The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

www.emeraldinsight.com/1759-0833.htm

Spiritual
The perspective of religious and tourism
spiritual tourism research: a research

systematic mapping study

Ali Heidari 747
Faculty of Management, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
Received 13 February 2017
Hamid Reza Yazdani Revised 14 July 2017
1 February 2018
Faculty of Management, University of Tehran, Qom, Iran, and Accepted 17 April 2018

Fatemeh Saghafi and Mohammad Reza Jalilvand

Faculty of Management, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

Abstract
Purpose – Religious tourism is a form of tourism where people of a particular faith travel to visit places of
religious significance in their faith. Previous research into the various aspects of religious and spiritual
tourism (RST) has been noticeably extended. The purpose of this study is to perform systematic mapping to
provide trends and classification regarding the recent publications in the area of RST.
Design/methodology/approach – This study collected 181 papers from five scientific databases, from
which 122 were selected to be classified according to six properties: research type, research focus, research
method, investigated religion, publication type and time.
Findings – The analysis of these data resulted in a map of the research field, which was presented under
three perspectives: the distribution and trends over time of each classification property and the relationship
between them. Besides the visual map, the full list of classified papers is available. The results showed that
the number of publications is increasing every year, which shows a growing interest in this field. Moreover,
the primary research focuses were destination, demand and marketing. Top three journals were found to be
International Journal of Tourism Research, Tourism Recreation Research and Journal of Heritage Tourism.
Furthermore, evaluation research, solution proposals and opinion papers were the main research types in the
area. In addition, the majority of studies focused on Christianity and Islam. Finally, survey, discussion paper,
interview and case study were the predominantly used research methods.
Originality/value – The mapping study delivers the first systematic summary of RST research.
Keywords Literature review, Religious tourism, Spiritual tourism, Systematic mapping study
Paper type Literature review

1. Introduction
Religion has been considered as a key motivator to travel, accentuating tourism-related
activities (Heidari et al., 2016). Religious tourism incorporates visits to religious
settings that are considered relevant to either one’s own faith or to the faith of others

The authors sincerely acknowledge the anonymous reviewer for giving constructive criticisms for
improving the overall character of this review paper. The remarks given by the reviewer has
certainly helped the authors in fine-tuning this paper, which may be of interest to the readers. This Journal of Islamic Marketing
Vol. 9 No. 4, 2018
paper is based on the second chapter of PhD dissertation of fourth author under the title of pp. 747-798
“Modelling Dynamics of Religious Tourism Networks: A Future-Oriented Approach” in the Faculty © Emerald Publishing Limited
1759-0833
of Management, University of Tehran, Iran. DOI 10.1108/JIMA-02-2017-0015
JIMA (Raj and Morpeth, 2007). Religious sites such as cathedrals, temples and mosques are
9,4 attracting an increasing number of visitors worldwide, not only for their spiritual value but
also for recreational, educational and cultural purposes (Woodward, 2004). Researchers
assert that the exponential growth of modern tourism is linked to the traditional religious
experience of pilgrimage (Heidari et al., 2017). According to the World Tourism
Organization (2014), between 300 and 330 million tourists visit the world’s most prominent
748 religious sites every year, totaling approximately 600 million national and international
religious journeys to Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim and Christian pilgrimage sites in the
world. For example, huge numbers of Muslims (over two million in January 2014) visit
Mecca every year. Woodward (2003) notes the importance of the Hajj, for example, to the
economy of Saudi Arabia. This is worth around US$1.5bn, with 40 per cent being spent on
the rental of rooms to pilgrims, and so a major input to local economies. From an
anthropological perspective, each individual has his/her own motivation to perform certain
actions and purchase a charm at religious centers. In general, anthropologists and others
interested in the cultural and social significance of human travel have to make sense of these
nuances that are contained in both written documents and oral testimonies (Bowie, 2003).
Despite tourism literature presenting religious and spiritual travel as its central themes and
covering numerous areas, none of the previous works systematically review the existing
literature, and thus, they do not provide a complete coverage of the different topics
associated with RST. This paper presents a systematic mapping study on RST research that
aims at identifying the research trends and categorizes studies at a higher granularity level.
We analyze a wide range of characteristics of the existing research on RST. We discuss a
range of analyses on the current research on RST to understand its current status and how
and in which direction it is going. Moreover, the outcomes of our mapping study can help to
identify research challenges and to direct ongoing research. The rest of paper is constructed
as follows: Section 2 discusses RST in brief. Sections 3, 4 and 5 describe the research
questions, the methodology followed in our conducted mapping study and classification
scheme, respectively. Section 6 reports results. Section 7 presents a discussion. The threats
to validity are given in Section 8. Section 9 concludes this work and highlights the direction
of future work.

2. Religious and spiritual tourism

2.1 Definitions
Religious tourism can be defined as the visit of sacred places, to participate or follow-up in
religious ceremonies and the pilgrimage in the form of visits or activities to fulfill religious
duties in the evaluation of tourism understanding. It mostly covers tourist trips to perform
the religious beliefs and/or to see the centers of faith attraction in the evaluation of the
tourism phenomenon (Heidari et al., 2017). Rinschede (1992) explained that travel behavior,
including travel patterns, transportation choices, seasonal demand and socialization
processes are all affected by beliefs, especially in the context of religious tourism. Religious
site visitors tend to travel with family members or organized groups, and their trip is highly
seasonal, influenced not only by climate and weather but also by the occurrence of holidays,
ceremonies and work schedules. At some religious sites, there are socio-demographic
differences in demand for travel products. A visit to a religious heritage site is often an
esthetic experience, one that may engage visitors at emotional, physical, intellectual or
spiritual levels. While the core activity of most religious sites is prayer and worship,
evidence suggests that spiritual motives are not the only reasons people visit these sites
(Keeling, 2000). Other factors motivating visitation include “spur of the moment decision”
(accounting for the majority of visits); family connections with site (for example, visiting
gravestones of ancestors); famous people who were connected with the site; and personal Spiritual
interest in architecture or historic art works such as stained glass (Shackley, 2002; Heidari tourism
et al., 2017). Most scholars commonly refer to differences between pilgrims and tourists
when discussing visitor experiences at religious sites. The main difference noted is the
research
traveler’s motive for visiting a specific site, with pilgrims being driven by sacred or spiritual
desires, while tourists are motivated by secular interests or pleasure (Cohen, 1992). Upon
arrival at a destination, the tourist will immediately look and get attracted by restaurants,
hotels, night clubs and other so-called “Western amenities.” These are common attitudes of
749
the average tourist. The pilgrim has a different attitude toward his trip. The pilgrim will
look at the spiritual beauty of a sacred place rather than esthetic beauty. The attractions
available to the tourist are identical to those available to the pilgrims. These can be various,
mainly varying in their purpose. Their purpose could be for entertainment, leisure, sports,
cuisine, historical, religious, etc. The tourist will concentrate more on the leisure and
entertainment attractions, while the pilgrim will concentrate more on the historical and
religious attractions available. Hence, a tourist’s expectations are different from that of a
pilgrim. As part of these differentiation exercises, tourists and pilgrims have on occasion
been placed on opposite ends of a spectrum in relation to their destinations of choice and
their motives (Figure 1). However, a pilgrim is always in danger of becoming a tourist. But
equally true is the fact that the tourist is constantly running the risk of becoming a pilgrim.
Generally, religious sites offer visitors a wide variety of experiences including religious
services, choir performances, music recitals and civic and religious ceremonies.
In addition, religious tourism focuses on the visiting of religious sites, monuments or
destinations with the primary aim off engaging with or intensifying a specific faith. But,
spiritual tourism aims to explore the elements of life which lie beyond the self and contribute
to body-mind-spirit balance. These may or may not have an affiliation to religion (Smith
et al., 2010). Spirituality is a set of ideas that one can find in religious traditions but which
also exist independently of them, including an emphasis and culture of the self, wholeness,
holism and (inter)connectedness, meaning-, search/quest- and experience-orientation,
nontheistic cosmology, peacefulness/tolerance and similar positive value commitments.
Research showed that conceptual discussions of leisure or tourism often have spiritual
overtones or link leisure with spirituality (Doohan, 1990). Aggarwal et al. (2008) asserted
that spirituality means having understanding with deep, often religious, feelings and beliefs,
including a person’s sense of peace, purpose, connection to others, and beliefs about the
meaning of life. Therefore, spiritual holidays seek to address the interdependence of
physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. Inextricably connected dynamic balances of body-
mind-spirit are seen as essential for well-being. Spiritual tourism is a more abstract, multi-

Figure 1.
Religion and tourism
JIMA faith and eclectic one in which tourists seek meaning, engagement and peace through
9,4 activities such as meditation. Chaline (2002) states spiritual tourism as an extraordinary
experience. What is anticipated in spiritual tourism destination is not holiness or divine
visions. It is however something even more miraculous – the opportunity to feel different
from the way we feel at home.

750 2.2 Impacts

Olsen and Timothy (2006) argued that RST can be assumed as the oldest form of non-
economic journeys, and approximately 240 million people visit holy places annually. Most of
these people are Christians; Muslims and visitors are interested to visit holy places for
different reasons, as a contribution in heritage or culture, for sense of curiosity or even to
enjoy the landscape of that place or site (Wong et al., 2013). Almost 50,000 religious
organizations are serving pilgrims and are trying to organize religious ceremonies and
pilgrim journeys. Income and technology are brought to countries which are planned in the
field of tourism, and people were able to gain knowledge about other religious cultures (Tala
and Padurean, 2008). According to Tala and Padurean (2008), four major factors should be
taken into consideration in the context of RST: religious belonging and practicing a religious
cult; education and culture; professional occupation and income level; and infrastructure
quality (access ways) and tourism services provided. They also added other factors such as
political stability, language similarities, belonging to a common cultural space, inflation and
fashion. They grouped the factors into two main categories of socioeconomic factors
(technical, economic and socio-political) and psycho-sociological factors (fashion, traditions,
individual character and temper). These factors exert a considerable impact on the pilgrims
when choosing a way of spending spare time (Tala and Padurean, 2008). Various
stakeholders have different interests in the way religious sites are managed, conserved and
consumed by tourists. Maybe the most important stakeholders are the religious leaders who
operate the site. Government organizations, local and regional tourism managers, urban
planners, state-sponsored historical societies and regional economic development agencies
are also major stakeholders in terms of affecting how religious sites function. Governments,
with their economic mandate to enhance tourism incomes, commodify socio-cultural and
physical resources to generate tourism services and/or products, using them in a manner
that makes them suitable for tourism development (Olsen, 2006a, p.111). Generally,
cooperative planning between all stakeholders involved must be the goal. However,
cooperation between the stakeholders may be difficult because “tourism is frequently
affected by local power relationships which favor the economic or political elite” (Sharpley
2000). Religious sites also deal with other external factors. For example, Shackley (2001)
argued that local, regional and national instability, vested interests in a site by religious,
social or political groups, can heighten management problems. In fact, religious sites can be
affected by the politics and social trends of the area in which they are located. In many cases,
the economic benefits of RST to destinations are viewed to outweigh the negative impacts.
This has been showed in the literature focusing on less-developed areas. For instance,
Baedcharoen (2000) indicated that Thailand residents are ambivalent about the negative
impacts of tourism on religious sites because of the economic benefits achieved. Shackley
(2002) asserted that although excessive numbers of tourists may adversely influence the
fabric of a cathedral (by vandalism, theft, erosion, graffiti, etc.), as well as diminishing the
quality of tourists’ experience by excessive noise and crowding, tourists undeniably make a
positive economic input into cathedral finances. In sum, it can be argued that the economic
impacts associated with religious tourism are greater than those associated with other
market segments, because pilgrims and other religious travelers are avid buyers of religious Spiritual
souvenirs. tourism
research
2.3 Destinations and places
Shrines, sites and geographic locations considered sacred by various faith traditions around
the world are innumerable. Hence, the most popular religious destinations in the world are
discussed. 751
Islam is the only religion growing faster than the world's population. The most sacred
place in Islam is the Kaaba in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Annually, about 13 million Muslims
visit Mecca. During the last month of the Islamic calendar, approximately two million
Muslims go to Mecca for Hajj. The Islamic pilgrimage includes carrying out a chain of
rituals, such as circumambulating the Kaabah independently, praying and wandering
between Safa and Marwah, the two hills Hagar lopes between searching for water for her
son Ishmael (Plate 1).
Another most sacred city in Islam is Jerusalem, which was the original qibla (direction of
prayer) before it was changed to Mecca. Annually, about two million visitors go abroad to
Jerusalem, being a sacred place for the three holy religions: Islam, Christianity and Judaism.
For Christians, it is the place of the Last Supper, the Crucifixion and the rebirth of Jesus.
Jerusalem is revered because in Muslim tradition, Muhammad miraculously traveled to
Jerusalem by night and ascended from there into heaven. Karbala is a sacred city in Iraq.
Shia Muslims consider Karbala to be one of the holiest places in the world, second only to
Mecca and Najaf (Plate 2).
Christian holy sites abound in various countries. In Europe, for example, pilgrimage sites
range from the premier destinations of Fátima (Portugal), Our Lady of Lourdes Sanctuary
(France), St Peter’s Basilica and the Vatican, the Basilica of St Francis and St Clare of Assisi
(Italy) to Jasna Gora (Poland), which annually attract millions of pilgrims and tourists.
Fatima is home to many striking churches and monuments. The Chapel of the Apparitions
is founded in the place of a Marian apparition that sighted by three peasant children in 1917.
Annually, since then, on the anniversaries of the apparitions, the streets of Fatima are full
with masses of pilgrims who make their way to the sacred site (Plate 3).

Plate 1.
Kaaba and Al-Masjid
al-Haram, Mecca,
Saudi Arabia
JIMA
9,4

752

Plate 2.
Bein Al-Haramein in
Karbala

Lourdes is the largest pilgrimage site in France, which attracts about five million pilgrims a
year. Lourdes’ significance comes from the apparitions of Our Lady of Lourdes, where
plentiful astounding healings take place. Tourists stay in one of 270 hotels in the city to visit
the Sanctuary of Lourdes (Plate 4).
In predominantly Hindu India, billions of Hindus visit holy places and shrines annually.
In total, 20 million pilgrims visit 150 of the best-known sites. Places such as Tirupati,
Mathura and Ayodhya are legendary sites of Hindu pilgrimage. Buddhism has inspired
shrines, known as pagodas, stupas, chortens and dagobas. Fabled sites include the

Plate 3.
Fatima in Portugal
 Spiritual
tourism
research

753

Plate 4.
Lourdes in France

Shwe Dagon Pagoda in Myanmar (Burma), the Shri Pada mountain in Sri Lanka, Bodh-
Gaya and the Ajanta Caves in India (Pagan) and Kyoto’s Nishi Hongwanji temple in Japan.
As a result of above discussions, it can be concluded that religion and spirituality are
driving forces in tourism, and the new mobility regime provided by tourism has in turn
made religion more mobile. RST is among the least explored tourist activities in the world of
modern tourism and the most understudied research areas in tourism research (Hughes
et al., 2013). Hence, it needs to further develop research in this area. This would open the way
to a conversation and collaboration between scholars of religion and people from tourism
studies. There are still many aspects of the religion/spirituality/tourism interface that have
not been explored systematically and comparatively.

3. Research questions
The goal of this systematic mapping study is to provide an overview of the current research
on the topic of RST. We attempt to characterize and summarize evidence and identify the
existing research. The research questions for present mapping study is formulated with the
help of population, intervention, comparison, outcome and context (PICOC) criteria
developed by Higgins et al. (2008). Because the objective of this mapping study is not to find
evidence on the comparison of approaches, methods or models, the “comparison” attribute of
PICOC was not used. The populations included the studies that investigated RST. The
intervention includes concepts, principles, approaches or techniques used from one
paradigm to another. The outcome of interest represents a mapping of studies, classification,
type and quality of evidence relating to RST. The context is within the domains of RST. The
overall objective was defined in the following six research questions:
RQ1. What are the types of papers typically published (e.g., conference proceedings,
journals and chapter books)? What journals have published the most works on
RST?
JIMA Rationale: Publication chronology of the papers and distribution of studies in different
9,4 venues substantially indicates the existence of research activity.

RQ2. Which religion received most coverage in tourism research?

Rationale: The second question explores the religion types (Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism,
Islam and Christianity) researched in the tourism field.
754
RQ3. What types of research are represented?
Rationale: This question identifies the types of research (evaluation research, solution
proposal, etc.).
RQ4. What is the focus of the existing research results on RST?
Rationale: The objective of the fourth question is to identify the major research focus in the
past studies. To identify the focus and key issues which have motivated the researchers to
engage in RST research, we categorized their research focus in five areas, namely,
destination, marketing, demand, travel and geographical areas.
RQ5. What are the most common research methods applied?
Rationale: This question discovers the most important designs and methods, as well as gaps
and underrepresented approaches.
RQ6. How have publication amount, frequency and research topics changed over time?
Rationale: The answer to this question shows research trends, a timeline of publications and
emerging or abandoned topics.

4. Systematic mapping and research method

A systematic mapping is a process of identifying, categorizing and analyzing existing
literature that is relevant to a certain research topic. The result of a systematic mapping will
provide a structured report based upon categorizations of the existing literature, which is
often able to illustrate a visual summary that portrays the mapping relationship between the
literature and the categories (Petersen et al., 2008). The mapping is obtained to identify the
extent of the conducted studies, to address any proposed research questions and to generate
more focus research questions. Peterson et al. (2008) described methods for conducting
mapping studies and discuss differences between systematic mapping studies and
systematic literature reviews. Moreover, they provide guidelines for a broader set of
situations where either or both systematic mapping studies and systematic literature reviews
are appropriate and required to be conducted. A systematic literature review is conducted as
a means of identifying, evaluating, interpreting and comparing all available researches that
are relevant to a particular research question and relative merits of competing technologies.
In contrast, a systematic mapping study provides a systematic and objective procedure to
determine the nature and extent of the empirical study data to answer a particular research
question (Budgen et al., 2008). Mapping studies often use the same basic methodology as
systematic literature reviews. The procedure of systematic mapping study presented in this
paper combines a well-organized set of proper practices both to undertake mapping study
and to systematically review guidelines (Batory, 2005; Petersen et al., 2008). The combination
of guidelines helps us to leverage both systematic mapping and literature review techniques.
The major steps of this systematic mapping process comprised:
  definition of a protocol of the study and research questions; Spiritual
 exploratory search and data collection; and tourism
 analysis of the collected data and reporting. research
Figure 2 summarizes a process followed in our systematic mapping study. The details of
each step are described in the following subsections.
755
4.1 Review protocol
A systematic mapping study starts by defining a review protocol specifying the plan of
research and primarily including the research. The review protocol primarily includes the
research questions, search process, study selection criteria, the classification schema and the
method to extract and analyze data. The review protocol is also important for other researchers
who would like to either extend or replicate the study (Kitchenham et al., 2011). It is sufficient,
in the case of the former, to include only new studies through the subsequent literature search.
Our literature review protocol is adopted from the systematic literature review guidelines
defined by Kitchenham and Charters (2007). We adopted the concepts such as protocol
definition that derives the research in the study during the study definition, which improves
reliability by describing different aspects of the review to conduct an unbiased mapping study
(Petersen et al., 2008). The final protocol used in our study included the following steps:
 defining the research questions, the scope and search strategy, the inclusion and
exclusion criteria to select studies;
 performing search, collecting and selecting studies using established protocol; and
 classifying and analyzing papers and extracting and aggregating data to produce a
comprehensive overview of the published literature on the studied topic.

The protocol is reviewed incrementally and updated according to the newly collected data in
the course of study. The following subsections describe the content of the protocol in detail.

4.2 Data sources

To collect primary studies, our exploratory search process included digital libraries, as well as
manual search of journals, conference proceedings and chapter books. The pre-review search
was performed using the ScienceDirect, Emerald, Sage, Wiley and Routledge. These search
engines cover the vast majority of published studies in hospitality and tourism research.

4.3 Search strategy

The search terms in our mapping study were constructed using the guidelines described by
Dieste and Padua (2007), i.e. through the following steps:

Figure 2.
Systematic mapping
process
JIMA  deriving major terms by breaking down the research questions;
9,4  identifying alternative spelling and synonyms for major terms;
 checking the keywords in any relevant papers we already retrieved;
 incorporating alternative spellings and synonyms using the logical operator “OR”;
and
756  using the logical operator “AND” to link the major terms.

To perform an automatic search on the selected libraries, the search string was the
following:
(“religious tourism OR spiritual tourism”)

AND

(“religion” OR “spirituality” OR “tourism”)

In this paper, we report the results of a broad search covering the period from 1992 to
January 10, 2017. Therefore, we are nearly certain that we have grasped every paper
published in the period of the span of our study despite publication time lag. The details and
full texts were recorded and managed using the open-source bibliography management tool
Zotero, primarily due to its integrated capability to manage, share and synchronize
resources among the researchers. Figure 3 shows the number of papers identified at each
stage of exploratory search and study selection. In Stage 1, the titles, abstracts and
keywords of publications in the included digital libraries and databases were searched with
the combination of given search terms. The outcome of manual search within selected
publication fora is also included in this stage. This state resulted in 181 publications. In
Stage 2, the duplicated studies were removed, and it comprised initial inclusion and
exclusion based on the title, abstract, introduction and conclusion sections. Furthermore, the
study collection is followed by performing “snow-balling,” such as pursuing related works

Figure 3.
Stages of search and
study selection
and papers listed in the references of papers. In total, we identified and collected 136 relevant Spiritual
publications and cleaned out the duplicated studies of the same author published in different tourism
venues. Typically, the most recent ones were considered and included. In the final stage, 122
studies are included for this mapping study after applying selection criteria that are
research
described in the next subsection.

4.4 Inclusion and exclusion criteria

The study selection processes are performed based on careful reading of the collected papers
757
to select the most relevant studies which address our research questions. We define
following inclusion and exclusion criteria for the selection of collected publications:
Inclusion criteria:
 Papers with a focus on various aspects of RST.

Exclusion criteria:

 Papers published before 1990;

 Papers not written in English language;
 Papers published on non-peer reviewed vehicles, such as working papers and
magazines; and
 Papers not related to RST.

Quality assessments of studies are important to restrict bias in conducting the review and to
guide interpretation of findings. However, evaluating the quality of a study is not
straightforward due to the fact there is no unanimous or universal definition of quality.
Because the goal of systematic mapping studies is to structure a large area within the
research domain under review, systematic mapping study guidelines do not constitute
formal quality assessment criteria (Petersen et al., 2008). We used accepted criteria to assess
the quality of the studies to test the suitability and selection of studies. Articles must have a
minimal description of the context, clear objectives or research goals and a consistent
description of the proposed approach. In this work, we consider selected studies for more
discussion about their proposed approaches by principles of good practice of conducting
empirical research proposed by Kitchenham et al. (2011). Owning to the fact that the
majority of identified studies have been published in two recent decades, we did not subject
them to stringent critical appraisal based on the number of citations.

4.5 Data extraction

The data extraction forms were designed to collect required information. We collected the
following information from each study: title and authors; source and type (journal,
conference or book chapter); date of publication; and collected information based on our
classification scheme (Section 4). The summary and description of research focus and
research method were also included. The data are extracted and stored in spreadsheet. The
workbook was shared among the authors for the collaboration and synchronization using
the share workbook feature in Microsoft Office. During the data extraction, each paper was
read entirely and was also scrutinized using the inclusion and exclusion criteria.

5. Classification scheme
To address the research questions of this mapping study, a classification scheme is defined
to analyze different facets of the analyzed studies in terms of research focus, research type
JIMA and research method. We developed the classification schema by following keyword method
9,4 (Petersen et al., 2008). Constituting the mapping publication and classification scheme were
performed iteratively as a new study was added. The classification schema is created and
developed by key wording the abstract, introduction and conclusion and reading the full-
text of studies to identify and cluster different facets and contributions of the papers. The set
of keywords from different papers was incorporated to develop a high-level realization
758 about the nature and contribution of the papers. This helped us to come up with a set of
categories which are representative of the different facets of the research and underlying
population. To address RQ3, we identified the following primary classes of research type:
validation research, evaluation research, solution proposal, philosophical paper and
experience paper. The research focus (RQ4) is classified into five categories: destination,
marketing, demand, travel and geographical areas. Research method (RQ5) is classified into
seven categories: case study/multiple case studies, literature review, discussion paper,
survey, interview, grounded theory and others. During the data extraction, some studies
could be classified into more than one category according to schema.

6. Results
This section describes the results obtained after conducting the systematic mapping study
by following the method described in the previous section. Appendix shows the
categorization of the 122 papers based on their research focus, research type, research
method, publication type, journal title, investigated religion and database. In total, 7 of these
articles are conference papers and 99 are journal papers. Further, there are 16 book chapters
in the field of RST.

6.1 Demographic data (RQ1)

We provide an overview of the reviewed papers with respect to the types of publication,
databases, and journals. The answer to RQ1 was addressed by collecting information and
distribution of publication fora. Figure 4 depicts the distribution of the publication types and
the major databases. The distribution of publications in terms of types and databases in this
mapping study (RQ1) indicates the important databases for this research area and further
studies. Plate 3 demonstrates the distribution of publication fora categorized by source,
including journal papers and conference proceedings. The book sections are also indicated.
All the sources are listed in Appendix. Accordingly, Routledge have published 43 per cent

Figure 4.
Distribution of
publication type by
database
(52 papers) of the sources in the area of RST, followed by ScienceDirect (17 per cent), Spiritual
Emerald (16 per cent), Wiley (14 per cent) and Sage (11 per cent). Additionally, the journals tourism
were the prime publication venue for RST research (81 per cent). Interestingly, the majority
of book chapters (13 chapters, 81.25 per cent) have been published by Routledge
research
Publications.
Table II shows the top journals. These journals account for 64.65 per cent (65 papers) of
all papers published in the field of RST. The International Journal of Tourism Research is
the prime publication venue for RST research (9.18 per cent). Next in the ranking are 759
Tourism Recreation Research (6.12 per cent), Journal of Heritage Tourism (6.12 per cent),
Tourism Review (5.10 per cent), International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality
Research (4.08 per cent), Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes (4.08 per cent), Tourist
Studies (4.08 per cent), Annals of Tourism Research (4.08 per cent), Tourism Management
Perspectives (4.08 per cent), Tourism Management (3.06 per cent) and Journal of Islamic
Marketing (3.06 per cent). The top journals are completed by the Journal of Travel and
Tourism Marketing (2.04 per cent), Tourism Geographies (2.04 per cent), Asia Pacific Journal
of Tourism Research (2.04 per cent), Current Issues in Tourism (2.04 per cent), Tourism
Economics (2.04 per cent) and Religion Compass (2.04 per cent). These journals are
considered as the high quality and top international journals in the area of tourism and
hospitality management.

6.2 Investigated religions (RQ2)

From the stacked bar chart (Figure 5), we see that 29 per cent of contributions (42 articles)
have not investigated a special religion in their research on RST. From the accumulated
results shown in Plate 4, we observe that “Christianity” (32 articles, 22.1 per cent) and
“Islam” (30 articles, 20.7 per cent) are the most addressed religions, followed by “Hinduism”
(16 articles, 11 per cent), “Buddhism” (14 articles, 9.7 per cent) and “Judaism” (9 articles, 6.2
per cent). Only one article (0.7 per cent) has addressed a different religious context from our
major categorization. Christianity is the world’s largest religion by number of adherents,
who number 31.5 per cent of the world’s inhabitants or 2.1 billion. Also, 8 of the world’s 11
macro regions are recognized as centers of Christian pilgrimage: Europe, Latin America,
North America, West and East Africa, West Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and East
Asia. However, the features of pilgrimage in Christianity may vary in different directions,
sects and denominations. The nature of these visits and their intensity also depend on the
peculiarities of economic and political situation in this or that country, the level of material

Figure 5.
Percentages of
articles per religion
JIMA well-being of the citizens and their social and professional status. Islam is a comparatively
9,4 young religion, which originated in Arabia in seventh-century AD and was founded by
Prophet Muhammad. The appearance of the Archangel Gabriel to Muhammad in 610 and
the revelation he uttered to Muhammad can be considered the origin of Islam. It is the
second largest of the world’s religions in terms of number of adherents and again consists of
three main strands: Sunni, Shia and Sufism. Estimates of the number of Moslems vary
760 between 1.2 and 1.5 billion people or 23.2 per cent of the world’s population by the higher
estimate. The word “Islam” means “commitment to God.” There are two types of pilgrimage
in Islam: umrah and Hajj. The Hajj to Mecca is obligatory for every able-bodied Muslim at
least once in his life. A pilgrimage is considered to be a Hajj if it finishes at the Eid al-Adha
and the pilgrim has conducted all the necessary rituals during the preceding 10 days
(walking counter-clockwise seven times around the Kaaba, running back and forth between
the hills of Al-Safa and Al-Marwah, drinking from the Zamzam Well and visiting the plains
of Mount Arafat to stand in vigil and throwing stones). The umrah, or minor pilgrimage, is
“a pilgrimage to Mecca which can be undertaken at any time of the year.” Therefore, the
unique and interesting characteristics of Christianity and Islam, as well as their large
markets, have led to attract more attention by the academics and researchers.

6.3 Research type (RQ3)

To provide an answer to RQ3, we categorized the final 122 papers with the classification
proposed by Wieringa et al. (2005). The explanation of each category can be found in Table I.
From the accumulated results shown in Figure 6, we observe that “evaluation research”
(39.62 per cent, 42 articles) is the most addressed category, followed by “solution proposals”
(24.53 per cent, 26 articles) and “opinion papers” (19.81 per cent, 21 articles). As it can be
observed, few philosophical papers (8.49 per cent, nine articles) and experience papers (7.55
per cent, eight articles) have also been addressed.

6.4 Research focus (RQ4)

Figure 7 shows the distribution of research focus of identified and collected primary studies.
If the focus or contribution was within more than one area, we assigned the paper to several
research focuses. To answer RQ4, the classification of 122 articles per research topic and
focus area is conducted by going through the title, abstract and keywords. We categorized
the research focus in five different categories of destination, marketing, demand, travel and
geographical areas based on Park et al.’s (2016) classification of tourism research.
Description of each research focus is provided in Table I. Destination with 57 articles (46.72
per cent) and demand with 28 articles (22.95 per cent) are the two dominant topic areas in
RST research. In fact, a gradual growth in destination and demand issues has been observed
in RST literature. Recently, the pilgrimage sites try to emulate the practices that have been
well known to the managers of tourism sites. In the (post) modern society, places of
pilgrimage perform significant social, economic and environmental functions, although they
have to compete with alternative offerings targeting the same needs and motives of potential
pilgrims. Although it may be argued that the competition in the field of religious tourism is
irrelevant, as long as customers’ spiritual needs are satisfied, both the organization running
such a site and the local community – often depending economically on the inflow of
pilgrims – would certainly disagree. Hence, as the economy of countries being primarily
service-oriented, producing (staging) and selling memorable experiences becomes a viable
tool for the promotion of services (either as an individual offering or combined with tangible
products). As a result, these research focuses, namely, destination and demand, have been
the two major fields for tourism researchers. In comparison, only seven articles (5.74
 Spiritual
Research type (adapted from Wieringa
et al., 2005) Descriptions
tourism
research
Evaluation research The methodology is implemented in practice and an evaluation
of it is conducted. That means, it is shown how the research is
implemented (solution implementation) and what are the
consequences of the implementation in terms of benefits and
drawbacks (implementation evaluation). This also includes 761
problems identified in industry
Solution proposal A solution for a problem is proposed. The solution can be either
novel or a significant extension of an existing methodology. The
potential benefits and the applicability of the solution is shown
by a small example or a good line of argumentation
Philosophical paper These papers sketch a new way of looking at existing things by
structuring the field in form of a taxonomy or conceptual
framework
Experience paper Experience papers explain what and how something has been
done in practice. It has to be the personal experience of the
author
Opinion paper These papers express the personal opinion of somebody
whether a certain technique is good or bad, or how things
should have been done. They do not rely on related work and
research methodology
Research method (adopted from
Banaeianjahromi and Smolander, 2016)
Case study/multiple case studies Study of a single phenomenon in one or more than one
organization over a logical timeframe
Literature review Research that analyses and extends existing literature
Discussion paper Research that discusses an argument or a phenomenon
Survey Research that uses predefined and structured questionnaires to
capture data from individuals
Interview Research that consists of one or more conversations where
questions are asked and answers are given
Grounded theory Research that aims towards theory development through the
analysis of data
Focus group Research that encourages respondents to discuss issues that,
individually, they might not normally consider or find difficult
to discuss, such as their personal feelings
Others Research that could not be classified into the before mentioned
concepts
Research focus (adopted from Park et al.,
2016)
Destination Attractions and events; authenticity, community involvement
and participation; development; economic impacts; education
and training; enterprises; facilities; hospitality resources; human
resources; infrastructure; organizations; place or geographic
location; planning; policy and government; product and
production; resource management and environmental impacts;
seasonality; social and cultural impacts; stakeholders;
sustainable tourism development; tourism impacts; tourism
management; transportation (within destination) Table I.
(continued) Classification scheme
JIMA
9,4 Research type (adapted from Wieringa
et al., 2005) Descriptions

Marketing Branding and identity; competitive analysis; customer

relationship management; demand forecasting; distribution
channels; market and marketing research; market segmentation;
762 marketing mix; marketing strategy and plans; partnering and
strategic alliances; performance measurement and evaluation;
promotion and communications; tourism marketing and
destination marketing
Demand Activities and participation; choices and selection; constraints;
customer loyalty; emotions; experiences; images and
perceptions; market characteristics; motivations and needs;
satisfaction levels; tourist behavior
Travel Externalities; transportation modes (origin-destination); travel
flows (origin-destination); travel markets (broad geographic)
Geographical areas China; Australia; USA; UK; Spain; Turkey; Canada; South Korea;
Thailand; India; Greece; South Africa; Indonesia; Japan;
Table I. Singapore; Portugal; Iran; Malaysia; Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Israel, etc.

per cent) had focused on travel. Finally, 16 articles (13.11 per cent) discussed about
marketing and 14 articles (11.48 per cent) focused on geographical areas. The following
subsections address research questions RQ4, where each of research focus is discussed and
an overview of studies is given with respect to their approaches reported.
6.4.1 Destination. Figure 8 depicts the frequency for each sub-category in “destination”
classification. Note that it is possible for a paper to address more than one area in each major
category. For example, Hughes et al. (2013) focused on destination and addressed the three
sub-categories of tourism management, place or geographic location and facilities. This
happens in 27 cases. The top ten most frequent research sub-categories in destination
category were: attractions and events (16 articles), social and cultural impacts (13 articles),
place or geographic location (11 articles), tourism management (9 articles), development
(7 articles), economic impacts (6 articles), policy and government (6 articles), enterprises
(5 articles), planning (5 articles) and authenticity (5 articles).

Figure 6.
Distribution of
articles per research
type
 Spiritual
tourism
research

763

Figure 7.
Percentage of articles
per research focus

6.4.2 Marketing. Figure 9 also illustrates the frequency for each sub-category in
“marketing” classification. The top five most frequent research sub-categories of
“marketing” were: marketing strategy and plans (five articles), promotion and
communications (four articles), market and marketing research (four articles), distribution
channels (two articles) and branding and identity (two articles). The least frequent research
sub-categories are useful in pinpointing the subject areas that were relatively neglected by
scholars from 1990 to 2017. For example, partnering and strategic alliances, marketing mix,
customer relationship management and destination marketing appeared infrequently.
6.4.3 Demand. Figure 10 highlights the most and least frequent research sub-categories
identified in “demand” category. The top most frequent research sub-categories of “demand”
were: motivations and needs (14 articles), tourist behavior (8 articles), market characteristics
(5 articles), experiences (5 articles), emotions (4 articles) and images and perceptions
(4 articles). It should be noted that the sub-category of market characteristics includes the

Figure 8.
Distribution of
research focus on the
sub-category of
destination in
collected primary
studies
JIMA
9,4

764
Figure 9.
Distribution of
research focus on the
sub-category of
marketing in
collected primary
studies

demographic, socioeconomic, psychographic and geographic origins of tourists. In addition,

the least frequent sub-categories were activities and participation, choices and selection,
customer loyalty, satisfaction level and constraints.
6.4.4 Travel. Within the “travel” category, the two most frequent sub-categories were
travel markets (three articles) and travel flows (one article). However, the rest of sub-
categories, namely, transportation modes and externalities, have not been addressed in the
collected studies on RST (Figure 11).
6.4.5 Geographic areas. Geographical areas included country names and each country’s
cities, states (provinces) and islands, if applicable. The most frequent geographical areas in
the literature were China (three articles), Israel (two articles), Iran (two articles) and India
(two articles). Interestingly, there is a geographical imbalance of research in the field. For
example, while increasing numbers of tourists visit Southeast and South Asia, the research
about RST in these regions are scarce. Tourism sector in Southeast and South Asia is an

Figure 10.
Distribution of
research focus on the
sub-category of
demand in collected
primary studies
emerging economic sector and can contribute significantly to national and regional Spiritual
development. Then, the studies on tourism in these regions should focus on the cultural, tourism
economic and environmental impacts and the public policy on tourism management. Hence,
research
the researchers have a plethora of issues such as the diverse and mixed impacts that they
can investigate (Figure 12).
6.4.6 Research focus and religion. Derived from a variety of research focus and religions,
the bubble chart in Figure 13 discloses many combinations. Nevertheless, some 765
combinations show a concentration of articles. In the context of destination focus, Hinduism
(12 articles), Islam (13 articles) and Christianity (11 articles) were the most common religions
that have been investigated in the RST research. Further, Islam (four articles), Christianity
(four articles) and Buddhism (three articles) were found to be the three most common
religions in the area of marketing. As for demand focus, Christianity (nine articles), Islam
(six articles) and Buddhism (four articles) have been shown as the major investigated
religions in the reviewed papers. It should be noted that travel area has been investigated in
all religious tourism research with similar and low frequency. Additionally, for geographical
area context, Christianity (seven articles) and Islam (five articles) are the dominant
examined religions. Finally, a large number of articles (42 articles) examining destination,
demand, marketing, travel and geographical area in RST context has not examined a
particular religion.

6.5 Research methods (RQ5)

The analysis regarding RQ5 revealed a wide set of applied research methods (Figure 14).
The research method classification is based on Banaeianjahromi and Smolander’s (2016)
framework. While analyzing the selected 108 articles, additional research methods, such as

Figure 11.
Distribution of
research focus on the
sub-category of travel
in collected primary
studies

Figure 12.
Distribution of
research focus on the
sub-category of
geographical areas in
collected primary
studies
JIMA
9,4

766

Figure 13.
Distribution of
articles per research
focus combined with
religion

interview, focus group and others (for methods out of the framework) are added. We
analyzed the used research methods for each paper. For example, Kreiner et al. (2015)
applied four research methods in their study. They conducted a case study on Baha’i World
Center in Haifa, Israel, in an attempt to explore the relationship between religion, tourism
and conflict. They also reviewed archival material (19 meeting protocols and documents)
surrounding the conflicts, as well as articles (15) published in the local and national press.
They interviewed 29 stakeholders (the Baha'i, the local population, decision-makers at the

Figure 14.
Distribution of
research methods
regional and national level and decision-makers at the local level) between 2010 and 2012. Spiritual
Finally, they also analyzed empirical data using grounded theory. In this situation, we tourism
considered all these four applied research methods in our analysis for this paper. Figure 10
presents mappings the category of research method. Survey with 26.92 per cent (35 papers)
research
is recognized as the predominant research method. After that interview with 18.46 per cent
(24 articles) and discussion paper with 18.46 per cent (24 articles) ranked in the second and
third place of the most frequent research methods. Further, case study or multiple case
studies with 15.38 per cent (20 articles) and literature review with 10 per cent (13 articles) are
767
the fifth and sixth most used research methods, respectively. The next frequent research
method was other methods such as ethnography (Banica, 2016; Zwissler, 2011) and content
analysis (Son and Xu, 2013; Hashim et al., 2007) with 6.20 per cent (eight articles). Focus
group with 3.08 per cent (four articles) and grounded theory with 1.54 per cent (two articles)
are the least applied research methods.
To analyze the distribution of articles from another dimension, Figure 15 presents the
number of articles per research method combined with research type. Survey (ten articles),
interview (nine articles) and case study (eight articles) are the predominant research methods
for the solution proposal articles. For instance, Indrawati et al. (2016) focused on educational-
religious tourism using a case study of Majasto Ceremony. They used semi-structured
interviews to provide some policy recommendations for expanding the attraction including:
 history education;
 education for shrine or ceremony pilgrimage, both based on the Islamic teaching
and the Islamic Javanese tradition;
 Javanese and Islamic architecture education; and
 green architecture education.

Figure 15.
Distribution of
articles per research
method combined
with research type
JIMA However, discussion paper, grounded theory and literature review have not been used in the
9,4 research type of solution proposal.
As for the evaluation research, survey (24 articles), interview (14 articles) and case study
(10 articles) are the dominant research methods.
Some articles described mixed methods approaches. For instance, Uriely et al. (2003)
examined the impact of religious affiliation on residents’ attitudes toward tourism
768 development. The attitudes of Christian and Muslim Arab residents of Nazareth and the
Galilee area were investigated regarding the economic role of tourism in Nazareth by using
survey and case study methods. Discussion paper (16 articles) and literature review
(4 articles) are the two most frequent applied research methods for the papers considered as
opinion paper. Literature review (five articles) and discussion paper (six articles) are the
most research methods applied in philosophical papers and experience papers, respectively.
Another way of analysis regarding RQ5 is to disclose the distribution of research focus
over the research method and research type (Figure 16). The bubble chart diagram in
Figure 12 displays the mapping of the 122 studies based on the research focus. This
mapping chart illustrates the concentration of the papers. From this bubble chart we can
conclude the following:
 Survey, discussion paper, interview and case study/multiple case studies are the
four most frequent research methods in the papers focused on destination; and
evaluation research and solution proposal are the two most frequent research types
for the papers focused on destination.
 Survey, literature review and interview are the most applied research methods for
the papers in the marketing category, and solution proposal is the dominant paper
type.
 Survey, interview and case study/multiple case studies are the most applied
research methods for the papers in the demand category. and evaluation research is
the dominant paper type.
 Discussion paper and interview are the most used research methods for the papers
in the geographical areas category, and opinion paper is the dominant paper type.

Figure 16.
Distribution of
articles per research
method and research
type combined with
research focus
  Discussion paper is the most research method used in the travel category. Spiritual
However, there is not a dominant paper type in travel category. Surprisingly, there
tourism
are only two grounded theory researches conducted among the papers in all research research
focuses.

6.6 Research trends (RQ6) 769

To answer RQ6, the distribution of 122 analyzed articles is illustrated in Figure 17 in periods
of three years from 1990 to the beginning of 2017. Figure 17 shows the grand total number of
studies published according to the chronological order of publication years. Starting from
2002, a significant rise is noticeable, reaching in peak with 43 articles by the first of 2017.
This result indicates that the topic to analyze the RST has become more important for
scholars during the past two decades for several reasons. First, religious tourism is a fast-
growing sector within the tourism industry. In addition to being places of worship for people
of a specific faith, many sacred spaces are viewed by the larger traveling public as
important destinations and attractions in their own right because of their historical or
esthetic value. Second, many religious sites throughout the world have been listed by
UNESCO as important World Heritage Sites with universal appeal and value, adding yet an
additional layer of allure for potential visitors. Third, most religions of the world today

Figure 17.
“Research type” over
time
JIMA endorse or accept some form of religious travel, and this form of tourism is growing in
9,4 importance in regions that possess sites that are venerated as sacred by the world’s faithful.
Sites visited by pilgrims and/or religious tourists include churches, mosques, temples,
gravesites, sacred groves and grottos, rivers, mountains, sites of miracles and locations of
divine visitations. These places are deemed sacred and are venerated by the faithful and
sanctified by faith organizations, so they have become important destinations for devotees.
770 As shown in the stacked column chart, from 2003 to beginning of 2017, the number of
“evaluation research” papers has increased significantly, which means that during these
years, RST research has strongly investigated the existing problems in the industry,
implemented solutions in practice or evaluated the consequences of the implementation in
terms of benefits and drawbacks. It is evident that between 2002 and 2017, the second
dominant research type is “solution proposal,” which means that during these years,
researchers have tried to propose solutions for various problems and the related benefits in
the context of RST. For example, El Hanandeh (2013) argued that pilgrimage to Mecca, Hajj,
is one of the oldest and largest religious tourism events in the world, drawing 2.79 million
participants from all around the world in 2011; this can be a large contributor of greenhouse
gas emissions. He noted that managing an event at such scale poses many challenges on
multiple fronts, not the least are the environmental management of its impacts. Therefore,
quantifying the environmental impacts of the event was considered as a key element in
setting up proper and effective environmental management programs. He concluded that on
average, each pilgrim contributes 60.5 kg CO2-eq per day as a result of transportation, hotel
stay, meals and waste management. The cultural exchange and dialogue evoked by RST are
the very cornerstones of mutual understanding, tolerance and respect, the fundamental
building blocks of sustainability. Above all, attaining sustainability requires that the local
traditions, religious and spiritual values and rich cultural heritage of visited destinations are
understood and respected, and that host communities can directly reap the benefits of RST
development. Furthermore, the number of “opinion paper” research has also noticeably
growth, which means that the authors have provided their own opinion on the RST.
However, these works do not rely on related works and a certain research methodology.
Finally, from the stacked bar chart, we can observe the least used research types are
“philosophical papers” and “experience papers.”
From the stacked bar chart in Figure 18, we see a peak of contributions reached in 2014-
2017. We noticed that both the “destination” (46.72 per cent) and “demand” (22.95 per cent)
are the most research focus addressed by the previous works on RST. Henderson (2011)
tried to improve understanding of the uniqueness and significance of the Hajj phenomenon
by Muslims in Saudi Arabia and illuminate the challenges of managing large-scale religious
tourism events in the changing world of the twenty-first century. Weidenfeld and Ron (2008)
addressed particular needs of Muslim tourists and concluded the following:
 Providing accommodation close to Muslim sites is required, to absorb an increasing
number of Muslim pilgrims and tourists, particularly in Jerusalem, the most popular
destination in the Holy Land.
 Placing “Mecca stickers” in every room when occupied by Muslim pilgrims is
suggested. Mecca stickers are stickers with ornamented arrows pointing towards
Mecca, and hence, the Muslim visitor knows the direction of the prayer. Such
stickers or tiles are common in hotels in Muslim countries, but in a place like Israel,
they might also have the opposite effect among certain non-Muslim visitors, and
therefore the recommendation was to use stickers (temporary signs) rather than tiles
(permanent signs).
 Spiritual
tourism
research

771

Figure 18.
“Research focus” over
time

 Placing a copy of the Koran in every room is proposed. Once again, the Koran can
serve as a temporary sign that can be replaced with another temporary sign, e.g. the
Bible.
 Providing food which complies with Muslim dietary laws is highly suggested.

The stacked bar chart also shows a growing interest in “marketing”, “geographical areas”
and “travel” fields in the RST research over the recent years. These research focuses have
recently received more attention, but their attention rate is lower than the two previous
mentioned fields.

7. Discussion
The conducted study is the first systematic mapping study in the field of RST research. Our
preliminary aim was to draw a picture of the current status of the research in the field of
RST; to help researchers and practitioners identify what has been done so far and to
understand the features of RST that are indicated in tourism literature. The research
questions aimed at generating a comprehensive overview about research topics, research
trends, research methods and, especially, about the investigated religions in the tourism
research. The answers to these questions deliver potential benefits for both research and
practitioner communities. Researchers may use the study results as state-of-the-art research
in RST research and as a reference and starting point for their own research projects.
Simultaneously, the study may be a good starting point for practitioners, too. They can
identify appropriate research on RST for their domain to deliver practically useful results.
JIMA To summarize the study findings, interest in RST has shown growing importance during
9,4 the past two decades, which is shown by the rising amount of publications in this field, as
illustrated by the trend line in Figures 17 and 18. It was found that “destination” and
“demand” are the most research focus in previous works. However, “marketing,”
“geographical areas” and “travel” fields have recently received lower attention than the two
previous one. It implied that academics should pay more attention to these fields in an
772 attempt to fill the existing research gap. This indicates that the research on the three fields is
still in its infancy, compared to the long-standing history of the first two fields, and
is gaining interest in the research community. The yearly distribution of publications attests
the novelty of the RST phenomenon. Further, considering the publication trend researchers
can realize the tendency in publication of “evaluation research”, “solution proposal” and
“opinion papers” in the past decade. To mitigate the lack of resources, RST research might
focus on “philosophical papers” and “experience research,” which provide access to a large
pool of contributions in the field. It can be inferred that RST is the area that can have various
attractions for academics and practitioners in the near future. The results of systematic
mapping study enabled us to identify what research topics had pursued in the available
literature. The primary research focuses of the identified studies in this field have been on
destination (41.67 per cent), demand (25 per cent) and marketing (14.81 per cent). Observing
the three focus facets, it is easy to see that there are significant research imbalances in their
subcategories. For example, looking at the destination facet in Figure 7, we can observe that
only 18 studies (17.82 per cent) are entirely dedicated to subcategories, including
transportation, tourism impacts, community involvement and participation, product and
production, seasonality, stakeholders, sustainable tourism development, education and
training, hospitality resources, resource management and environmental impacts, facilities
and infrastructure. Looking at the studies which focus on demand facet (Figure 6), majority
(40 out of 49 studies) has a full pertinence with the subcategories of tourist behavior, images
and perceptions, experiences, market characteristics, emotions and motivations and needs,
but minority (9 of 49 studies) has investigated the subcategories containing activities and
participation, choices and selection, customer loyalty, satisfaction levels and constraints. In
addition, with regard to marketing facet, it was observed that the three subcategories,
namely, marketing strategy and plans, promotion and communications and market and
marketing research, are the major subcategories (13 out of 21 studies), and the reminder of
subcategories, namely, destination marketing, customer relationship management,
marketing mix, partnering and strategic alliances, branding and identity and distribution
channels, devoted 38.1 per cent of related studies to marketing field (8 out of 21 studies).
Therefore, these subcategories are critical issues in a religious destination that should be
addressed more and more by the researchers. Figure 7 also illustrates a major weakness of
the state-of-art in travel facet. Only four studies (3.28 per cent of the total) have addressed its
two subcategories, namely, travel flows and travel markets. The two another subcategories
of externalities and transportation modes have not been investigated in the prior research on
RST. In fact, travel facet has received the lowest score rather than other facets of RST
research. Finally, the most frequent reported geographical areas in RST concern West and
Southwest Asia (i.e. Iran, India, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iraq). Hence, there is a geographical
imbalance of research in the field. For example, while increasing numbers of tourists visit
Southeast and South Asia, the research about RST in these regions is scarce. This represents
a major threat to the transferability of the results to the religious and spiritual industry. One
of the most important factors contributing to academic results being applied in the industry
is the provision of strong scientific evidence in various geographical areas. As an important
implication, the researchers have a plethora of issues in the five major categories, namely,
destination, demand, marketing, travel and geographical areas, that they can investigate to Spiritual
fill the existing deep research gap in the RST literature. The mapping study also shows that tourism
around one-fourth of the selected studies (26 out of 99 articles) have been published in four
journals of International Journal of Tourism Research (9.09 per cent), Tourism Recreation
research
Research (6.06 per cent), Journal of Heritage Tourism (6.06 per cent) and Tourism Review
(5.05 per cent), as provided in Table III. These journals have provided academics with more
special issues and published works related to RST. It means that academics can refer to
these journals and use their publications to improve their knowledge about the field.
773
Furthermore, the classification scheme, which was applied in this study, paved the way for
us to infer that the majority of studies are evaluation research (39.62 per cent), solution
proposals (24.53 per cent) and opinion papers (19.81 per cent), with the primary focus on
destination, marketing and demand. Thus, this study indicated other gaps in this area of
research. For instance, the need for having more research using empirical research methods
with the focus on travel and geographical areas has been realized. Moreover, the majority of
studies (62 out of 122) focused on Christianity (22.1 per cent) and Islam (20.7 per cent).
Although the majority within these articles deal with these two religions, other religions are
still important to be addressed. Hence, the authors should pay attention to other religions,
particularly Hinduism, Buddhism and Judaism. It should be mentioned that the philosophies
of the four major religions (in terms of followers), Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and
Christianity, are not conflicting if we examine their spiritual aspects and bases. All these
religions aspire to be world religions, but are hindered by barriers such as ritualism,
ethnicity and nationalism. Religion has an enormous influence in the daily life of Asians,
and the four major religions, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Christianity, play a major role
in Southeast Asian society (the leading destinations of Southeast Asia are Indonesia,
Malaysia and Thailand). Invariably, religious tourism in the region is closely linked to these
faiths. However, religious tourism has not been fully exploited due to the high sensitivity of
the subject, the lack of scientific data and its overwhelming domestic nature. Survey (27.13
per cent), discussion paper (17.83 per cent), interview (18.60 per cent) and case study (51.50
per cent) are predominantly used research methods in this area. However, grounded theory
and focus group were used less often. Thus, it can be interpreted that qualitative methods
were rarely used in the RST literature. As another methodological implication, there is a
significant research gap in using qualitative or mixed (qualitative and quantitative) methods
for conducting research on the RST setting in an attempt to develop, apply or validate
conceptual models, take out assessments, etc.

8. Threats to validity
The results of this systematic mapping study may be affected by the coverage of the study
search, bias on study selection, imbalance of study distribution, inaccuracy of data
extraction and bias on data synthesis, which are discussed in this section.

8.1 Incompleteness of study search

There may be relevant studies that were not retrieved, which may affect the completeness of
the study search. To mitigate this threat, first, we searched the most popular electronic
databases in which a large number of journals, conference proceedings and book chapters in
the tourism field are indexed. The trial search was performed on seven databases, and the
final full search was performed on five databases. Second, we used the “snowballing”
technique (Wohlin, 2014) to include the potential studies in the references of the selected
studies retrieved from the database searches.
JIMA 8.2 Bias on study selection
9,4 There may be bias on behalf of the researchers regarding the study selection. A first step
toward reducing the bias is to set clear inclusion and exclusion criteria for study selection.
However, different researchers are prone to have different under standings on these criteria;
hence, the selection results of different researchers tend to be varied. To mitigate the bias on
study selection results, a pilot selection was performed to ensure that the researchers
774 reached a consensus on the understanding of the selection criteria. Also, the study protocol
was discussed among the researchers to ensure a common understanding on study
selection. Moreover, in the second and final round of study selections, three researchers
conducted the selection process in parallel and independently and then compared and
discussed their selection results to mitigate any potential personal bias in study selection.
However, as we included only peer-reviewed studies in this mapping study, it is possible
that we missed some non-peer-reviewed works on RST.

8.3 Imbalance of study distribution over publication venues

As we can see in Table II and Plate 3 (distribution of selected studies over publication
sources), around 9.3 per cent (10 out of 108) come from the conference proceedings and book
chapters. To some extent, these studies may carry the biases of the workshop organizers,
committee members and editors. However, we did not deal with such kind of biases, because
there is no effective way to identify exactly what such biases are and thus they cannot be
mitigated or eliminated. In addition, conferences by definition allow immature results to be
published, which may skew the evidence level of the selected primary studies.

8.4 Inaccuracy of data extraction

Bias on data extraction may result in inaccuracy of the extracted data items, which may
affect the classification and analysis results of the selected studies. This bias was reduced
by three measures. First, the data items to be extracted in this mapping study were
discussed among the researchers, and agreement on the meaning of each data item was
achieved. For instance, in the study protocol, we explicitly defined what RST-related notions

Journal title Counts (%) of 99

International Journal of Tourism Research 9 9.09

Tourism Recreation Research 6 6.06
Journal of Heritage Tourism 6 6.06
Tourism Review 5 5.05
International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research 4 4.04
Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes 4 4.04
Tourist Studies 4 4.04
Annals of tourism research 4 4.04
Tourism Management Perspectives 4 4.04
Tourism Management 3 3.03
Journal of Islamic Marketing 3 3.03
Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing 2 2.02
Tourism Geographies 2 2.02
Table II. Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research 2 2.02
Top journals Current Issues in Tourism 2 2.02
considering citation Tourism Economics 2 2.02
counts Religion Compass 2 2.02
and activities are, and disagreements were resolved among the researchers. Second, a pilot Spiritual
data extraction was performed among three researchers, and disagreements on the results of tourism
the pilot data extraction were discussed to reach a consensus. This measure further
improved the accuracy of the extracted data items. Third, the data extraction results were
research
checked by three researchers, and again, disagreements were discussed and resolved.

8.5 Bias on data synthesis

Not all papers sufficiently and clearly describe the details of information that is to be
775
extracted as data items. Therefore, we had to infer certain pieces of information of data
items during data synthesis. To minimize the possibility of the inaccuracy of such
inferences, we discussed the extracted data items after each researcher checked their context
in the studies from which they were extracted to clarify the potential ambiguities.

9. Conclusion and future work

The presented mapping study analyzed the field of RST research. Out of 181 initially found
articles, 122, reaching from 1990 to 2017, were finally included in the study. The developed
classification scheme allowed a systematic and reproducible mapping of the articles. It is the
first comprehensive representation of the RST research field and builds a reference basis for
further research activities. The study revealed an ongoing and rising interest in the religious
tourism topic. The study analyzed the focus of the included articles, research type and
methods; it also took a closer look on religious tourism literature development and examined
current research trends. This mapping study not only offers useful information for
researchers who are interested in the existing works regarding RST but also identifies gaps
in this research topic. Main implications for future research include a need for more work
about inter-organizational relationships in the destinations, business networks and the
dynamics of destination for the religious tourism. Understanding the strategic relationships
among tourism businesses in a religious destination is an inevitable issue for success in its
tourism industry. In general, religious tourism involves the development of informal and
formal partnerships, collaboration and networks. Hence, future research should be directed
to reviewing-related research and identifying such inter-organizational networks in the RST
setting. Further, the literature on destination evolution in RST setting has given little
attention to how structure and businesses interact dynamically. Then, future works can
undertake a comprehensive review and analysis of the literature relevant to destination
transformation. Transformation theory describes the dynamic interactions between
businesses and structure. Transformation theory can be studied through qualitative case
studies focusing on social dynamics, single tourism products and multiple tourism products
at the regional and country destination level for the RST context. The use of transformation
theory would enable the proposition of research insights that can inform future research.
Future research may also complete the literature basis. The classification scheme can easily
be applied to new publications, other publication types or specialized topics in RST research
that were excluded in this study. Therefore, an ongoing update of the mapping is
unproblematic. Although the investigated contributions were published by the journals
under the five famous publishers of ScienceDirect, Emerald, Sage, Wiley and Routledge,
there are some tourism and hospitality management journals, such as International Journal
of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage, that have not been considered because of our research
scope in databases. As future work, we propose to carry out another review of RST research
using meta-analysis of published paper in these journals. Furthermore, as it is typically the
case in systematic mapping studies, we might have missed some pieces of work in the
literature, and we do not claim that we have found all the published works in all various
JIMA fields of RST. However, we say that the results drawn upon our collected sample of papers
9,4 in the literature are generalizable and conclusive.

References
Abbate, C.S. and Di Nuovo, S. (2013), “Motivation and personality traits for choosing religious tourism,
a research on the case of Medjugorje”, Current Issues in Tourism, Vol. 16 No. 5, pp. 501-506.
776 Aggarwal, A.K., Guglani, M. and Goel, R.K. (2008), “Spiritual and yoga tourism: a case study on
experience of foreign tourists visiting Rishikesh, India”, Health, Spiritual and Heritage Tourism.
Agrawal, M., Choudhary, H. and Tripathi, G. (2010), “Enhancing Buddhist tourism in India: an
exploratory study”, Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes, Vol. 2 No. 5, pp. 477-493.
Aukland, K. (2016), “Retailing religion: guided tours and guide narratives in Hindu pilgrimage”, Tourist
Studies, Vol. 16 No. 3, pp. 237-257.
Baedcharoen, I. (2000), Impacts of Religious Tourism in Thailand, unpublished Master thesis,
Department of Tourism, University of Otago, Dunedin.
Banaeianjahromi, N. and Smolander, K. (2016), “What do we know about the role of enterprise
architecture in enterprise integration? A systematic mapping study”, Journal of Enterprise
Information Management, Vol. 29 No. 1, pp. 140-164.
Bandyopadhyay, R. (2016), “Who owns the past? The politics of religious heritage in contemporary
India”, Tourism Review, Vol. 71 No. 3, pp. 234-243.
Banica, M. (2016), “Coach pilgrimage: religion, pilgrimage, and tourism in contemporary Romania”,
Tourist Studies, Vol. 16 No. 1, pp. 74-87.
Batory, D. (2005), “Feature models, grammars, and propositional formulas”, Software Product Lines,
pp. 7-20
Bhardwaj, S.M. (1998), “Non-Hajj pilgrimage in Islam: a neglected dimension of religious circulation”,
Journal of Cultural Geography, Vol. 17 No. 2, pp. 69-87.
Blomfield, B. (2009), “Markers of the heart: finding spirituality in a bus marked ‘tourist’”, Journal of
Management, Spirituality and Religion, Vol. 6 No. 2, pp. 91-105.
Bond, N. and Falk, J. (2013), “Tourism and identity-related motivations: why am I here (and not there)?”,
International Journal of Tourism Research, Vol. 15 No. 5, pp. 430-442.
Bond, N., Packer, J. and Ballantyne, R. (2015), “Exploring visitor experiences, activities and benefits at
three religious tourism sites”, International Journal of Tourism Research, Vol. 17 No. 5,
pp. 471-481.
Bone, K. (2013), “Spiritual retreat tourism in New Zealand”, Tourism Recreation Research, Vol. 38 No. 3,
pp. 295-309.
Bowie, F. (2003), “An anthropology of religious experience: spirituality, gender and cultural
transmission in the Focolare movement”, Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 68 No. 1,
pp. 49-72.
Bremer, T.S. (2006), “Sacred spaces and tourist places”, in Timothy, D. and Olsen, D.H. (Eds), Tourism,
Religion and Spiritual Journeys, Routledge, London, pp. 25-35.
Bremer, T.S. (2014), “A touristic angle of vision: tourist studies as a methodological approach for the
study of religions”, Religion Compass, Vol. 8 No. 12, pp. 371-379.
Brin, E. (2006), “Politically-oriented tourism in Jerusalem”, Tourist Studies, Vol. 6 No. 3, pp. 215-243.
Budgen, D., Turner, M., Brereton, P. and Kitchenham, B. (2008), “Using mapping studies in software
engineering”, Proceedings of PPIG 2008, Lancaster University, pp. 195-204.
Cahaner, L. and Mansfeld, Y. (2012), “A voyage from religiousness to secularity and back: a glimpse
into ‘Haredi’ tourists”, Journal of Heritage Tourism, Vol. 7 No. 4, pp. 301-321.
Carboni, M., Perelli, A. and Sistu, G. (2014), “Is Islamic tourism a viable option for Tunisian tourism? Spiritual
Insights from Djerba”, Tourism Management Perspectives, Vol. 11, pp. 1-9.
tourism
Chadha, A.H. and Onkar, P. (2016), “Changing cities in the perspective of religious tourism- a case of
Allahabad”, Procedia Technology, Vol. 24, pp. 1706-1713.
research
Chaline, E. (2002), Zen and the Art of Travel, MQ Publications, London.
Chand, M. (2010), “A cross-national study of motivational determinants among non-resident Indian
visitors to religious centers in India”, International Journal of Hospitality and Tourism 777
Administration, Vol. 11 No. 1, pp. 22-38.
Cheal, F. and Griffin, T. (2013), “Pilgrims and patriots: Australian tourist experiences at Gallipoli”,
International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, Vol. 7 No. 3, pp. 227-241.
Cohen, E. (1992), “Pilgrimage centers: concentric and excentric”, Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 19
No. 1, pp. 33-50.
Cohen, E.H. (2003), “Tourism and religion: a case study-visiting students in Israeli universities”, Journal
of Travel Research, Vol. 42 No. 1, pp. 36-47.
Cohen, E.H. (2006), “Religious tourism as an educational experience”, in Timothy, D. and Olsen, D.H.
(Eds), Tourism, Religion and Spiritual Journeys, Routledge, London, pp. 78-93.
Collins-Kreiner, N. (2010), “Geographers and pilgrimages: changing concepts in pilgrimage tourism
research”, Tijdschrift Voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Vol. 101 No. 4, pp. 437-448.
Collins-Kreiner, N. (2016), “The lifecycle of concepts: the case of ‘pilgrimage tourism’”, Tourism
Geographies, Vol. 18 No. 3, pp. 322-334.
Collins-Kreiner, N. and Sagi, K.T. (2011), “Tourism to India as popular culture: a cultural, educational
and religious experience at Dharamsala”, South Asian Popular Culture, Vol. 9 No. 2, pp. 131-145.
Collins-Kreiner, N., Shmueli, D.F. and Gal, M.B. (2013), “Spatial transgression of new religious sites in
Israel”, Applied Geography, Vol. 40, pp. 103-114.
Cristea, A.A., Apostola, M.S. and Dosescua, T. (2015), “The role of media in promoting religious tourism
in Romania”, Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, Vol. 188, pp. 302-306.
Dieste, O. and Padua, A.G. (2007), “Developing search strategies for detecting relevant experiments for
systematic reviews”, Proceedings of the First International Symposium on Empirical Software
Engineering and Measurement (ESEM ’07), IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC,
pp. 215-224.
Digance, J. (2006), “Religious and secular pilgrimage: journeys redolent with meaning”, in Timothy, D.
and Olsen, D.H. (Eds) Tourism, Religion and Spiritual Journeys, Routledge, London, pp. 36-48.
Doohan, L. (1990), Leisure: A Spiritual Need, Ave Maria Press, Notre Dame, IN.
Drule, A.M., Chis, A., Bacila, M.F. and Ciornea, R. (2012), “A new perspective of non-religious
motivations of visitors to sacred sites: evidence from Romania”, Procedia-Social and Behavioral
Sciences, Vol. 62, pp. 431-435.
Ebadi, M. (2014), “Typologies of the visitors at Khaled Nabi shrine, Iran: tourists or pilgrims?”,
International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, Vol. 8 No. 3, pp. 310-321.
Eid, R. and El-Gohary, H. (2015), “Muslim tourist perceived value in the hospitality and tourism
industry”, Journal of Travel Research, Vol. 54 No. 6, pp. 774-787.
El Hanandeh, A. (2013), “Quantifying the carbon footprint of religious tourism: the case of Hajj”,
Journal of Cleaner Production, Vol. 52, pp. 53-60.
Fonneland, T.A. (2013), “Sami tourism and the signposting of spirituality, the case of Sami tour: a
spiritual entrepreneur in the contemporary experience economy”, Acta Borealia, Vol. 30 No. 2,
pp. 190-208.
Fourie, J., Rossello, J. and Santana-Gallego, M. (2015), “Religion, religious diversity and tourism”,
KYKLOS, Vol. 68 No. 1, pp. 51-64.
JIMA Gallarza, M.G., Arteaga, F., Floristán, E. and Gil, I. (2009), “Consumer behavior in a religious event
experience: an empirical assessment of value dimensionality among volunteers”, International
9,4 Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, Vol. 3 No. 2, pp. 165-180.
Grimshaw, M. (2013), “Sheilas on the move? Religion, spirituality, and tourism”, Journal of Religious
History, Vol. 37 No. 4, pp. 541-552.
Guo, C. (2006), “Tourism and the spiritual philosophies of the ‘orient’”, in Timothy, D. and Olsen, D.H.
778 (Eds), Tourism, Religion and Spiritual Journeys, Routledge, London, pp. 121-138.
Gupta, K. and Gulla, A. (2010), “Internet deployment in the spiritual tourism industry: the case of
Vaishno Devi shrine”, Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes, Vol. 2 No. 5, pp. 507-519.
Gupta, V. (1999), “Sustainable tourism: learning from Indian religious traditions”, International Journal
of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 11 Nos 2/3, pp. 91-95.
Hall, C.M. (2006a), “Travel and journeying on the sea of faith: perspectives from religious humanism”,
in Timothy, D. and Olsen, D.H. (Eds), Tourism, Religion and Spiritual Journeys, Routledge,
London, pp. 64-77.
Hall, C.M. (2006b), “Buddhism, tourism and the Middle way”, in Timothy, D. and Olsen, D.H. (Eds),
Tourism, Religion and Spiritual Journeys, Routledge, London, pp. 172-185.
Haq, F. and Wong, H.Y. (2010), “Is spiritual tourism a new strategy for marketing Islam?”, Journal of
Islamic Marketing, Vol. 1 No. 2, pp. 136-148.
Hashim, N.H., Murphy, J. and Hashim, N.M. (2007), “Islam and online imagery on Malaysian tourist
destination websites”, Journal of Computer–Mediated Communication, Vol. 12 No. 3,
pp. 1082-1102.
Heidari, A., Yazdani, H.R. and Jalilvand, M.R. (2016), “A typology of strategic relationships in a
religious tourism business network”, 5th International Conference of Strategic Management,
Faculty of Management, University of Tehran.
Heidari, A., Yazdani, H.R., Saghafi, F. and Jalilvand, M.R. (2017), “Developing strategic relationships for
religious tourism businesses: a systematic literature review”, EuroMed Journal of Management,
Vol. 2 No. 1, pp. 77-98.
Henderson, J.C. (2011), “Religious tourism and its management: the hajj in Saudi Arabia”, International
Journal of Tourism Research, Vol. 13 No. 6, pp. 541-552.
Hernandez-Ramdwar, C. (2013), “African traditional religions in the Caribbean and Brazil: models of
religious tourism and impacts of commodification”, Journal of Heritage Tourism, Vol. 8 No. 1,
pp. 81-88.
Higgins, J., Green, S. and Collaboration, C. (2008), Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of
Interventions, Wiley Online Library, Vol. 5.
Hughes, K., Bond, N. and Ballantyne, R. (2013), “Designing and managing interpretive experiences at
religious sites: visitors’ perceptions of Canterbury Cathedral”, Tourism Management, Vol. 36,
pp. 210-220.
Hung, K., Yang, X., Wassler, P., Wang, D., Lin, P. and Liu, Z. (2016), “Contesting the commercialization
and sanctity of religious tourism in the shaolin monastery, China”, International Journal of
Tourism Research, doi: 10.1002/jtr.2093.
Indrawati, A., Soetomo, S., Setioko, B., Murtini, T.W. and Nurhasan, A. (2016), “Edu-religious tourism
based on Islamic architecture approach, a preliminary research in Majatso Cemetery-Sukoharjo
regency Central java”, Procedia–Social and Behavioral Sciences, Vol. 227, pp. 656-663.
Isnart, C. (2014), “Changing the face of Catholicism in a tourist context: heritage care, ritual dynamics,
and the rhetoric of transformation of a religious minority in Greece”, Journal of Tourism and
Cultural Change, Vol. 12 No. 2, pp. 133-149.
Jackson, R.H. and Davis, J.A. (1997), “Religion and tourism in Western China”, Tourism Recreation
Research, Vol. 22 No. 1, pp. 3-10.
Jackson, R.H. and Hudman, L. (1995), “Pilgrimage tourism and English cathedrals: the role of religion in Spiritual
travel”, The Tourist Review, Vol. 50 No. 4, pp. 40-48.
tourism
Jafari, J. and Scott, N. (2014), “Muslim world and its tourisms”, Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 44,
pp. 1-19.
research
Jauhari, V. (2010), “How can the visitor experience be enhanced for spiritual and cultural tourism in
India?”, Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes, Vol. 2 No. 5, pp. 559-563.
Jauhari, V. and Sanjeev, G.M. (2010), “Managing customer experience for spiritual and cultural tourism: 779
an overview”, Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes, Vol. 2 No. 5, pp. 467-476.
Kaelber, L. (2006), “Paradigms of travel: from medieval pilgrimage to the postmodern virtual tour”, in
Timothy, D. and Olsen, D.H. (Eds), Tourism, Religion and Spiritual Journeys, Routledge, London,
pp. 49-63.
Kang, X. (2009), “Two temples, three religions, and a tourist attraction: contesting sacred space on
china’s ethnic frontier”, Modern China, Vol. 35 No. 3, pp. 227-255.
Kartal, B., Tepeci, M. and Atlı, H. (2015), “Examining the religious tourism potential of Manisa, Turkey
with a marketing perspective”, Tourism Review, Vol. 70 No. 3, pp. 214-231.
Kasim, A. (2011), “Balancing tourism and religious experience: understanding devotees’ perspectives
on Thaipusam in Batu caves, Selangor, Malaysia”, Journal of Hospitality Marketing and
Management, Vol. 20 Nos 3/4, pp. 441-456.
Kaur, G. (2016), “Customer interface in spiritual tourism via ‘synaptic CRM gap’: an integrative
technology-based conceptual model for relationship marketing”, Journal of Relationship
Marketing, Vol. 15 No. 4, pp. 326-343.
Keeling, A. (2000), “Church tourism: providing a ministry of welcome to visitors”, in Ryland, A., (Ed.),
Insights, English Tourism Council, London, pp. A-13.
Khaksari, A., Lee, T.J. and Lee, C.K. (2014), “Religious perceptions and hegemony on tourism
development: the case of the Islamic republic of Iran”, International Journal of Tourism
Research, Vol. 16 No. 1, pp. 97-103.
Khalilur, M., Suhaiza, R. and Ghazali Musa, Z. (2017), “What travel motivational factors influence
Muslim tourists towards MMITD?”, Journal of Islamic Marketing, Vol. 8 No. 1.
Kitchenham, B. and Charters, S. (2007), “Guidelines for performing systematic literature reviews in
software engineering”, Tech. rep. EBSE 2007-001, Keele University and Durham University
Joint Report.
Kitchenham, B.A., Budgen, D. and Pearl Brereton, O. (2011), “Using mapping studies as the basis for
further research: a participant-observer case study”, Information and Software Technology,
Vol. 53 No. 6, pp. 638-651.
Kreiner, N.C., Shmueli, D.F. and Gal, M.B. (2015), “Understanding conflicts at religious-tourism sites:
the Baha'i world center, Israel”, Tourism Management Perspectives, Vol. 16, pp. 228-236.
Kurmanaliyeva, A., Rysbekova, S., Duissenbayeva, A. and Izmailov, I. (2014), “Religious tourism as a
socio-cultural phenomenon of the present the unique sense today is a universal value tomorrow.
this is the way religions are created and values are made”, Procedia–Social and Behavioral
Sciences, Vol. 143, pp. 958-963.
Lee, T.H., Fu, C.J. and Chang, P.S. (2015), “The support of attendees for tourism development: evidence
from religious festivals, Taiwan”, Tourism Geographies, Vol. 17 No. 2, pp. 223-243.
Levi, D. and Kocher, S. (2012), “Perception of sacredness at heritage religious sites”, Environment and
Behavior, Vol. 45 No. 7, pp. 912-930.
Mansfeld, Y. and Mcintosh, A.J. (2009), “Spiritual hosting and tourism: the Host-Guest dimension”,
Tourism Recreation Research, Vol. 34 No. 2, pp. 157-168.
Matheson, C.M., Rimmer, R. and Tinsley, R. (2014), “Spiritual attitudes and visitor motivations at the
Beltane fire festival, Edinburgh”, Tourism Management, Vol. 44, pp. 16-33.
JIMA Metreveli, M. and Timothy, D.T. (2010), “Religious heritage and emerging tourism in the republic of
Georgia”, Journal of Heritage Tourism, Vol. 5 No. 3, pp. 237-244.
9,4
Moal-Ulvoas, G. and Taylor, V.A. (2014), “The spiritual benefits of travel for senior tourists”, Journal of
Consumer Behaviour, Vol. 13 No. 6, pp. 453-462.
Muhammad Haq, M. (2014), “The significance of partnership as a marketing strategy for Islamic
spiritual tourism”, Journal of Islamic Marketing, Vol. 5 No. 2, pp. 258-272.
780 Mujtaba, U.S. (2016), “Ramadan: the month of fasting for Muslims, and tourism studies-mapping the
unexplored connection”, Tourism Management Perspectives, Vol. 19, pp. 170-177.
Muriuki, L.M., Bururia, D. and Mutegi, J. (2016), Determinants of Religious Tourism Branding Tactics in
Kenya: A Cross Sectional Study, Tourism and Hospitality Research, pp. 1-14.
Nolan, M.L. and Nolan, S. (1992), “Religious sites as tourism attractions in Europe”, Annals of Tourism
Research, Vol. 19 No. 1, pp. 68-78.
Norman, A. and Cusack, C.M. (2012), “The religion in Olympic tourism”, Journal of Tourism and
Cultural Change, Vol. 10 No. 2, pp. 124-136.
Nyaupane, G.P., Timothy, D.J. and Poudel, S. (2015), “Understanding tourists in religious destinations: a
social distance perspective”, Tourism Management, Vol. 48, pp. 343-353.
Olsen, D.H. (2006a), “Management issues for religious heritage attractions”, in Timothy, D. and Olsen,
D. H. (Eds), Tourism, Religion and Spiritual Journeys, Routledge, London, pp. 104-118.
Olsen, D.H. (2006b), “Tourism and informal pilgrimage among the latter-day saints”, in Timothy, D.
and Olsen, D.H. (Eds), Tourism, Religion and Spiritual Journeys, Routledge, London, pp. 254-270.
Olsen, D.H. (2012), “Negotiating identity at religious sites: a management perspective”, Journal of
Heritage Tourism, Vol. 7 No. 4, pp. 359-366.
Olsen, D.H. and Timothy, D.J. (2006), “Tourism and religious journeys”, in Timothy, D. and Olsen, D.H.
(Eds), Tourism, Religion and Spiritual Journeys, Routledge, London, pp. 1-22.
Palmer, D.A. (2014), “Transnational Sacralizations: when Daoist monks meet global spiritual tourists”,
Ethnos, Vol. 79 No. 2, pp. 169-192.
Park, J., Wu, B., Morrison, A.M., Shen, Y., Cong, L. and Li, M. (2016), “The tourism system research
categorization framework”, Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research, Vol. 21 No. 9, pp. 968-1000.
Petersen, K., Feldt, R., Mujtaba, S. and Mattsson, M. (2008), “Systematic mapping studies in software
engineering”, Proceedings of 12th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in
Software Engineering (EASE), University of Bari, Vol. 17, p. 1.
Piewdanga, S., Mekkamola, P. and Untachaia, S. (2013), “Measuring spiritual tourism management in
community: a case study of Sri Chom Phu Ongtu temple, Thabo district, Nongkhai province,
Thailand”, Procedia–Social and Behavioral Sciences, Vol. 88, pp. 96-107.
Poria, Y., Butler, R. and Airey, D. (2003), “Tourism, religion and religiosity: a holy mess”, Current Issues
in Tourism, Vol. 6 No. 4, pp. 340-363.
Prandi, R. (2008), “Religions and cultures: religious dynamics in Latin America”, Social Compass,
Vol. 55 No. 3, pp. 264-274.
Prayag, G., Mura, P., Hall, C.M. and Fontaine, J. (2016), Spirituality, drugs, and tourism: tourists’ and
shamans’ experiences of ayahuasca in Iquitos, Tourism Recreation Research, doi: 10.1080/
02508281.2016.1192237.
Raj, R. and Morpeth, N.D. (2007), Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage Festivals Management: An
International Perspective, CABI Publishing, Wallingford, Oxfordshire.
Rinschede, G. (1992), “Forms of tourism”, Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 19 No. 1, pp. 51-67.
Rivera, M.A., Shani, A. and Severt, D. (2009), “Perceptions of service attributes in a religious theme site:
an importance–satisfaction analysis”, Journal of Heritage Tourism, Vol. 4 No. 3, pp. 227-243.
Robledo, M.A. (2015), “Tourism of spiritual growth as a voyage of discovery”, Tourism Research Spiritual
Frontiers: Beyond the Boundaries of Knowledge, Tourism Social Science Series, Vol. 20, pp. 71-86.
tourism
Saayman, a., Saayman, M. and Gyekye, A. (2014), “Perspectives on the regional economic value of a
pilgrimage”, International Journal of Tourism Research, Vol. 16 No. 4, pp. 407-414.
research
Sanchez, V.L., Fernandez, D.M. and Lara, J.S. (2016), “Economic impact of a religious and tourist event:
a holy week celebration”, Tourism Economics, pp. 1-20.
Santos, M.D.G.M.P. (2003), “Religious tourism: contributions towards a clarification of concepts”, in
Fernandes, C., Mcgettigan, F. and Edwards, J. (Eds), Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage-
781
Conference Proceedings of the 1st Expert Meeting of ATLAS-Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage
Research Group, 23-27 April, Tourism Board of Leiria/Fatima, Fatima, pp. 27-42.
Seshadri, K.S. and Ganesh, T. (2011), “Faunal mortality on roads due to religious tourism across time
and space in protected areas: a case study from South India”, Forest Ecology and Management,
Vol. 262 No. 9, pp. 1713-1721.
Shackley, M. (2001), “Sacred world heritage sites: balancing meaning with management”, Tourism
Recreation Research, Vol. 26 No. 1, pp. 5-10.
Shackley, M. (2002), “Space, sanctity and service; the English cathedral as heterotopia”, International
Journal of Tourism Research, Vol. 4 No. 5, pp. 345-352.
Sharpley, R. (2000), “Tourism and sustainable development: exploring the theoretical divide”, Journal of
Sustainable Tourism, Vol. 8 No. 1, pp. 1-19.
Sharpley, R. and Jepson, D. (2011), “Rural tourism: a spiritual experience?”, Annals of Tourism
Research, Vol. 38 No. 1, pp. 52-71.
Shinde, K. (2012), “Policy, planning, and management for religious tourism in Indian pilgrimage sites”,
Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure and Events, Vol. 4 No. 3, pp. 277-301.
Shinde, K.A. (2010), “Entrepreneurship and indigenous entrepreneurs in religious tourism in India”,
International Journal of Tourism Research, Vol. 12, pp. 523-535.
Shinde, K.A. (2011), “What are charitable trusts doing in religious tourism? Insights from an Indian
pilgrimage site”, Tourism Planning and Development, Vol. 8 No. 1, pp. 21-36.
Shinde, K.A. (2015), “Religious tourism and religious tolerance: insights from pilgrimage sites in India”,
Tourism Review, Vol. 70 No. 3, pp. 179-196.
Shinde, K.S. (2016), “Planning for urbanization in religious tourism destinations: insights from Shirdi,
India”, Planning Practice and Research, doi: 10.1080/02697459.2016.1198197.
Simone-Charteris, M.T. and Boyd, S.W. (2011), “The potential for Northern Ireland to promote politico-
religious tourism: an industry perspective”, Journal of Hospitality Marketing and Management,
Vol. 20 Nos 3/4, pp. 457-483.
Singh, S. (2009), “Spirituality and tourism an anthropologist's view”, Tourism Recreation Research,
Vol. 34 No. 2, pp. 143-155.
Smith, A.J., Scherrer, P. and Dowling, R. (2009), “Impacts on aboriginal spirituality and culture from
tourism in the coastal waterways of the Kimberley region, North West Australia”, Journal of
Ecotourism, Vol. 8 No. 2, pp. 82-98.
Smith, M., Macleod, N. and Robertson, M.H. (2010), Key Concepts in Tourist Studies, Sage Publications,
London, pp. 139-144.
Son, A. and Xu, H. (2013), “Religious food as a tourism attraction: the roles of Buddhist temple food in
Western tourist experience”, Journal of Heritage Tourism, Vol. 8 Nos 2/3, pp. 248-258.
Stausberg, M. (2014), Religion and Spirituality in Tourism, Chapter Book in the Wiley Blackwell
Companion to Tourism, in Lew, A.A., Michael Hall, C. and Williams, A.M. (Eds), 1st ed., John
Wiley and Sons.
Štefko, R., Kiráľová, A. and Mudrík, M. (2015), “Strategic marketing communication in pilgrimage
tourism”, Procedia- Social and Behavioral Sciences, Vol. 175, pp. 423-430.
JIMA Subhi, J., Suleiman, H. and Mohamed, B. (2012), “Palestine’s international visitors barriers: case studies
of Bethlehem and Ramallah”, International Journal of Tourism Research, Vol. 14 No. 2,
9,4 pp. 177-191.
Suntikul, W. and Dorji, U. (2016), “Local perspectives on the impact of tourism on religious festivals in
Bhutan”, Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research, Vol. 21 No. 7, pp. 741-762.
Taheri, B. (2016), “Emotional connection, materialism, and religiosity: an Islamic tourism experience”,
Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing, Vol. 33 No. 7, pp. 1011-1027.
782
Tala, L.M. and Padurean, A. (2008), “Dimensions of religious tourism, towards business excellence”,
pp. 242-253.
Terzidou, M., Stylidis, D. and Szivas, E.M. (2008), “Residents' perceptions of religious tourism and its
socio-economic impacts on the Island of Tinos”, Tourism and Hospitality Planning and
Development, Vol. 5 No. 2, pp. 113-129.
Tilson, D.J. (2005), “Religious-Spiritual tourism and promotional campaigning: a Church-State
partnership for St. James and Spain”, Journal of Hospitality and Leisure Marketing, Vol. 12
Nos 1/2, pp. 9-40.
Timothy, D. and Iverson, T. (2006), “Tourism and Islam: considerations of culture and duty”, in
Timothy, D. and Olsen, D.H. (Eds), Tourism, Religion and Spiritual Journeys, Routledge, London,
pp. 186-205.
Timothy, D.J. and Conover, P.J. (2006), “Nature religion, self-spirituality and new age tourism”, in
Timothy, D. and Olsen, D. H. (Eds), Tourism, Religion and Spiritual Journeys, Routledge,
London, pp. 139-155.
Uriely, N., Israeli, A. and Reichel, A. (2003), “Religious identity and residents’ attitudes toward heritage
tourism development: the case of Nazareth”, Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research,
Vol. 27 No. 1, pp. 69-84.
Valenta, M. and Strabac, Z. (2016), “The dramaturgical nexus of ethno-religious, tourist and
transnational frames of pilgrimages in post-conflict societies: the Bosnian and Herzegovinian
experience”, Tourist Studies, Vol. 16 No. 1, pp. 57-73.
Vukonic, B. (2002), “Religion, tourism and economics: a convenient symbiosis”, Tourism Recreation
Research, Vol. 27 No. 2, pp. 59-64.
Vukonic, B. (2006), “Sacred places and tourism in the Roman Catholic tradition”, in Timothy, D.
and Olsen, D.H. (Eds), Tourism, Religion and Spiritual Journeys, Routledge, London, pp. 237-253.
Wang, W., Chen, J.S. and Huang, K. (2016), “Religious tourist motivation in Buddhist Mountain: the
case from China”, Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research, Vol. 21 No. 1, pp. 57-72.
Wang, Z., Ding, P., Scott, N. and Fan, Y. (2015), “Muslim tourism in China”, Tourism in the Muslim
World, Bridging Tourism Theory and Practice, Vol. 2, pp. 107-119.
Weidenfeld, A. (2006), “Religious needs in the hospitality industry”, Tourism and Hospitality Research,
Vol. 6 No. 2, pp. 143-159.
Weidenfeld, A. and Ron, A.S. (2008), “Religious needs in the tourism industry”, Anatolia: An
International Journal of Tourism and Hospitality Research, Vol. 19 No. 2, pp. 357-361.
Wichasin, P. (2009), “Stūpa worship: the early form of tai religious tourism”, Contemporary Buddhism:
An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol. 10 No. 1, pp. 185-191.
Wieringa, R., Maiden, N., Mead, N. and Rolland, C. (2005), “Requirements engineering paper
classification and evaluation criteria: a proposal and a discussion”, Requirements Engineering,
Vol. 11 No. 1, pp. 102-107.
Wohlin, C. (2014), “Guidelines for snowballing in systematic literature studies and are placation in
software engineering”, Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Evaluation and
Assessment in Software Engineering (EASE’14), ACM, London.
Wong, C.U.I., Ryan, C. and McIntosh, A. (2013), “The monasteries of putuoshan, China: sites of secular Spiritual
or religious tourism?”, Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing, Vol. 30 No. 6, pp. 577-594.
tourism
Woodward, S.C. (2003), “Faith and tourism: accommodating visitor and worshipper in the historic city”,
6th US/ICOMOS International Symposium, ‘Managing Conflict and Conservation in Historic research
Cities’, 24-27 April 2003, Annapolis, MD, available at: www.icomos.org/usicomos/Symposium/
SYMP03/Woodward.htm
Woodward, S.C. (2004), “Faith and tourism: planning tourism in relation to places of worship”, Tourism
and Hospitality Planning and Development, Vol. 1 No. 2, pp. 173-186. 783
World Tourism Organization (WTO) (2014), “Tourism can protect and promote religious
heritage”, available at: http://media.unwto.org/press-release/2014-12-10/tourism-can-protect-
and-promotereligiousheritage
Zamani-Farahani, H. and Eid, R. (2016), “Muslim world: a study of tourism and pilgrimage among OIC
member states”, Tourism Management Perspectives, Vol. 19, pp. 144-149.
Zamani-Farahani, H. and Henderson, J.C. (2010), “Islamic tourism and managing tourism development
in Islamic societies: the cases of Iran and Saudi Arabia”, International Journal of Tourism
Research, Vol. 12, pp. 79-89.
Zwissler, L. (2011), “Pagan pilgrimage: new religious movements research on sacred travel within
pagan and new age communities”, Religion Compass, Vol. 5 No. 7, pp. 326-342.

Further reading
Byrkjeland, M. (1995), “Sustainable tourism: problems and possibilities”, Norway, European
Environment Conference Proceedings, September 11-12, Nottingham, pp. 39-44
Finney, R.Z. and Orwig, R.A. (2008), “Strangers in an old land: 19 Southern pilgrims on the South and
religious experience tourism”, International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality
Research, Vol. 2 No. 2, pp. 132-151.
Fleischer, A. (2000), “The tourist behind the pilgrim in the holy land”, Hospitality Management, Vol. 19
No. 3, pp. 311-326.
Melian, A.G., Prats, L. and Coromina, L. (2016), “The perceived value of accessibility in religious sites-
do disabled and non-disabled travellers behave differently?”, Tourism Review, Vol. 71 No. 2,
pp. 105-117.

Corresponding author
Mohammad Reza Jalilvand can be contacted at: rezajalilvand@ut.ac.ir
 9,4

784
JIMA

overview
Table AI.
Systematic map
Main
category of Journal
research Sub-category of Research Investigated Publication title/ chapter
Appendix

References focus research focus Research type method religion Database type number

Rinschede (1992) Destination Attractions and Philosophical Discussion paper No specific ScienceDirect Journal Annals of
events paper religion tourism research
Nolan and Nolan Destination Attractions and Philosophical Discussion paper No specific ScienceDirect Journal Annals of
(1992) events paper religion tourism research
Collins-Kreiner Destination Policy and Evaluation Interview, Judaism, Islam, ScienceDirect Journal Applied
et al. (2013) government research grounded theory Christianity Geography
Sharpley and Demand Experiences Experience paper Focus group No specific ScienceDirect Journal Annals of
Jepson (2011) religion tourism research
Jafari and Scott Travel Travel markets Opinion paper Literature review Islam ScienceDirect Journal Annals of
(2014) tourism research
Mujtaba (2016) Destination Seasonality, Experience paper Discussion paper Islam ScienceDirect Journal Tourism
attractions and Management
events Perspectives
Hughes et al. (2013) Destination Tourism Solution proposal Survey Christianity ScienceDirect Journal Tourism
management, Management
place or
geographic
location, facilities
Matheson et al. Destination Attractions and Evaluation Survey No specific ScienceDirect Journal Tourism
(2014) events research religion Management
Nyaupane et al. Demand Tourist behavior, Evaluation Case study, Buddhism, ScienceDirect Journal Tourism
(2015) motivations and research survey Hinduism, Management
needs Christianity
Seshadri and Destination Infrastructure, Solution proposal Case study Hinduism ScienceDirect Journal Forest Ecology
Ganesh (2011) transportation and
Management
El Hanandeh (2013) Destination Environmental Solution proposal Others Islam ScienceDirect Journal Journal of
impacts Cleaner
Production
(continued)
 Main
category of Journal
research Sub-category of Research Investigated Publication title/ chapter
References focus research focus Research type method religion Database type number

Drule et al. (2012) Demand Motivations and Evaluation Survey Christianity ScienceDirect Conference Procedia-Social
needs research and Behavioral
Sciences
Piewdanga et al. Destination Tourism Evaluation Case study, No specific ScienceDirect Conference Procedia-Social
(2013) management research survey religion and Behavioral
Sciences
Kurmanaliyeva Destination Social and Opinion paper Discussion paper No specific ScienceDirect Conference Procedia-Social
et al. (2014) cultural impacts religion and Behavioral
Sciences
Štefko et al. (2015) Marketing Promotion and Solution proposal Survey No specific ScienceDirect Conference Procedia-Social
communications, religion and Behavioral
marketing Sciences
strategy
Cristea et al. (2015) Marketing Promotion and Solution proposal Case study No specific ScienceDirect Conference Procedia-Social
communications, religion and Behavioral
marketing Sciences
strategy
Indrawati et al. Destination Education and Solution proposal Case study, Islam ScienceDirect Conference Procedia-Social
(2016) training, interview and Behavioral
attractions and Sciences
events
Carboni et al. (2014) Destination Policy and Solution proposal Case study, Islam ScienceDirect Journal Tourism
government, interview Management
enterprises, Perspectives
planning
Kreiner et al. (2015) Destination Social and Evaluation Case study, Bahai (others) ScienceDirect Journal Tourism
cultural impacts, research Interview, Management
tourism Grounded theory, Perspectives
management, literature review
planning
(continued)

Table AI.
research

785
tourism
Spiritual
 9,4

786
JIMA

Table AI.
Main
category of Journal
research Sub-category of Research Investigated Publication title/ chapter
References focus research focus Research type method religion Database type number

Zamani-Farahani Geographical Iran, Iraq, Saudi Opinion paper Literature review Islam ScienceDirect Journal Tourism
and Eid (2016) area Arabia, and Management
Syria Perspectives
Chadha and Onkar Geographical India Experience paper Others No specific ScienceDirect Conference Procedia
(2016) area religion Technology
Khalilur et al. (2017) Demand Motivations and Solution Survey Islam Emerald Journal Journal of
needs proposal Islamic
Marketing
Muhammad Haq Marketing Marketing Solution Focus group Islam Emerald Journal Journal of
(2014) strategy and plan proposal Islamic
Marketing
Gupta (1999) Destination Sustainable Opinion paper Discussion paper Hinduism Emerald Journal International
tourism Journal of
development Contemporary
Hospitality
Management
Finney et al. (2008) Geographical Israel, USA, Evaluation Interview Christianity Emerald Journal International
area research Journal of
Culture,
Tourism and
Hospitality
Research
Gallarza et al. (2009) Demand Tourist behavior, Evaluation Survey No specific Emerald Journal International
customer loyalty, research religion Journal of
satisfaction levels Culture,
Tourism and
Hospitality
Research
(continued)
 Main
category of Journal
research Sub-category of Research Investigated Publication title/ chapter
References focus research focus Research type method religion Database type number

Jauhari and Geographical India Opinion paper Discussion paper No specific Emerald Journal Worldwide
Sanjeev (2010) area religion Hospitality and
Tourism Themes
Agrawal et al. Destination Development Solution proposal Survey Buddhism Emerald Journal Worldwide
(2010) Hospitality and
Tourism Themes
Gupta and Gulla Marketing Promotion and Solution proposal Survey, interview Hinduism Emerald Journal Worldwide
(2010) communications Hospitality and
Tourism
Themes
Jauhari (2010) Destination Tourism Philosophical Literature review Hinduism Emerald Journal Worldwide
management, paper Hospitality and
stakeholders, Tourism
social and Themes
cultural impacts
Haq and Wong Marketing Marketing Evaluation Interview Islam Emerald Journal Journal of
(2010) strategy and plan research Islamic
Marketing
Cheal and Griffin Destination Tourism Solution proposal Interview No specific Emerald Journal International
(2013) management religion Journal of
Culture,
Tourism and
Hospitality
Research
Ebadi (2014) Geographical Iran Philosophical Case study, Islam Emerald Journal International
area paper survey, interview Journal of
Culture,
Tourism and
Hospitality
Research
(continued)

Table AI.
research

787
tourism
Spiritual
 9,4

788
JIMA

Table AI.
Main
category of Journal
research Sub-category of Research Investigated Publication title/ chapter
References focus research focus Research type method religion Database type number

Jackson and Destination Social and Experience paper Discussion paper Christianity Emerald Journal Tourism Review
Hudman (1995) cultural impacts
Robledo (2015) Destination Authenticity – – No specific Emerald Book Chapter 8
religion
Wang et al. (2015) Geographical China – – Islam Emerald Book Chapter 8
area
Kartal et al. (2015) Marketing Marketing mix, Solution proposal Interview Judaism, Islam, Emerald Journal Tourism Review
promotion and Christianity
communication,
destination
marketing,
marketing
strategy and plan
Bandyopadhyay Destination Place or Philosophical Literature review Hinduism Emerald Journal Tourism Review
(2016) geographic paper
location, policy
and government,
planning
Shinde (2015) Destination Community Evaluation Survey, interview Hinduism, IslamEmerald Journal Tourism Review
involvement and research
participation,
social and cultural
impacts
Kartal et al. (2015) Demand Tourist behavior, Evaluation Survey No specific Emerald Journal Tourism Review
customer research religion
satisfaction,
customer loyalty
(continued)
 Main
category of Journal
research Sub-category of Research Investigated Publication title/ chapter
References focus research focus Research type method religion Database type number

Kasim (2011) Destination Tourism Evaluation Survey Hinduism Routledge Journal Journal of
management, research Hospitality
place or Marketing and
geographic Management
location
Blomfield (2009) Travel Tourism markets Solution proposal Interview Buddhism Routledge Journal Journal of
Management,
Spirituality and
Religion
Cahaner and Demand Tourist behavior, Solution proposal Interview, focus Judaism Routledge Journal Journal of
Mansfeld (2012) experiences group Heritage
Tourism
Chand (2010) Demand Motivations and Solution proposal Survey Hinduism Routledge Journal International
needs Journal of
Hospitality and
Tourism
Administration
Isnart (2014) Geographical Greece Opinion paper Discussion paper Christianity Routledge Journal Journal of
area Tourism and
Cultural Change
Collins-Kreiner and Demand Market Evaluation Interview, survey Buddhism, Routledge Journal South Asian
Sagi (2011) characteristics, research Judaism, Popular Culture
motivations and Christianity
needs
Kaur (2016) Marketing Customer Philosophical Literature review No specific Routledge Journal Journal of
relationship paper religion Relationship
management, Marketing
distribution
channels
(continued)

Table AI.
research

789
tourism
Spiritual
 9,4

790
JIMA

Table AI.
Main
category of Journal
research Sub-category of Research Investigated Publication title/ chapter
References focus research focus Research type method religion Database type number

Taheri (2016) Demand Emotions, Evaluation Survey Islam Routledge Journal Journal of
experiences, research Travel and
market Tourism
characteristics Marketing
Hernandez- Destination Development, Evaluation Multiple case No specific Routledge Journal Journal of
Ramdwar (2013) policy and research studies religion Heritage
government Tourism
Jackson and Davis Geographical China Opinion paper Discussion paper Islam, Routledge Journal Tourism
(1997) area Buddhism Recreation
Research
Suntikul and Dorji Destination Attractions and Evaluation Survey No specific Routledge Journal Asia Pacific
(2016) events, social and research religion Journal of
cultural impacts, Tourism
tourism impacts Research
Metreveli and Geographical Georgia Opinion paper Discussion paper Christianity Routledge Journal Journal of
Timothy (2010) area Heritage
Tourism
Abbate and Di Demand Motivations and Evaluation Survey No specific Routledge Journal Current Issues
Nuovo (2013) needs, tourist research religion in Tourism
behavior, choices
and selection
Norman and Cusack Destination Attractions and Opinion paper Discussion paper No specific Routledge Journal Journal of
(2012) events religion Tourism and
Cultural Change
Olsen (2012) Geographical Canada Opinion paper Discussion paper Christianity Routledge Journal Journal of
area Heritage
Tourism
(continued)
 Main
category of Journal
research Sub-category of Research Investigated Publication title/ chapter
References focus research focus Research type method religion Database type number

Shinde (2016) Destination Planning, place or Opinion paper Case study, Hinduism Routledge Journal Planning
geographic interview Practice and
location Research
Poria et al. (2003) Demand Motivations and Evaluation Survey Judaism, Routledge Journal Current Issues
needs, image and research Christianity in Tourism
perceptions
Prayag et al. (2016) Demand Image and Evaluation Interview No specific Routledge Journal Tourism
perceptions research religion Recreation
Research
Wang et al. (2016) Demand Motivations and Evaluation Survey Buddhism Routledge Journal Asia Pacific
needs, emotions research Journal of
Tourism
Research
Rivera et al. (2009) Demand Images and Solution proposal Survey Christianity Routledge Journal Journal of
perceptions, Heritage
satisfaction levels, Tourism
tourist behavior
Fonneland (2013) Travel Tourism markets Experience paper Discussion paper Christianity Routledge Journal Acta Borealia
Shinde (2011) Destination Enterprises, Solution proposal Case study Hinduism Routledge Journal Tourism
facilities, Planning and
infrastructure, Development
transportation
Shinde (2012) Destination Policy and Solution proposal Case study Hinduism Routledge Journal Journal of Policy
government, Research in
infrastructure Tourism,
Leisure and
Events
(continued)

Table AI.
research

791
tourism
Spiritual
 9,4

792
JIMA

Table AI.
Main
category of Journal
research Sub-category of Research Investigated Publication title/ chapter
References focus research focus Research type method religion Database type number

Simone-Charteris Destination Attractions and Solution proposal Interview Christianity Routledge Journal Journal of
and Boyd (2011) events, Hospitality
enterprises, policy Marketing and
and government Management
Son and Xu (2013) Marketing Branding and Solution proposal Others (content Buddhism Routledge Journal Journal of
identity, analysis) Heritage
distribution Tourism
channels
Terzidou et al. Destination Social and culturalEvaluation Survey No specific Routledge Journal Tourism and
(2008) impacts, economic research religion Hospitality
impacts, place or Planning and
geographic Development
location
Collins-Kreiner Marketing Market research Opinion paper Literature review No specific Routledge Journal Tourism
(2016) religion Geographies
Wong et al. (2013) Marketing Activities and Solution proposal Survey Buddhism Routledge Journal Journal of
participation, Travel and
motivations and Tourism
needs, images and Marketing
perceptions
Lee et al. (2015) Destination Authenticity, Evaluation Survey No specific Routledge Journal Tourism
attractions and research religion Geographies
events,
development
Tilson (2005) Marketing Partnering and Solution proposal Case study Christianity Routledge Journal Journal of
strategic alliances, Hospitality and
promotion and Leisure
communications Marketing
(continued)
 Main
category of Journal
research Sub-category of Research Investigated Publication title/ chapter
References focus research focus Research type method religion Database type number

Palmer (2014) Travel Tourism markets Opinion paper Discussion paper No specific Routledge Journal Ethnos
religion
Vukonic (2002) Destination Economic Experience paper Discussion paper No specific Routledge Journal Tourism
impacts religion Recreation
Research
Weidenfeld and Demand Motivations and Opinion paper Discussion paper Islam Routledge Journal Anatolia
Ron (2008) needs
Wichasin (2009) Travel Travel markets Experience paper Discussion paper Buddhism Routledge Journal Contemporary
Buddhism: An
Interdisciplinary
Journal
Mansfeld and Destination Social and Evaluation Interview Judaism, Routledge Journal Tourism
Mcintosh (2009) cultural impacts, research Christianity Recreation
hospitality Research
resources
Singh (2009) Demand Emotions, market Opinion paper Discussion paper No specific Routledge Journal Tourism
characteristics religion Recreation
Research
Bone (2013) Demand Choices and Evaluation Multiple case No specific Routledge Journal Tourism
selection, research studies, interview religion Recreation
experiences Research
Smith et al. (2009) Destination Social and Solution proposal Survey No specific Routledge Journal Journal of
cultural impacts, religion Ecotourism
place or
geographic place,
tourism
management,
planning
(continued)

Table AI.
research

793
tourism
Spiritual
 9,4

794
JIMA

Table AI.
Main
category of Journal
research Sub-category of Research Investigated Publication title/ chapter
References focus research focus Research type method religion Database type number

Bhardwaj (1998) Destination Attractions and Opinion paper Discussion paper Islam Routledge Journal Journal of
events, place or Cultural
geographic Geography
location
Timothy and Destination Attractions and – – Islam Routledge Book Chapter 13
Iverson (2006) events, place or
geographic
location
Digance (2006) Destination Attractions and – – Christianity, Routledge Book Chapter 3
events Hinduism,
Buddhism,
Islam
Hall (2006a) Demand Tourist behavior – – No specific Routledge Book Chapter 5
religion
Cohen (2006) Destination Social and cultural– – No specific Routledge Book Chapter 6
impacts religion
Olsen (2006a) Destination Attractions and – – No specific Routledge Book Chapter 8
events religion
Guo (2006) Destination Place or – – No specific Routledge Book Chapter 9
geographic religion
location
Timothy and Destination Authenticity – – No specific Routledge Book Chapter 10
Conover (2006) religion
Hall (2006b) Destination Place or – – Buddhism Routledge Book Chapter 12
geographic
location
Vukonic (2006) Geographical Romania – – Christianity Routledge Book Chapter 16
areas
Olsen (2006b) Destination – – Christianity Routledge Book Chapter 17
(continued)
 Main
category of Journal
research Sub-category of Research Investigated Publication title/ chapter
References focus research focus Research type method religion Database type number

Place or
geographic
location
Bremer (2006) Destination Place or – – No specific Routledge Book Chapter 2
geographic religion
location
Kaelber (2006) Destination Social and cultural– – No specific Routledge Book Chapter 4
impacts religion
Olsen and Timothy Destination Social and cultural– – No specific Routledge Book Chapter 1
(2006) impacts, resource religion
management and
environmental
impacts
Levi and Kocher Destination Authenticity, Evaluation Survey Buddhism Sage Journal Environment
(2012) resource research and Behavior
management and
environmental
impacts
Prandi (2008) Destination Place or Opinion paper Discussion paper Christianity Sage Journal Social Compass
geographical
location, cultural
impacts
Cohen (2003) Demand Motivations and Evaluation Case study, Judaism Sage Journal Journal of
needs research Survey Travel Research
Eid and El-Gohary Demand Images and Evaluation Survey Islam Sage Journal Journal of
(2015) perceptions, research Travel Research
emotions
Kang (2009) Geographical China Opinion paper Discussion paper Buddhism Sage Journal Modern China
areas
(continued)

Table AI.
research

795
tourism
Spiritual
 9,4

796
JIMA

Table AI.
Main
category of Journal
research Sub-category of Research Investigated Publication title/ chapter
References focus research focus Research type method religion Database type number

Uriely et al. (2003) Destination Economic Evaluation Case study, Christianity, Sage Journal Journal of
impacts, research survey Islam Hospitality and
development Tourism
Research
Sanchez et al. (2016) Destination Economic Evaluation Case study Christianity Sage Journal Tourism
impacts, research Economics
development,
attractions and
events
Muriuki et al. (2016) Marketing Branding and Evaluation Survey Christianity, Sage Journal Tourism
identity, research Islam, Economics
authenticity Buddhism
Brin (2006) Geographical Israel, Palestine Opinion paper Discussion paper Judaism, Islam, Sage Journal Tourist Studies
areas Christianity
Aukland (2016) Destination Enterprises, Experience paper Discussion paper Hinduism Sage Journal Tourist Studies
product and
production, place
or geographical
location
Valenta and Strabac Geographical Bosnia- Evaluation Case study, Christianity Sage Journal Tourist Studies
(2016) areas Herzegovina research interview
Banica (2016) Demand Tourist behavior Evaluation Others Christianity Sage Journal Tourist Studies
research (ethnography)
Weidenfeld (2006) Demand Motivations and Evaluation Survey Christianity Sage Journal Tourism and
needs research Hospitality
Research
Bond and Falk Demand Motivations and Philosophical Literature review No specific Wiley Journal International
(2013) needs paper religion Journal of
Tourism
Research
(continued)
 Main
category of Journal
research Sub-category of Research Investigated Publication title/ chapter
References focus research focus Research type method religion Database type number

Bond et al. (2015) Demand Experiences, Evaluation Case study, Christianity Wiley Journal International
activities and research survey Journal of
participation, Tourism
market Research
characteristics
Bremer (2014) Marketing Market and Opinion paper Discussion paper Christianity Wiley Journal Religion
marketing Compass
research
Stausberg (2014) Travel Travel markets – – No specific Wiley Book Chapter 8
religion
Collins-Kreiner Marketing Market and Philosophical Literature review No specific Wiley Journal Journal of
(2010) marketing paper religion Economic and
research Social
Geography
Fourie et al. (2015) Travel Travel flows, Evaluation Others Christianity, Wiley Journal KYKLOS
travel markets research Judaism, Islam,
Hinduism
Grimshaw (2013) Marketing Market and Opinion paper Literature review No specific Wiley Journal Journal of
marketing religion Religious
research History
Hashim et al. (2007) Demand Images and Evaluation Interview, others Islam Wiley Journal Journal of
perceptions research (content analysis) Computer-
Mediated
Communication
Henderson (2011) Destination Tourism Philosophical Literature review Islam Wiley Journal International
management, paper Journal of
attractions and Tourism
events Research
(continued)

Table AI.
research

797
tourism
Spiritual
 9,4

798
JIMA

Table AI.
Main
category of Journal
research Sub-category of Research Investigated Publication title/ chapter
References focus research focus Research type method religion Database type number

Hung et al. (2016) Destination Attractions and Evaluation Focus group, Buddhism Wiley Journal International
events, research interview Journal of
development Tourism
Research
Khaksari et al. Destination Development, Evaluation Literature review Islam Wiley Journal International
(2014) economic impacts research Journal of
Tourism
Research
Moal-Ulvoas and Demand Motivations and Evaluation Interview No specific Wiley Journal Journal of
Taylor (2014) needs research religion Consumer
Behaviour
Saayman et al. Destination Economic impacts Evaluation Others Christianity Wiley Journal International
(2014) research Journal of
Tourism
Research
Shinde (2010) Destination Enterprises, social Solution proposal Interview, survey, Hinduism Wiley Journal International
and cultural case study Journal of
impacts Tourism
Research
Subhi et al. (2012) Demand Constraints, Evaluation Survey Islam Wiley Journal International
market research Journal of
characteristics Tourism
Research
Zamani-Farahani Destination Tourism Evaluation Literature review Islam Wiley Journal International
and Henderson management research Journal of
(2010) Tourism
Research
Zwissler (2011) Marketing Market and Solution proposal Others No specific Wiley Journal Religion
marketing (ethnography) religion Compass
research