•  
  •  
 

Abstract

This study questions selected behavioural aspects of travellers belonging to different religious beliefs during their religious heritage site visits. Tourist behaviour needs to be analysed in specific circumstances. This study aims to clarify in situ problems experienced by religious tourists, behavioural differences of tourists with different beliefs, and religious tourist behaviour regarding cultural heritage site protection. A qualitative approach with semi-structured interviews has been followed. Documentary analysis provided secondary data. On-site observation and face-to-face interviews with key-informants provided primary data. Snowball (referral) sampling was applied as non-probability sampling was convenient for data collection. Primary data suggest that visitor behaviour tends to differentiate based on religious faith and age of visitors. Young Turkish Muslim visitors (Gen Y) seemed to have superficial contact with holy sites especially when the site does not represent their own faith. This superficiality seemed higher for Euro Turks and young male students. Muslims and Christians exhibit similarities (deeper interest and respect with increasing age) and dissimilarities (more female interest in Muslims, more on-site praying for Christians).

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.21427/D7013P

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.