Religious tourism is one of the fastest growing segments of the tourism industry in 2018. To find out more about this type of travel, Sean O'Rourke spoke to tourism lecturer at DIT, Kevin Griffin and writer and broadcaster, Manchán Magan. So, are we in a new era of religious tourism? Kevin thinks so.
"It's facilitated very much by access to transport, more leisure time, people want to travel and religious tourism seems to be one of the growing areas."
To give us an idea of some of the options around the world, Kevin says,
"Globally there’s some enormous ones in India where there's a hundred million people going to the Kumbh Mela in 2012… The annual pilgrimage to the Ganges can be anything from 20, 30, 40, up to 100 million people. There's shrines in the likes of Guadalupe in Mexico which gets about 20 million people a year. There's also the Western Wall in Jerusalem, 8 million people a year, and then, of course, you have… Mecca."
Of course, you don't have to go too far afield to experience religious tourism. Manchán says there are plenty of options right here in Ireland.
"They say in the Medieval Age, Ireland could have been the 5th greatest pilgrimage site in the world after Jerusalem, after Rome, after the Camino. There were people coming to the likes of Skellig Michael or to the likes of Croagh Patrick and so they're just recreating this tradition and every year we see more people doing this route. One of the most profound experiences I had is this walk from Ballintubber to Croagh Partick which you can do any time of the year. It's like a 30km walk and Fr Fahy, the local priest in Ballintubber will bless you and send you on your way with a sort of sacred stone."
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