Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage Management

Abstract

In recent years, religion has been on the agenda of mass media, either as a central theme of a series of conflicts materialized or targeted by terrorism, or as the impossibility of a medieval institution whose problems consist of a certain impossibility to answer to the needs of believers. For a long time, it was thought that the capitalist industrialization would bring about the death of religion, but, on the contrary, many people are willing to travel to centers of pilgrimage and religious attractions around the world. Dean MacCannell emphasized that tourism was as a continuation of religion. To the indigenous world, the totem gives protection and an identity to the community. Tourism has this same function in modern society. However, within that scheme: where can modern tourism be placed? This phenomenon is a test of social decomposition, as predicted MacCannell (1976), or an inevitable reality that religion still plays an important role in society?