Religious Tourism: A Vehicle for Alternative and Sustainable Tourism in Turkey
Nuray Turker1
1 Karabuk University, Safranbolu Vocational College, Turkey
To cite this text:
Turker, N. (2010), Religious Tourism: A Vehicle for Alternative and Sustainable Tourism in Turkey, Percursos & Ideias, Vol. 2, pp. 117-126.
Abstract
Turkey is one of the major pilgrimage sites for the Christian community especially for Catholics, Protestants and Orthodoxies. Despite the growth of religious tourism throughout the world, relatively only a few studies have explored on this topic by scholars of tourism in Turkey. This paper focuses on religious tourism in Anatolia, Turkey which is a Holly Land for Christians whose purpose of the visit is for religious needs and pilgrimage.
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the components and the nature of religious tourism in Turkey from following main perspectives: (a) the evaluation of the selected holy sites which are religiously important for Christian community. (b) The current state of religious tourism in Turkey. (c) The findings of a semi-structured in depth interviews with the experts of tourism business. (d) Analyzing the potentials for the future prospects as an alternative and sustainable type of tourism.
Keywords
Religious tourism, Religious sites of Turkey, Sustainable and alternative tourism, Biblical tours.