Religious Tourism: The Way to Santiago

Abstract
Religious tourism and pilgrimages are one of the oldest forms of tourism. The
present dissertation focuses on the increase of non religious tourists into religious
sites. This increase is influenced by different types of motivation. A literature review
on tourism motivation will clarify the reasons the tourists have in order to travel to
one specific destination. These motivations differ one from another according to the
tourist’s personal beliefs.
Santiago de Compostela, part from UNESCO’s World Heritage List and one of the
three more important sites of pilgrimage for Christianity, together with Rome and
Jerusalem, is the place chosen to carry out a case-study where the increase of non
religious tourists into Santiago will be analysed
The Way of Santiago, the different Ways and its history, take part in this dissertation,
since Santiago de Compostela is the last stage and the final destination for all the
pilgrims coming from any of the Ways. Most of these pilgrims have turned
nowadays into religious tourism consumers.
A quantitative research was undertaken to measure the motivations the tourists have
visiting Santiago de Compostela. In order to measure their motivations, a
questionnaire was created and asked to 489 visitors with questions such as place of
residence, level of studies, information about the trip and personal religious beliefs,
to have a description of the type of tourists which consume religious tourism.
After analysing the results of this research, not a clear difference between religious
tourists visiting Santiago de Compostela and non religious tourists or tourist with a
weak religious belief was found; therefore the results suggest that the personal
religious belief is not an affecting factor when choosing the tourist destination.
David Mashhadigholam Rojo iii