Religion offers Depth to travel
Faith-based and spiritual holidays have proved to be a popular niche travel market with 330 million people visiting the world’s key religious sites annually. Encompassing more than just religious pilgrimages, spiritual travel incorporates everything from religious heritage tours and festivals, to conventions, mission trips, retreats and even specialised ‘schoolies‘ holidays. Experiences can be as diverse as following the footsteps of Buddha in India, attending a private healing ceremony with a Shaman at Machu Picchu, exploring Jewish heritage in the Holy Land or hiking the Camino de Santiago trail in Spain. Combined, this type of tourism pumps an estimated $50 to $100 billion into the global economy each year. So what’s the appeal of such trips? Meath Conlan of Diverse Journeys says “people want to travel with a purpose”. Conlan has been running spiritual journeys to Asia since the 1980s with some of his more recent journeys including a prayer retreat in Bali and meditation and reflection tours in India. This year’s Bali prayer retreat was held in the country’s spiritual centre, Ubud, at the Vishrama Pure Retreat Centre where guests took part in daily silent prayer for “calming the body and mind”, yoga instruction and learnt the art of Ayurvedic massage. He explains that his bespoke tours are best kept intimate with under 15 participants. “These tours are about self-enquiry and people tend to leave feeling fulfilled, like everything just fits together again,” General manager of Catholic tour company, The Harvest Group, Peter Calopedos, agrees the appeal of these tours is to have a more profound journey. “Travel is an experience, but for some people the opportunity for spiritual travel can be a much deeper kind of experience,” Calopedos reflects. Harvest believes the company’s clients want to go beyond just visiting a destination as a regular tourist. Calopedos says the company, which has been running for 30 years, has seen “ebbs and flows, peaks and troughs” during its three decades of operation but there has always been a constant customer base with a few thousand clients a year – unless there is a major religious event causing the numbers to soar. “We took about 3,000 people to the canonisation of Mary Mackillop a few years back in Rome,” he says. If the predicted canonisation of Mother Theresa goes ahead there too he predicts another strong demand for travel. The company’s flagship tour is to the Holy Land to experience firsthand the Sea of Galilee, Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Other unique tours for the company include mission or immersion trips in destinations such as outback Australia or Timor and even an alternate schoolies where school leavers can travel to Fiji for island activities mixed in with meeting and assisting villagers. World Youth Day in Krakow, Poland in July is another event set to cause a surge in this kind of travel. Organised by the Catholic church, WYD sees youth of the world gather together culminating in a mass conducted by the Pope. The official Australian tour operator this year’s WYD, Cosmos Travel, says it is gearing up for one of the biggest group operations the company has ever mounted with about 3,000 young people set to take the journey. Globus family of brands (including Cosmos) national marketing manager for Australia, Chris Fundell, says religious travel is a growing niche specialty for Globus and there has been a definite increase in interest since Cosmos began its involvement in WYD. “The religious travel program allows people to explore Europe and the Holy Lands in more detail than a regular tour, travelling with specialist guides and meeting other travellers with a shared interest,” Fundell explains. Globus and Cosmos religious travel programs offer faith-based tours in Poland, Germany, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, Ireland, Italy, France, Spain and Portugal. Popular pilgrimages showing recent growth include a famous pilgrimage visiting towns of Spain, Portugal and France and a journey following the footsteps of Apostle Paul travelling through Turkey and Greece. For millions of people, faith based and spiritual travel is a catalyst for examining themselves, their faith and pondering the greater questions of existence.