Religious Tourism and Motivations for Attending Religious Leadership Conferences (Spiritual Leadership Development Approach)

Religious conferences are a new form of spiritual event for leaders with institutional/ministerial roles. Despite considerable research in this area, it is largely unclear what exactly motivates these leaders to attend a religious conference. Therefore, the real goal of conceptualizing religious tourism and developing spiritual leadership was considered with the approach of religious leadership conferences. Sampling was determined as a non-probability purpose for four religious events from all religious conferences held on holidays in 1398. The conceptual framework includes the theory of spiritual leadership (over 2003), the core competencies of religious leadership (Malphurs and Mancini (2004), and the characteristics of segmentation variables (Tkaczynski and Rundle-Thiele 2011) for determining the intrinsic motivation, attending a religious conference in five designed spiritual encouragement, listening to an influential lecturer, better equipment in an organizational role, listening to other speakers, and motivating one to be involved in leadership. The results showed that although the core competencies of knowledge, executive skills, emotions, and personality appear in a comprehensive and all-encompassing way, the two important motivations seemed to be spiritual encouragement (skills) and better equipped with the current organizational role (personality) representing the key motivators for attendance. Some conferences reflect the theme of the event. Music which is here meant saying prayers and supplications is useful for encouraging a tourist's beliefs but is not a major motivator for attending a conference.