Bid to boost religious tourism product

Fáilte Ireland has launched a new initiative to boost visitor numbers to Irish religious tourism sites.

Last week, a seminar in Co. Mayo was attended by sixty tourism businesses from the west and north-west, and representatives of a number of European religious heritage destinations.

A spokesperson for Fáilte Ireland said that, two years ago, the agency had turned its attention to pro-actively developing the west of Ireland’s religious tourism product.

“We commissioned the development of a strategy initially, and this told us of the huge potential for the religious heritage tourism market in the west of Ireland.  Estimates on faith or pilgrim tourism reveal a burgeoning market,” the spokesperson explained.

“The World Religious Tourism Association has estimated that 200 million visitors engaged in pilgrimage journeys in the 1990s and by 2000, this had increased to 240 million.  Other estimates state that faith-based tourism serves 300 million travellers and produces 18 billion dollars in revenue each year.”

Fáilte Ireland said that there are three distinct segments to the market.  

These are so-called ‘sacred tourists’, for whom faith is the primary motivation for visiting a spiritual site, 

Christian and cultural tourists, who go to spiritual sites as part of a wider holiday and ‘spiritual interest’ tourists who want to connect with the traditions and values of a destination by seeing attractions with a spiritual dimension.

The agency spokesperson said that Ireland “has wonderful religious sites that are easily accessible by road, rail and airports.  This, combined with a growing interest among many of our tourism businesses to package and sell this, has prompted us to make this a priority.”

“In 2009, we delivered a year-long training programme to over sixty businesses in the region and [we] are now in the process of delivering a new brand for this niche area”

Fáilte Ireland is also involved with other European tourism promotion organisations in developing an EU-funded project called Sailing to St James, which is to promote maritime pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Campostela in Spain.

SIC: CIN/IE