of religious, cultural, and environmental motivations on religious tourism in this region.

Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage: Bibliometric Overview

“…This is so, in spite of recognizing that managers of religious sites should offer visitors a wide range of activities, both spiritual and non-spiritual, that complement each other with the aim of providing a holistic experience (Tirca and Stanciulescu 2011;Weidenfeld and Ron 2008). Although the studies that address the other three types of experiences are scarcer if they have been addressed, for example, in relation to educational experiences, as in the studies of Nyaupane et al (2015), Ramírez andFernández (2018), andSarris (2004).…”

“…However, religious issues are not the only ones considered by visitors to religious sites or events, and their motivation is composed of religious, cultural, traditional, spiritual, and landscape patterns, which often interact in the intention and decision to set out on a trip (Abbate and Nuovo 2013;Amaro et al 2018;Drule et al 2015;Hughes et al 2013;Kaewumpai 2018;Kim and Kim 2018;Olsen 2013;Terzidou et al 2018;Wang et al 2016). This means that, in the last decades, traditional pilgrimage destinations have also become tourist sites of multifunctional nature (Kaufman 2005) that welcome moved by their religious beliefs and those interested in their historical heritage or architectural, cultural, or artistic value (Hughes et al 2013;Hyde and Harman 2011;Fernandes et al 2012;Geary 2018;Musa et al 2017;Ramírez and Fernández 2018;Shinde 2007). It is generally acknowledged that tourist motivation is multi-faceted; that is, tourists have multiple motives for travelling, even within a single journey (Bowen and Clarke 2009;Pearce 1993;Ryan 2002;Uriely et al 2002).…”

What role geoparks play improving the health and well-being of senior tourists?

“…Visits to natural places such as geoparks provide an opportunity to socialise and maintain connections with other people [ 76 , 77 ], benefits that contribute significantly to both personal and social development [ 78 ].…”

Hermeneutic Phenomenological Understanding of the Inner Journey of Templestay

“…Religious tourism aims to find religious faith in the past, but modern religious tourism does not only endeavor to find religious faith. The motivations for visiting religious places consist of culture, tradition, spirituality, scenery, and so on, and all these play an essential role in making decisions to travel to religious places [22][23][24]. This fact means that templestay has also become a multifunctional tourist destination visited by tourists with various interests, including Buddhist history, heritage, culture, architecture, and experiencing the life of monks, as well as religious beliefs [25,26].…”