Towards a Conceptual Demarcation Between the Religious Tourism and the Pilgrimage, in the Context of Globalization

The present study attempts to identify the relationship between religious tourism and pilgrimage, as well as the elements that make religious tourism and pilgrimage individual and separate components of this increasingly varied aggregate in what concerns the conceptual and the theoretical demarcations. There are more and more opinions, especially nowadays, at the beginning of a century which, according to the way it manifests and according to predictions; it is certainly deeply influenced on various levels by the element religion and its reflections. As a consequence, during the pilgrimage, like during the religious tourism, various impulses - ranging from the religious to the cultural and the spiritual ones, cultural, psychological, sociological, topographic and economic impulses - that are gathered act together and succeed in maintaining a phenomenon that is always alive, engaged in continuous revolution and interpreting the needs and the inner impulse of those who practice it. It is important to underline the fact that one cannot make a clear distinction between these, when it comes to visiting religious buildings and holy places.