The influence of hospitality and service offerings in religious tourism

Abstract

Religious tourism is the pioneer form of tourism that has begun almost with the dawn of humanity. Assumed the growing and significant influx of religious tourism and the assumption of the importance of relations of hospitality and religion, it is justified the present study that seeks to investigate the competitive strategy of religious tourist destinations and the need to broaden the discussions on religious tourism, understood as a promising segment in the tourism sector. The research question is: Do hospitality actions and service offerings in religious destinations encourage the visitors to return to the location? Therefore, this paper aims to analyze if the hospitality and service provision contribute to the competitiveness of the religious destination, the satisfaction of the believers and their return. Data for this study were collected from Brazilian travelers by means of a questionnaire based on the Likert scale and proposed hypotheses were tested. Findings indicated that the feeling of being welcomed in religious destinations positively affects the return of visitors to the destination. Findings also suggested that religion is not the only attraction of religious destinations.