Turismo espiritual¿una moda pasajera o una práctica permanente en el viajero de hoy?

Abstract

Initially, an analysis was developed in order to integrated the following sciences: Anthropology, Sociology, Geography, Psychology, as well as religion and its linkage with tourism. This allowed to have a solid scientific platform, which facilitated throughout the research the understanding of the tourist phenomenon from a more complete perspective and, oriented to the central topic of the thesis. The thesis raised spiritual tourism as a way to respond to this group of tourists who are the product of a society of religious contrasts and which in turn gave way to a secularization of it. To this end, it was proposed to validate whether today's tourists seek to re-create, re-connect with themselves, through traveling to places of high spiritual value, whether religiously based or not. In order to validate the hypothesis and objectives, a methodology was applied to Guatemala, a country where three study subjects were selected, for their high sacred value and for being consolidated tourist destinations at the same time. A definition of spiritual tourism was proposed that would integrate the elements raised in the field work, as well as what was found in the bibliographical review. Given that the theme is innovative, it will require future research to support the strengthening of this concept. The definition was created from what was collected during the investigation, since within the tourist scenario there are clear definitions for both religious tourism and wellness tourism. Regardless of whether or not they practice a specific religion, or if they have a holistic spirituality or are simply tourists with a need to know and experience, tourists look for these sacred geographic spaces in order to re-encounter, which validated the main hypothesis of the investigation. As it was raised at the time, the research promotes the analysis of the following concepts: spiritual connection; connection with nature; meditation, prayer, encounter with oneself; plenitude and atmosphere of the place. Constituted these in the new motivators of travel for a group of tourists.