Religious or Faith Tourism

I think that it can be clearly seen on the Camino how its popularity has led to money coming into the area it goes through – at its height large Hospitals were built to house pilgrims, Cathedrals were expanded and villages sprung up. With its decline villages were abandoned and hospitals fell into ruin and were destroyed.

These days the village of Rabanal near to Astorga can be taken as an example – until recently it was almost abandoned and had no where for Pilgrims to stay (they had to take a taxi over the Cruz de Ferro) until the English Confraternity converted the old Priest’s house which allowed Pilgrims to stay overnight and led to more albergues in this village and those around the area as well.

The importance of the ‘Pilgrim Euro’ can also be seen in the numbers of sign for bars that can be seen on the Camino. On the Camino Portuguese in 2014 I went to one bar that was slightly off the route which had a petition out for people to sign to change the route of the Camino so that it would go past this bar – for business owners having the Camino go past your house is a make or break situation. Indeed the plan to alter the route of the Camino Nortes to a more ‘traditional’ route has brought a lot of complaints from locals who know that they will be ruined should this change go ahead (with many posters stating 'no al camino' - no to the change, being displayed and locals stating that they thought the route was going to be changed because of 'interes' - that the people on the 'authentic' route had the political influence to have the route changed).

A similar situation has occurred on the Camino Portuguese where the route has been changed to a more scenic one and arrows directing you onto this route have been obscured and posters have been torn down.

The fact is that buying your café con leche or (my favourite drink on the Camino) a Cola Cau in a bar for a Euro can help to make a lot of difference to those who live near to the Camino.

According to the National Geographic Special Edition ‘Sacred Journeys’ (ISSN 1536-6596) 300 million people travel for faith tourism each year generating about $18 billion of revenue each year (with Wikipedia [www.en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_tourism] estimating that $10billion of this comes from North American faith tourists)

Faith tourism includes:

• Pilgrimages
• Fellowship holidays (such as Church camps)
• Crusades, conventions and rallies
• Faith-based cruises
• Monastery visits
• Religious tourist attractions (for example visiting York Minster)
• Retreats
• Missionary travel