Booming religious group travel market

Since 9/11, there has been a renewed dedication to family and faith. Attendance at Sunday church services skyrocked in the month’s following the disaster and has held up steadily. With this renewed dedication to faith, there is also a new dedication to community. These two factors are but a few of the reasons that the religious group travel market is expanding and showing no sign of slowing down, reported Premier Tourism Marketing in its Special Report on the Religious Group Travel Market.

The report highlighted the immense size of the religious group travel market, where of the over 450,000 churches in the United States, about 50,000 are known to run group travel programs.

Michael Harvey, Vice President and General Manager of Omaha, NE based American Church Lists says in the report, “We’ve seen a 20% increase in the last 5 years of churches running travel programs. Youths and seniors in particular, have greater incomes and desire to travel in groups.” Not all denominations travel with the same frequency however, says Harvey. “Catholic churches, as a whole travel the least, with Baptists, Protestants and Methodists traveling more.”

Many of these groups are do-it-yourselfers, especially when it comes to planning domestic trips. They secure a motorcoach and start picking up the phone, calling hotels, attractions and restaurants. This presents an phenomenal opportunity for destinations and operators to forge relationships with religious groups traveling for leisure purposes.

Travel by religious groups takes on many shapes and purposes. Sectors include youth, pilgrimage, missionary and fellowship. Depending on the nature of your business or destination, one, or all of these segments are potential customers.  The Premier Tourism Marketing report breaks them down as follows:

Youth – includes retreats, missionary work, choir and religious bonding. Multi-generation travel is a big part of this experience

Pilgrimage/Reaffirmation – historically overseas to destinations such as Israel, Greece and Italy have dominated this market, but due to world conditions, a larger shift to domestic destinations is underway. Each denomination has its own unique pilgrimage sites across the U.S. and internationally.

Missionary – giving back to those less fortunate is an integral part of the religious foundation, and missionary travel plays hand-in-hand to this. Missionary work is performed domestically as well as overseas. While these groups are budget conscious, and often stay with community members while traveling, they do take time out for fun activities, meals, sightseeing and some entertainment.

Fellowship – religious institutions are promoting leisure group trips that allow for bonding among community members – very important in today’s society, as well as providing a fund-raising opportunity for the church with a portion of the trip price donated back to the church. This provides a sense of purpose for those traveling, especially among desirable demographic audiences.