Document Type : Research Paper

Author

• Fatemeh Shekari

Assistant professor, Department of Tourism and Hospitality Management, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran

Abstract

Although the research on religious tourism experiences has increased in recent years, and given that most of the studies have been focused on the spiritual aspect of these experiences, there still needs to be more knowledge about the multiple attributes of religious tourists’ experiences. Therefore, the current study aims to provide an “integrated and multifaceted conceptual framework of religious tourists’ experiences” using a systematic literature review and deductive thematic analysis. The search was conducted on June 12, 2023. The PRISMA procedure identified fifty-three relevant articles ranging from 2006 to 2022. Based on the findings, the multifaceted religious tourists’ experiences can include cognitive, emotional, physical, relational, recovery, spiritual, transformative, and behavioral facets. The findings can extend the literature and benefit managers, planners, and destination marketing organizations in designing religious tourism experiences to enhance visitors’ satisfaction and destination competitiveness.
Introduction
In the 21st century, religious tourism and pilgrimages are critical components of the travel and tourism market (Albayrak et al., 2018). Bibliometric studies reveal the exponential growth of religious tourism studies in the last decade. Due to religious tourism’s benefits, destinations need to understand religious tourists' experiences to enhance destination competitiveness and attract these tourists. However, religious tourism experience is an emerging topic in the literature (Collins-Kreiner, 2020), and scant studies have been conducted on this topic (Bond et al., 2015). Also, most of the research has focused on the spiritual aspect and ignored other aspects to a large extent. Meanwhile, managers of religious sites should offer a holistic experience that embraces spiritual and non-spiritual complementary aspects (Durán-Sánchez et al., 2018). Considering the importance of understanding the religious tourists' experience and the inadequate studies in this field, especially the lack of comprehensive frameworks that include multiple aspects of the religious tourists’ experiences (Kim et al., 2020), the present study has systematically reviewed the literature to provide an “integrated, multifaceted religious tourism experience conceptual framework” and extends literature in this field.
Materials nd Methods
The present research employed a systematic literature review. Scopus was chosen as the database as it is the largest multidisciplinary database in social sciences (Aria et al., 2020). Also, compared to the Web of Science, it has a broader coverage of tourism journals (Lin & Rasoolimanesh, 2022). The search was conducted on June 12, 2023. The PRISMA procedure identified fifty-three relevant articles ranging from 2006 to 2022. The deductive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) was done to determine the aspects and components of the religious tourists’ experience based on the “orchestra model” (Pearce & Mohammadi, 2021) and the “multifaceted conceptual framework of tourist experience” (Packer & Ballantyne, 2016).
Discussion and Results
Based on the findings, the “integrated, multifaceted framework of religious tourists’ experiences” includes cognitive, affective, physical, relational, restorative, spiritual, transformative, and behavioral facets, each includes the following aspects:

Cognitive: reflection, learning or discovering, perceived authenticity, perception of setting attributes, mental engagement, and remembering
Affective: joy, awe or wonder, attachment, hope, pride, discontent
Physical: sensory engagement, bodily engagement, or challenge
Relational: social interaction and sharing, communitas
Restorative: peacefulness or relaxation, escape, nourishment, freedom
Spiritual: spiritual connection, religiousness or closeness to God or sacred people, communion with nature, purification
Transformative: self-growth or fulfillment, liminality or flow, identity construction
Behavioral: religious site or ritual-specific (religious), non-religious (touristic)

 Conclusions
Theoretically, this research attempted to provide a multifaceted perspective of the religious tourists’ experience, employing a systematic literature review. Therefore, it has presented the most recent overview of the topic and identified the theories used, methodologies, study context, and experience attributes. By providing an “integrated, multifaceted conceptual framework of the religious tourist experience,” the present study contributes to extending the literature. This research used the existing frameworks to categorize the attributes of experience. It also added new facets and components. Three facets, namely restorative, spiritual, and transformative, can be added to the “orchestra model of tourist experience” (Pearce & Mohammadi, 2021). Also, the religious tourism-related components of communitas (relational), hope (affective), religiousness or closeness to God or sacred people, communion with nature, purification (spiritual), and liminality or flow (transformative) were added. Other components were also included that may be helpful to describe more general tourism experiences: perceived authenticity and mental engagement (cognitive), self-expression and social acceptance (relational), and identity construction (transformative). This framework needs to be more comprehensive, and future research may add other facets and components. The findings can extend the literature and benefit managers, planners, and destination marketing organizations in designing religious tourism experiences to enhance visitors' satisfaction and destination competitiveness. Finally, study limitations and future research directions are proposed, including cross-cultural studies to compare results and enhance the generalizability of the findings, examining the proposed framework in various religious destinations contexts, paying more attention to Muslim religious tourists’ experiences, considering the role of information and communication technologies, and investigating the interactions of the framework components.

Keywords

• Religious tourism
• Pilgrimage
• Tourist experience
• Systematic review
• Thematic analysis

Main Subjects

• Religious tourism planning