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Religious pilgrimages are components of religious tourism and a revenue generator for different countries. The study aims to explore the contribution of African religious pilgrimages towards tourism development of the study areas. Sequential exploratory mixed method research design was applied in this paper. The study used a convenience sampling method of the non-probability sampling design in selecting 210 respondents. Additionally, convenience sampling was used in selecting 40 participants that were readily and easily accessible in the study area. Lastly, the elucidates that there is a need for tourism development for African religious pilgrimages.

This paper reports on a study that explored tourists' profiles (such as gender, age, level of education, employment status, etc) and the potential that they would embark on pilgrimage tourism in selected municipalities in the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province of South Africa. The study, which applied the Local Economic Development (LED) and Tourism Value Chains (TVCs) theories, finds that South African religious tourism has the potential to make socio-economic contributions, but it is not yet perceived in that manner by local stakeholders including municipalities and religious leaders. This reveals that tourists are not sufficiently aware of religious pilgrimages and their potential benefits for the country's economic development. The study recommends that stakeholders (municipalities, religious leaders, pilgrims, tourists, local businesspeople and community members) work together to harness the socio-economic potentials of these pilgrimages. It is argued that this would make it possible for pilgrimage sites to be better appreciated in terms of religious and exchange value purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A religious pilgrimage is generally viewed as a process through which pilgrims depart geographically and psychologically from social structures that govern their daily lives for personal development and spiritual upliftment. Pilgrimages with a strong component of religious tourism are a big revenue generator for different countries for example, Israel and Saudi Arabia. Religious pilgrimages in particular, have not been classified under big revenue generators based on the fact that their spaces including surroundings have no tourism facilities for tourism development purposes. This paper aims to present both a review and systematic reflection on the trends that pertain to sustainable development of tourism at religious pilgrimage destinations. The relationship between religion and tourism, has been studied from different perspectives. Ideally, religious consciousness is considered as a positive influence to sustainable development providing religious travellers with an improved attitude towards nature. The paper uses both the theory and document analysis to look at this phenomenon. Further the paper uses Modernisation and Globalisation theories in guiding the lensing and framing of the questions and objectives for this study. The findings of this paper indicates that the study area could benefit a lot if the required tourism facilities could be available for tourists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]