Christian tourism involves organized tours for Christians to visit historical sites relevant to their religion or perform charitable work overseas. Travel agencies offer packages that include transportation, lodging, and recreational activities. Tour guides provide historical knowledge and cultural exchanges. Some tours focus on helping people in need. Christian tourism is often organized by churches and charities to form relationships with organizations in foreign lands. Popular destinations include Israel and Greece.
Christian tourism is the term used to describe a particular segment of the tourism industry that caters to Christians who wish to visit historical sites relevant to that religion. The term also applies to tours set up to assist Christian groups wishing to travel overseas to perform charitable work. While individual Christians participate in Christian tourism, the term largely applies to organized tours for members of church groups, as well as other faith-based organizations. Among the most popular destinations of Christian tourism are Israel and Greece.
Some travel agencies specialize in offering Christian travel packages. As such, a travel agent may work with a religious group to organize a pilgrimage to one or more places that the group deems sacred. That arrangement typically includes things like air and ground transportation, room lodging, shopping, and recreation. While Christian tourism is primarily intended to offer educational and devotional components, a fair amount of recreational activities are also included in most tours.
By participating in religious tourism, adherents can visit the historic lands mentioned in the sacred texts. In many cases, however, these types of tour packages are not designed to be mere geographical visits. Groups are often accompanied by one or more tour guides who share significant historical knowledge about the sites and who work to organize cultural exchanges with other churches, as well as local people and groups currently living near a pilgrimage site.
The groups also engage in Christian tourism to offer assistance to people in need. Just as Christian pilgrimage groups travel to religious sites with historical significance, groups are often organized to help people living in countries that have been ravaged by war, famine, and other natural disasters. This type of Christian tourism is sometimes more of a spontaneous effort and often does not include the commercial or recreational components that other tours of this type of travel do.
Travelers often engage in Christian tourism through religious organizations, such as churches and Christian charities. While some countries are selected based on their historical value, some tours are also organized on a regular basis for church members to form relationships with others in foreign lands. For example, it is not unusual for a church in one country to adopt an organization, such as a hospital, school or orphanage, in another country and plan regular trips to that adopted organization to assist and build lasting relationships with members of the organization adopted.
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