Comparison of Tourist and Pilgrim Conepts

Who is a pilgrim? Who is a tourist? Is the pilgrim the same as tourist or do they differ? What are the differences and similarities of these two words? Is pilgrimage a kind of tourism with special interests or distinct and different phenomenon? In spite of similarities and distinctions between tourism and pilgrimage and the individual’s ideology and motivation, the nature of tourists’ relationship, religions and spiritual places have been ignored. In this article, we are trying to answer these questions by philosophic comparison of these two cultural concepts, as well as analyzing and explaining logical framework of ideology and motivation of the tourists and pilgrims as different or similar phenomena to reach an acceptable conclusion. The words tourist and pilgrim contain different and contradictory concepts due to their exclusive cultural and natural specifications. The key issue is that pilgrimage and tourism are the subject of truth. Discovering and analysis of tourism is not a complex and a prodigious matter since tourism belonging is not objective, nor subjective, but is the composition of both. As a result, the approach to tourism can change from movement by locations to a knowledge oriented capacity. In subjective concept and unlike objective one, tourism is a kind of knowledge acquisition and a background for approaching the God, searching the truth and so forth. The final result is that the hypothesis is not absolutely true or false; but individual, social and perceptual (ideological) factors directly influence it and so it is proportional matter which demands it’ s own essentials.