These are tourists who seek
out religious or spiritual settings for the purpose of fulfilling their desire to travel,
either in whole or in part, and to have some form of religious or spiritual experience. I
call these travellers ‘spiritual tourists’, and see them, like MacCannell to an extent, as
emerging out of the changes and uncertainties of modernity and secularisation. Yet
whilst MacCannell saw tourists as travelling for reasons similar to pilgrims64, I argue
that there is a wider variety of both purpose and activity. This holds even for spiritual
tourists who, using Cohen’s work, I can see as fitting all five types, from the pilgrimlike
existential type tourist to a form of recreational type. The latter are quite different
from pilgrims in some ways, yet it is my contention that this distinction may not be
immediately apparent due to the sort of activities they engage in. The term ‘spiritual
tourist’ is thus proposed as a means of both distinguishing between tourists and
pilgrims, and