EVENTS

Although the term “tourism” is relatively modern, its characteristics and roots can be traced back through the centuries, as far as antiquity.

The human need to visit religious monuments and places of worship is timeless, motivated by pilgrimage, the fulfilment of a vow, or prayer. Perhaps the best-known example of mass pilgrimage tourism comes from the Middle Ages, when thousands of people, under adverse and often dangerous conditions, travelled long distances on foot to visit the Holy Land, the Vatican, Hagia Sophia, and other sacred sites. Even in more recent times, travel remained difficult. After all, people travelled mainly for livelihood rather than leisure. Nevertheless, major religious centres continued to attract travellers seeking answers to the hardships of daily life.

Things changed radically and rapidly in the 19th century. The railway and the steamship made travel safer, faster, and more comfortable. The first to capitalise on this new reality was Thomas Cook, the founder of organised tourism. A churchman himself, serving as an itinerant Baptist preacher, he combined religion and travel to organise the first “tourist packages” of religious tourism from England to the Holy Land.

From then on, tourism would become a continuously expanding industry and a key pillar of the economy in almost every state. And religious tourism has never ceased to be a dynamic and mass segment of it.

In recent decades, religious and pilgrimage tourism has seen significant growth. It no longer addresses only believers, but also people interested in a destination’s history, natural wealth, architecture, archaeology, and cultural heritage. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide seek such travel packages every year, and hundreds of billions of euros circulate around religious tourism.

In Greece, there are major Orthodox centres of international renown—such as Mount Athos, Meteora, the Panagia of Tinos, and the Monastery of St John the Theologian on Patmos—that attract international visitors annually. Moreover, almost every part of the country contains sites of religious interest that are valuable to the local economy. Efforts are underway at both national and local levels to organise religious tourism on a scientific basis. This is especially relevant in Greece, where a visit to a place of worship is often combined with visits to archaeological monuments or with “traditional forms of tourism.” Neither a superficial or one-dimensional understanding of the field, nor an approach to religious tourism in narrowly economic and commercial terms, is sufficient.

To meet these continuously growing and changing needs, Inter-Institutional Postgraduate Programmes—such as “Religious and Pilgrimage Tourism” offered jointly by AUTH and IHU)—have been established through interdisciplinary collaboration. Their aim is precisely the advanced training of executives who will undertake the holistic approach and organisation of pilgrimage tourism.