Religious Tourism in Jordan: Current Situation, Future Developments and Prospects

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Acknowledgement

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Abstract

The purpose of this research is to analyze the components and nature of religious tourism in Jordan from three main perspectives: to present the current state of religious tourism in Jordan through studying the tourism movement in the holy sites and analyzing the potentials and the future prospects. The relationship between the local community and these sites will be another perspective, from which the researcher will form the study.

Religious Tourism in Jordan: Current Situation, Future Developments and Prospects

Background of the Study

Jordan is one of the main tourist destinations in the Middle East in religious tourism in both Islamic and Christian sacred sites. There are a lot of holy sites in Jordan and these holy places have a characteristic because it is related to the biggest two religions in the world Islam and Christianity.

“Indeed half of humanity views Jordan and the river of Jordan as the geographic and spiritual center of their faith” .

Generally speaking , there is no enough attention paid by the tourism bodies in Jordan in this promising type of tourism and there is no enough database about the sacred sites, their distribution, the importance, infrastructure and superstructures and the characteristics of tourist and pilgrim, whether they are demographic, economic, social or behavioural. As the result of this, religious tourism in Jordan is still in the introductory stage of product life cycle.

There is also very view research written on religious tourism. At smallest two research creeks concern to religion on the Internet. The first stream examines how religious assemblies use the Internet to supply information and preach religion (Helland, 2002). The second stream investigates online demeanour by religious board riders, for example utilizing online forums and Usenet to broadcast and exchange information (Kinney, 1995; MacWilliams, 2002; McKenna & West, 2007). A Pew Internet and American Life review discovered that 28 million Americans were "religion surfers" who went online for religious and religious information and to attach with other ones of alike beliefs (Larsen, 2001). Over one in five of these board riders searched information about Islam.

The present study adds to the scant research on online religious imagery in four areas. It expands consideration of Muslim destination images (Burns & Cooper, 1997; Din, 1982; Hattab & Katz, 2001; Schneider & Sonmez, 1999) to an online natural environment and expands MacWilliams's (2002) issue that multimedia websites conceive wealthy imagery for religious pilgrimages to multimedia conceiving religious imagery on destination websites. It expands Henderson's (2003b) consideration of Jordanian tourism images from nationwide to state-level destination ...