Visitors’ motivations and behaviours at pilgrimage centres: push and pull perspectives

Religious tourism is one of the fastest growing and changing sectors of the world tourism market because of, among other things, social-cultural changes in the 20th and 21st centuries (i.e. the development of transport and mass tourism, globalization, secularization, and commercialization). Pilgrimage centres are important destinations also for general heritage tourism. Despite their global importance and growing popularity, there is still a lack of the knowledge about the complexity, multidimensionality, and diversity of journeys to pilgrimage centres. Here, the results from a comprehensive empirical study on visitors’ motivations and behaviours to pilgrimage centres in Poland are presented for the first time, to provide insight into contemporary religious tourism. The diversity and dependence of the main motivations, additional motivations, behaviours, and socio-demographic research sample indicators were analyzed. The motivations and behaviours are varied and multi-faceted, and include mainly religious and tourist factors, but are also related to cultural heritage tourism, recreation, social/family life, and additional factors. A conceptual model is presented of the motivations of pilgrimage centre visitors based on the push-pull motivational framework, adapted to religious tourism, taking into account the importance of the religious element – as an innovative contribution – summarized the studies.