The Intersection between Pilgrims and Religious Tourist: the different paths to the sacred

Abstract

Knowing that religious tourism is nowadays the segment of the touristic activity with the highest growth and development as well as taking into account that there is very little academic production on the subject, which is full of ambiguity and epistemological inaccuracies regarding the use of theme categories, this work was elaborated with the purpose of discovering the difference between pilgrim and religious tourist. It was tried to identify pilgrim’s and religious tourist’s relevant characteristics by rising its sources and historic development aiming to produce a theoretical systematization about the difference between this two actors. That was accomplished by a proposition of a summary table as a result of this work, which is based on the research and the analysis of studies in the tourism field and other related areas. This work comprises a theoretical research, with applied and exploratory goals, and uses bibliographic research and qualitative approach. It was concluded that, despite being very similar, it is possible to identify differences between pilgrim and religious tourist with a more detailed analysis of the particularities and activities played by these two actors during displacement. The summary table proposed is a facilitating tool that helps researches, laymen and professionals of the field when defining pilgrim and religious tourist, two players that meet each other on their journeys motivated by the holy.