مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد گردشگری مذهبی و توسعه رهبری معنوی – الزویر 2018

Christian leadership conferences are an increasingly relevant form of special events for leaders within ministry roles. Despite considerable anecdotal research, it is largely unknown what intrinsically motivates these leaders to attend a Christian leadership conference and if this motivation/s is homogenous. Through employing spiritual leadership and core competencies to identify intrinsic motivations to attend a Christian leadership conference, five segments are conceptualised. Whilst two motivations that mirror the key event theme and manifest the internal reward for most respondents, the segments differ significantly on key criterion, most notably their usual place of residence. Tourism and event academics and practitioners should carefully use the research findings when seeking to develop theory or attract attendees to Christian leadership conferences. © 2018 The Authors.

Introduction

Religious tourism is defined as all kinds of travel that is motivated by religion (Rinschede, 1992) that is voluntary, unpaid and for a limited time (Blackwell, 2007). Popular options include pilgrimage to sites of historical and religious significance (Hudman & Jackson, 2002; Raj & Morpeth, 2007). In addition to its historical and spiritual significance, religious tourism’s relevance as a form of economic injection to local economies cannot be underestimated. UNWTO (2014) estimated that between 300 and 330 million tourists visit the world’s key religious sites each year. Further, approximately 2.7% of Saudi Arabia’s Gross Domestic Product is tourism related, with the largest tourism cohort being religious tourists (Jeddah Chamber, 2016). Despite considerable insight into religious tourism (e.g. Cohen, 2006; Stausberg, 2011), research has largely focused on conceptualising tourists’ self-gratifying motivations for attending religious events such as Christian music festivals (e.g. Pastoor et al., in-press; Tkaczynski & Rundle-Thiele, 2013). This research seeks to contribute to the tourism and events literature by conceptualising an intrinsically motivated religious tourist. Despite considerable research focusing on external benefits of attending conferences (e.g. Mair & Thompson, 2009; Severt, Wang, Chen, & Breiter, 2007), these extrinsic “touristic” motivations are not the mission purpose of Christian Leadership Conferences. Consequently, rather them employing existing conference motivational literature (Mair, 2010; Tanford, Montgomery, & Nelson, 2012) to profile religious tourists, this research employs Fry (2003) spiritual leadership framework to identify how religious tourists to a Christian leadership conference are potentially motivated, valued and committed to perform productively within their organisation (e.g. church). It also aims to confirm whether Malphurs and Mancini (2004) four core competencies of character, knowledge, skills and emotions for church leadership development are exhibited within a special religious event context. Therefore, through applying Fry (2003) theory of spiritual leadership, in addition to Malphurs and Mancini (2004) core competencies for church leadership development, this research will conceptualise a tourist that is motivated to attend a religious event (Christian leadership conference) for selfdevelopment and altruistic purposes.