Appraising Malta’s significance as a spiritual tourism destination

Abstract

This dissertation investigates Malta’s significance as a destination for spiritual tourism within faith-based tourism. The research addresses the latent presence of this tourism branch and probes the reasons and its level of becoming a special interest tourism in Malta. It assesses Malta’s available must-haves and assets for spiritual tourism, and what benefits guests and Malta itself can obtain through this activity. The point of departure was establishing the complementarity of spiritual tourism to religious tourism, without neglecting the former’s own special features. The work explored Malta’s value as a ‘go-to’ place for spiritual tourism through the analysis of data originated from 23 semi-structured and unstructured interviews with candidates involved in the field and others who provided an objective opinion about the subject. The results showed that the relationship between spirituality and tourism is either completely unknown, underrated or misunderstood. Spiritual tourism is taken to mean as almost identical with religious tourism, rather than as a division within faith-based tourism, making the degree to which it can become a special interest tourism negligible and tantamount to nil. The findings demonstrated inadequate knowledge and interest among many stakeholders which limits the potential of the emergence of spiritual tourism in Malta as a valid, tenable and doable subdivision of faith-based tourism.