Pilgrimage Church Of Saint John Of Nepomuk Within Religious Tourism

Abstract

This case study deals with religious tourism in the context of the pilgrimage church of Saint John of Nepomuk at Zelená hora where spiritual and secular worlds blend. Two questions were stated: Are there any ways to improve promotion of the Pilgrimage Church and bring more pilgrims to the site? and Is modern-day society still interested in pilgrimage in general? The goal of the paper is to characterize the religious tourism in connection with the pilgrimage church of St. John of Nepomuk and propose marketing procedures in terms of religious tourism to popularize pilgrimage trips to this site. Both quantitative and qualitative research methods were applied; specifically an on-line questionnaire survey, hard-copy questionnaire survey, a semi-structured interview with the castle manager, an analysis of tourist turnout data and literature review. The questionnaire survey shows that awareness of plentiful Christian pilgrimage sites in the Czech Republic is relatively low. At the same time, however, almost half of respondents stated that they would like to participate in some pilgrimage. After returning the monument back to the Roman Catholic Church in 2014, the churchs pastor expressed his intention to restore the monument as a place of pilgrimage.Site promotion is based primarily on the UNESCO World Heritage status. The survey on websites of the pilgrimage sites in the Czech Republic shows that Zelena horaisn´t sufficiently presented. More pilgrims could be brought by better promotion of the place with highlighting its role as a pilgrimage site and providing better services.