Impact of COVID-19 on Pilgrimage Tourism: A Case Study of Lumbini, Nepal

Abstract

The coronavirus outbreak is troubling the pilgrimage tourism industry in terms of economic, social, food, employment, and spiritual faith as pilgrimage activities are being stopped during the pandemic. The COVID-19 restriction and the nationwide lock-down has made it a very difficult time for pilgrims to stop the travel movement and this has made a big worry for government around the world. The pilgrimage tourism in Mecca, Vatican City, Israel, and India has been affected much by pandemic as gathering in the pilgrimage sites have been restricted since the year 2020. Lumbini one of the most important pilgrimage site, which is also a UNESCO-listed World Heritage site in Nepal, and has a significant contribution to the national economy. This research uses Lumbini, Nepal, the birthplace of Lord Buddha, to explore the impact of novel coronavirus on pilgrimage tourism and discusses the challenges experienced by Buddhist pilgrim, monks and nuns in different monasteries in 2020 and during the first quarter of the year 2021. The research is qualitative. The study is based on both primary and secondary data gathered through interviews with the related stakeholders and the review of several relevant secondary sources. The outcomes of the research illustrate that pilgrimage tourism has been extremely affected by coronavirus and lock-down causing multiple effects on social creation, economic and holy activities, and daily lives of the monks and nuns in Lumbini.

Buddhist Ethics for Improving Health and Well-Being during Pandemics Like COVID-19 with Special References to Modern Scientific Experiments

“…In Buddhist contexts, most scholarship on COVID-19 deals with the traditional view of Buddhist healthcare. For example, Craig C. Lewis (Lewis 2021) focused on the activities of monks, as have the works of C. Pierce Salguero (Salguero 2020), Benjamin Schonthal and Tilak Jayatilake (Schonthal and Jayatilake 2020), Cheongghwan Park and Kyungrae Kim (Park and Kim 2021), Lamirin Lamirin (Lamirin 2021), Kai Shmushko (Shmushko 2021), Ghimire Gopal (Gopal 2021), andBhim Bahadur Kunwar (Bhim Bahadur Kunwar 2021).…”

“…His work proved empirically that the Buddha's teaching could be used to strengthen Nepalese societies in the middle of COVID-19 (Gopal 2021). Bhim Bahadur Kunwar wrote about the impact of COVID-19 on pilgrimages in Nepal (Kunwar 2021).…”

Pilgrimage and Religious Tourism in Society, in the Wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Paradigmatic Focus on ‘St. Paul’s Route’ in the Central Macedonia Region, Greece

“…Two major research trends have occurred in recent decades, in the field of religious tourism. One of them refers to the significant growth dynamics of religious tourism in the contemporary world (Griffin and Raj 2017), and the other one considers the potential impact that pandemics may have on these growth dynamics (Mróz 2021;Griffin 2015, 2020;Kunwar 2021;Nhamo et al 2020).…”