When Paul Wright boards a motorcoach with 40-some coreligionists for a tour of Ireland or Norway or Italy, he looks forward to seeing historic churches and gorgeous scenery. But what he enjoys most, Wright says, is the “fellowship with those of like precious faith.”
“We don’t have to be in a church to enjoy the Lord’s creation. In a beautiful place, every new scene gives us new appreciation of the Lord’s glory and greatness,” says Wright, general manager of WMUU, a fundamentalist Christian radio station in Greenville, S.C.
In the 43 years he has worked there, he has participated in about 30 tours for listeners, including a 12-day tour of Greece last year. That trip, like most of the others, was handled by Globus, an international operator.
The boom in such travel has been evident in the last few years, and Globus was one of the first large operators to tap into it. According to Mike A. Schields, director of group sales and emerging markets, Globus has offered customized tours to religious groups for more than 50 years and created a specific faith-based division in 2004.
“Religious travel is . . . a big piece of our emerging markets area,” says Schields. He adds that Globus’s customer base is international, but, given that most ancient religious sites are located in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, the majority of religious travelers come from North America. And, he says, they are overwhelmingly Christian. “Early on, we looked at offering Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, and Jewish tours too, but there just wasn’t a big enough market,” he says.
A 2007 survey by Menlo Consulting Group, a market-research company based in Palo Alto, Calif., found that one-third of US international “pleasure travelers,” a potential market of 15.7 million adults, are likely to take an international religious/faith-based vacation at some point.
Yet a survey the same year by the US Department of Commerce Office of Travel & Tourism Industries found that 1.6 percent of overseas US travelers said the purpose of their trip was “religion/pilgrimages,” up only one-tenth of a percent since 2000.
The World Religious Travel Association, formed in 2007 by Kevin Wright, a former Globus employee, calls itself the “leading global network for the $18 billion and 300 million traveler faith tourism industry” and has proclaimed 2009 “The Year of Faith Tourism.”
Why now? Wright, the group’s executive director, says that the organization aims to “increase the awareness of the personal and communal benefits of faith tourism . . . especially during a time of increasing challenges and uncertainties.”
The increase in religious trip offerings may also relate to changing demographics. “Earlier, people taking religious trips tended to be very senior. . . . Now we’re seeing multigenerational families going together,” Schields says. Like most travelers these days, he says, “people on religious tours want to do things. . . . And our surveys showed that they want a 50-50 balance of activities in terms of religious and nonreligious. These factors combine to grow the market.”
Preferences vary somewhat according to religion. Schields says Roman Catholics, for instance, are likely to make pilgrimages to religious shrines, such as Lourdes, in France, while nonevangelical Protestants generally enjoy visiting sites associated with the Reformation. Wright notes that about 10,000 American Muslims travel each year on pilgrimages to Mecca.
An online search of tours for Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists finds itineraries under the heading of “walk in the footsteps of . . .” Moses or Jesus, Mohammed or Krishna or Buddha and others, suggesting a desire to visit places associated with a deity or prophet.
Jane Roy Brown can be reached at regan-brown.com .
By Jane Roy Brown