This book considers the impact of globalization on religious tourism. It presents a range of contemporary case studies on the transformations of pilgrimage experience related to new challenges such as virtualization, consumerism, cultural assimilation and the changes in the global religious landscape

Is it possible to identify the positive and negative effects of globalization on religious tourism or to estimate the transformation of the internal and external constructs of pilgrimage by these effects? In order to address these questions, this book highlights the importance of the search for identity and transformative experience during religious tourism. It also looks at how, recently, globalization has played a part in the changes of the concept of personal and social identity and the transformative experience of pilgrimage. The chapters, consisting of carefully selected case studies, analyse possible effects including the adoption of different new rituals, new pilgrims' values, changes of tradition, acceptance of technologic innovations, development of new business models, and other environmental and sociocultural changes. The book provides: - a conceptual framework for understanding the impacts of globalization;- integrated cross-disciplinary approaches; and- an insight into major religious travel practices in the age of identity challenges and worldwide transformations. It will be suitable for researchers and students of religious tourism, pilgrimage, identity tourism, as well as related subjects such as sociology, anthropology, psychology, theology, history and cultural studies.