Review of the Intersections Within Faith Tourism, Social Memory, and Collective Identity

The intersections between memory, space, and mobility have become increasingly prominent in tourism studies in recent years. This article examines the relationship between religious tourism and social memory by conceptualizing religious tourism as an active process of collective remembrance. While realizing this aim, it conceptualizes faith tourism as an active process of collective memory. Faith tourism possesses a wider area than the traditional classification of religious travel. This article adopts a conceptual and thematic narrative review approach. Rather than offering a systematic or meta-analytic review, it develops a theory-based interpretive framework by synthesizing interdisciplinary literature from sociology, memory studies, anthropology, and tourism studies. The article argues that faith tourism constitutes essential memory work. This review does not contribute by presenting the relationship between memory, space, identity, and tourism as an entirely new field of research. Instead, it proposes an integrative analytical framework specific to faith tourism that brings social memory theory into closer dialogue with sacred space, ritual mobility, visitor interpretation, and the formation of collective identity. By organizing these dimensions not as separate themes, but as interacting mechanisms, the article clarifies how sacred sites and faith-based tourism practices contribute to the production, transmission, and reinterpretation of collective memory. Moreover, it provides a conceptual contribution by clarifying the role of religious sites as memory spaces that link past, present, and future.