Introduction

There is considerable variation between Christian denominations, not just doctrinally speaking, but also in terms of their travel preferences, behaviors, pilgrim narratives and cultural performances (Bajc, 2006; Bowman, 2000; Guter, 2004; Liebelt, 2010). The Holy Land is the central focus of travel on a global scale for all Christian denominations. However, various churches also have faith-specific destinations to which their adherents travel regularly and with considerable devotion. Some of these are international in scale, such as Medjugorje and Lourdes, which draw millions of Roman Catholics from around the world each year. Christian pilgrimage destinations in some countries, however, have a more domestic market reach and have significant nationalistic undertones, such as those associated with the life of St Olaf in Norway and St Patrick in Ireland.

Likewise, various Protestant groups have their own sacred sites, which few other Christians visit, except perhaps as curiosity-seekers. Examples of these include various church history locations and holy sites presumed to be associated with different scriptural experiences. For example, Latter-day Saint tourists commonly travel to church history sites in New York, Missouri and Ohio, and Russian and Greek Orthodox adherents travel to many church-specific sites in Eastern Europe and Greece, most of which would not exert a natural religious appeal to adherents of other Christian faiths.

Efforts are also under way, however, to effect changes in current markets, including attracting more Christian denominations to locales that traditionally have been the focus of individual denominations, such as attempts to bring Lutherans and Methodists to Rome, and Christians in general to places such as Malta, or in other words, converting sectoral destinations to multisectoral destinations.

This chapter describes several denominations and their unique travel patterns, and it highlights the patterns and trends associated with the common core of Christian travel, namely Jerusalem and the broader Holy Land. It also examines the geographical broadening of the ‘Holy Land’ concept and the erosion of place-based pilgrimages toward a modern-day emphasis on pilgrimage/sacred experiences.