Religious Events as Special Interest Tourism. A Spanish Experience

Abstract

This paper contributes to the development of the theoretical understanding in the field of religious tourism management by considering the Pilgrimage of the Dew as an alternative paradigm of analysis, which has been constituted in a destination able to host a very large number of travellers (pilgrims), in a very short period of time (3 days), without damaging the environment, ecologic and social, due to the own anthropologic characteristics of this form of travelling that gives priority to the human experience more than the market consumption. Thus, the model researched in this paper through the concept of “social capital” is opportune due to the confluence in the analysis of different social sciences (anthropology, economy and sociology) and from the theory and technique of tourism, concluding that the maintenance of the authenticity and sustainability of this form of religious tourism should be planned not on the basis of a real state model as currently, but on the unseasonality and a much better and regu-lated quality of the services provided.

Keywords

• Religious tourism
• Special event
• Community
• Local development
• Social capital
• Authenticity