Religious and religious studies’ tourism in Ukraine: problems of development

Abstract

The article represents religious tourism as a special component of a branched complex of modern
tourism. A comparative overview of the concepts used by tourism studies for describing religious
tourism and its varieties was made. The advisability of introducing the concept of “religious studies’
tourism” is substantiated taking into consideration its greater scientific adequacy .
Unlike religious tourism, which includes pilgrimage, missionary work, religious education,
traveling as an ascetic vow and other forms of religious selfless devotion, religious studies’ tourism
consists of educational and cognitive travels for studying religious sights, the history of religions
in the world, ethnical and religious traditions and customs, acquisitions of a religious culture and/
or the satisfaction of special-scientific or theological interest. The author generalized and analyzed
the differences between religious and religious studies’ tourism as different in many parameters
types of tourism activity. These types of tourism have a different purpose; different content and the
nature of the needs that motivate people to engage in tourism activity; different requirements for
quality and package of tourist services; distinctive socio-psychological characteristics of travelling
individuals and groups; unsimilar volume and constancy of tourist flows, etc.
Despite the significant number of problems that these things that hinder the development of
religious and religious studies’ tourism in Ukraine – the lack of material resources, undeveloped
tourist routes, low quality of the tourist infrastructure, the deficit of highly skilled specialists, the
shadowing of tourism activities, safety problems associated with military aggression on the territory
of Ukraine, and other – these types of tourism have a considerable potential of development.
The importance of religious and religious studies’ tourism in Ukraine for the development of
interconfessional communication and creation a tolerant social environment was emphasized.
Keywords: pilgrimage, religious tourism, religious studies’ tourism, tourism studies, tourist
activity, interreligious tolerance