Pilgrimage tourism is one of the oldest yet fastest growing and evolving sectors in the world tourism market particularly in view of the socio-cultural and economic changes in the last century (ie. the development of transport, globalization, secularization, commercialization of tourism etc.). In India too, according to Ministry of Tourism data, pilgrimage tourism rose from 677 million in 2021 to 1439 million in 2022, while revenue increased from US $ 7.9 billion (65.1 thousand crore rupees) in 2021 to approximately US 16.2 billion (1.34 lakh crore rupees) in 2022, thus accounting for more than 60% of the domestic tourism and approximately 1.6 billion of the revenue generated in the tourism industry in total. The present study is based on a survey conducted among visitors to the 18th exposition of the Holy Relics of St. Francis Xavier at Old Goa from 21st November 2024 to 5th January 2025. The study attempts to a) Discover if an association exists between religious versus secular tourists and their demographic characteristics; b) Explore the possibility of identifying latent motivational factors and testing whether any significant difference exists in motivational factors across the demographic characteristics of both religious and secular visitors. c) It attempts to identify the gap between the perception and expectations of visitors (prior to visit) and their experience (during visit) with respect to various facilities available for tourism. d) It attempts to replicate the research study of the 17th Exposition held in 2014-2015 in order to enhance credibility and generalizability of research findings in the field of religious tourism. The research indicates interesting findings with respect to consistency and variations in terms of the demography and the motivation for travel in terms of religious and secular visitors. Further, with respect to the gap analysis of various tourism facilities and infrastructure, the findings indicate whether the destination falls into the responsible/irresponsible category of tourism (Pillai, 2023) and what improvements and timely action are needed by DMOs if the destination is to remain sustainable and the visitor experience to remain positive.
