Main Reasons for Religious Tourism – From a Quantitative Analysis to a Model

Religious tourism is one of the most expanding forms of tourism in the world. The significant boom in religious tourism in the world in the last 30 years is due to many factors, namely: religious, historical, economic, geographic, socio-cultural and political. Currently, the term "religious tourism" is very fashionable, or "pilgrimage tourism", which means journeys undertaken for religious or religious-cognitive reasons. The modern pilgrim not only expects to meet God, but also wants to get added value, which are additional attractions for him, because visiting holy places becomes an element of the journey. It can be observed on the basis of our analysis, that the main reasons for religious tourism are connected with religious issues like: pray for specific intention (58% people) and seeing the pilgrimage as a unique spiritual experience (48% of people). This work attempts to conduct quantiative analysis of the pilgrims touristic in Poland. Based on the research, it was found that 25% of the causes of prayer is for a specific intention and exceptional spiritual experience affect 50.65% to participate in the pilgrimage. Based on expert analysis and results of Ishikawa-Method the model was built integrating the main reasons of participation in pilgrimage, which consisting of three groups: religious, touristic and social. In the case of Poland our analysis showed that the main reason is connected with religious causes (63%); the second is touristic reason (19%) and the third is connected with social reason (17%). The model of causes of participation is universal and can be used to analyze reasons of pilgrimage to other sacred places in Poland and also in other countries.