Journeys to Significant Places in Orthodoxy as a Source of Sustainable Local Development in Romania

Abstract

Religious tourism has developed in post-communist Romania, after decades of restrictions on the manifestation of the population’s religiosity. New monasteries and hermitages appeared and the number of travellers eager to arrive visit those and other religious places has increased. The purpose of this article is to support a sustainable orientation in the development of religious tourism in Romania. Content analysis of articles published by mass media in the last year regarding the two great Orthodox pilgrimages in Romania, to St. Parascheva in Iași and to St. Dimitrie the New in Bucharest, together with a thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted with group or solitary travellers and the results of two participatory observations conducted at monasteries in Făgăraș Land highlighted the types of journey to religiously significant places in contemporary Romania, i.e., pilgrimages, journeys to father confessor, spiritual journeys, group religious journeys and secular visits, as well as the particularities of hospitality related to them. Involving local communities in hosting and preparing meals for travellers to hermitages and monasteries would reduce pressure on monastic communities and contribute to sustainable local development. The inclusion of local historical sites in journey itineraries to religious places, and the revitalization of traditional local crafts would also contribute to this development.

Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage in Vâlcea County, South-West Oltenia Region: Motivations, Belief and Tourists’ Perceptions

“…Likewise, modern-day religious tourism is presented in the international literature as interconnected with other types of tourism, such as cultural tourism, social tourism, group tourism, holiday tourism, historical tourism and spiritual tourism, which means it is linked to tourist seasonality (Rinschede 1992;Olsen and Timothy 2006;Timothy and Boyd 2006;Raj and Morpeth 2007;Oviedo et al 2014;Lois-González and Santos 2015;Collins-Kreiner 2018;Sorea et al 2023). However, in modern societies, religious motivation and perceptions appear to have less influence on overall tourism flows than in ancient societies (Rinschede 1992).…”