Mobility and sustainable religious tourism – accessibility of holy sites

Abstract

Getting to know the social and spatial conditions of the sustainable development of cultural and religious tourism seems to be an important and timeless problem, because the interest in this form of travel in Poland is not waning. Among tourists – pilgrims there are many people with different disabilities, the elderly and families with young children. However important, the issue of the accessibility of sanctuaries for these groups of tourists has not been the material of a broader and in-depth scientific study in Poland so far, which encourages us to consider these issues in our scientific research. A detailed analysis of the problem, focused on the possibility of removing technical, architectural and spatial barriers in the sanctuaries and in the surroundings of holy sites, seemed to the authors of particular importance in the context of the expected pilgrimage movement in Poland in 2016, in which year the international World Youth Day was organized. One of the assumed and achieved application effects of the research study was the development of the ‘Accessible Sanctuary Card’ (ASC), helpful for the practical assessment of the accessibility of places of religious worship for people with various types of disabilities. The presented paper contains the research final conclusions of the project No. 245 AWF Warsaw (grant from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education undertaken in 2014–2018).