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The purpose of this paper is to discuss various aspects of the development of the places of apparitions and miraculous images, motives and behavioral characteristics of pilgrims coming to the miraculous places of the Virgin Mary in Lithuania.

The paper reviews literature about miraculous events and presents miraculous places in Lithuania (apparition places of the Virgin Mary and sites of miraculous images). Various classifications are applied. Pilgrims ' motivation and behavioral aspects are analyzed based on the quantitative survey.

The research showed that the main motives of religious pilgrims visiting miraculous places were asking for God’s grace, health, expressing gratitude to Jesus or Virgin Mary as well as spiritual quest and renewal. These places attract pilgrims who want to solve different problems in their life or to recover from illnesses. Religious pilgrimage has different forms and rituals, and constitutes different models of the specific behavior. During the journey, pilgrims perform various religious practices such as praying, singing hymns, kissing the relics, etc. The grouping of devotional rituals performed during the pilgrimage and at the destination place is presented.

The paper is important to the researchers of pilgrimage and religious tourism. For the first time, miraculous places of Lithuania are analyzed in the broader international context. Classifications of the miraculous sites indicate various aspects of the development of these places. Motives and behavioral characteristics of pilgrims enable to better understand the multidimensional reality of religious pilgrimage.

Reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Now that shopping online is normal rather than being a minority activity, and that users include people of disparate ages, incomes and technical experience, the focus should be on the customer rather than the technology. As websites become better and better, easier to use and offer believable assurances that your payment details are safe in their hands, so the necessity for differentiation increases.

Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to‐digest format.

Globalization, advanced by technologies of production and information, created seamless world markets with profound impacts on the world economy. Vast amounts of wealth have been created, but that wealth has been unequally distributed. Such inequality has meant that large numbers of young people have not been able to find the kinds of jobs and careers that provide the “goods” life extolled in a consumer society. Nor do the dominant values of rationality, neo-liberalism or secularism hold much appeal. These conditions have encouraged the emergence of a number of subcultures of transgression, identity-granting communities of meaning which provide members with a sense of community with recognition and empowerment. As many such subcultures repudiate dominant norms, we note how they resemble the medieval carnival, which Bakhtin showed was a time and place of inversion, transgression, and celebration of the grotesque. It allowed the common people encapsulate realms of agency to articulate disdain and resistance. Yet this served to reproduce the dominant system.

In much the same way, insofar as globalization is intimately tied to cities, we have seen the growing importance of cities as nodal points for global commerce as well as sites for entertainment and tourism. These factors, together with the longstanding anonymity and toleration of the city, have become focal points for the emergence of a number of oppositional subcultures. They include those who embrace extreme body modification, numerous forms of body adornment through piercings (rings, posts, studs), tattoos, and surgical modifications such as implanted horns, furrows, or split tongues. Following Simmel, adornment can be seen as a means of inclusion within a group and differentiation from others. The practitioners of extreme body modification label themselves “urban primitives,” who see themselves rejecting global modernity, the occupation-based status hierarchies of the dominant occupational system and its shallow, materialistic culture. They see themselves as a moment of the “transvaluation of values” in which Dionysian passion triumphs over Apollonian control and restraint. This is especially evident in various genital decorations in which what heretofore has been private and exposure was a matter of shame. There has been a “cultural transformation of the pubic sphere.” While such groups find community, identity and recognition, they must also be understood as a key ingredient of the city in a global age in which diversity, cosmopolitanism, and the offbeat constitute essential moments of urban ambience.

Much corporate and government strategy is a reaction to the widely accepted wisdom that a new economy, grounded in an ever‐quickening pace of change, is emerging world‐wide. But what evidence is there? In these extracts from a recent interview the US economist Paul Krugman challenges whether there are any measures to show we live in such exceptional times.

This paper aims to analyse the development of the pilgrimage phenomenon over the past few decades. Pilgrimage was the first tourism mobility to come into existence thousands of years ago. In recent decades, its significance has decreased, as other tourism segments have gained prominence. Although modern tourism is regarded as a relatively new phenomenon, its origins are clearly rooted in the age-old practice of pilgrimage. Indeed, the development of tourism is difficult to understand without a thorough comprehension of the practice of pilgrimage in ancient times.

This paper analyses the development of the pilgrimage phenomenon over the past few decades. The phenomenon of Pilgrimage Tourism and the nexus between the two mobilities has been experiencing tremendous changes over the past few decades and is still in the midst of an on-going process of transformation.

This paper concludes with the prediction that pilgrimage will re-emerge when the many similar segments – particularly, spiritual tourism, heritage tourism, religious tourism, dark tourism and secular pilgrimage – are re-identified as pilgrimage: a mobility for the search for meaning that contains an element of transformation that is often deep and enduring (as they were viewed at the dawn of humanity and for thousands of years).

This review has examined the development of pilgrimage tourism as a research topic, highlighting the importance of re-examining our contemporary usage of terms in order to allow for broader interpretations of different phenomena in the field of tourism. These conclusions are consistent with the current calls for a fundamental rethinking of the paradigms and the norms shaping scholarship on pilgrimage, dark tourism and tourism as a whole from a post-disciplinary perspective based on synthesis and synergy.

Given the growing importance of religious tourism, the purpose of this paper is to present a review of the literature around the area.

All papers with the term “religious tourism” have been searched via Emerald Insight from January 2006 to December 2017. The search was run in June 2017 for the last time and all early cite papers falling under the criteria were also included. This has ensured that key literature produced after the seminal work by Timothy and Olsen (Eds) (2006) has been reviewed. Certain exclusions apply which have been listed in the paper.

Key themes from the literature on religious tourism along with new developments and overlaps with other tourism sectors have been highlighted.

This paper reviews literature spanning more than a decade on religious tourism.

This paper aims to investigate how motivation aspects including expected organizational rewards (EOR) and enjoyment in helping others (EHO) drive umrah travelers’ participation. Furthermore, it verifies the effect of umrah travelers’ participation on loyalty and assesses the perceived value and umrah travelers’ satisfaction emerging in this relationship.

The survey uses the purposive sampling method. Data analysis uses confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling with a total sample of 438 umrah travelers.

The results show that EOR and EHO affect umrah travelers’ participation; umrah travelers’ participation has a direct effect on umrah travelers’ loyalty; and all the relationships between umrah travelers’ participation, perceived value, satisfaction and loyalty are significant.

This study contributes to the theory of religious tourism particularly in identifying the motivation aspects as the antecedents of umrah travelers’ participation beyond religiosity. Furthermore, this study provides the theory of umrah travelers’ participation and loyalty and proposes that perceived value and satisfaction emerge in this relationship.

本研究框架调查了动机方面的内容, 包括预期的组织奖励（EOR）和帮助他人的愉悦感（EHO）是如何推动朝圣旅游者的参与的。 此外, 它验证了朝圣旅游者参与对忠诚度的影响, 并评估了这种关系中出现的感知价值, 以及朝圣旅行者的满意度。

调查采用目的抽样方法。 共收集了438位朝圣旅游者的样本, 采用验证性因素分析和结构方程模型进行数据分析。

结果表明, EOR和EHO影响朝圣旅游者的参与； 朝圣旅游者的参与会直接影响朝圣旅游者的忠诚度； 朝圣旅游者的参与、感知的价值、满意度和忠诚度之间的所有关系都很显著。

这项研究为宗教旅游学理论做出了贡献, 特别是在确定动机方面, 是超越宗教信仰来讨论朝圣旅行者参与度的先驱研究。 此外, 这项研究提供了朝圣旅游者的参与和忠诚度的理论, 并提出在这种关系中出现了感知的价值和满意度。

Este trabajo investiga cómo los aspectos motivacionales, incluidas las recompensas organizacionales esperadas (EOR) y el placer de ayudar a otros (EHO), impulsan la participación de los viajeros “umrah”. Además, verifica el efecto de la participación de dichos viajeros sobre la lealtad y evalúa el valor percibido y satisfacción, que emerge en esta relación.

La encuesta utiliza el método de muestreo intencional. El análisis de los datos, emplea análisis factorial confirmatorio y modelos de ecuaciones estructurales (SEM), sobre una muestra total de 438 viajeros “umrah”.

Los resultados arrojan que, EOR y EHO afectan a la participación de los viajeros “umrah”; Que la participación de dichos viajeros tiene un efecto directo en la lealtad de los mismos; y todas las relaciones entre la participación de los viajeros de “umrah”, el valor percibido, la satisfacción y la lealtad son significativas. 

Este estudio contribuye al turismo religioso y sus teorías, particularmente en la identificación de los aspectos de motivación y los antecedentes de la participación de los viajeros “umrah”, más allá de la propia religiosidad. Además, este estudio proporciona a la literature, el análisis sobre la participación y lealtad de los viajeros “umrah”, y propone que el valor percibido y la satisfacción de los mismos, sean elementos a considerer en esta relación.

The aim of this chapter is to argue that charisma is a collective representation, and that charismatic authority is a social status that derives more from the “recognition” of the followers than from the “magnetism” of the leaders. I contend further that a close reading of Max Weber shows that he, too, saw charisma in this light.

I develop my argument by a close reading of many of the most relevant texts on the subject. This includes not only the renowned texts on this subject by Max Weber, but also many books and articles that interpret or criticize Weber’s views.

I pay exceptionally close attention to key arguments and texts, several of which have been overlooked in the past.

Writers for whom charisma is personal magnetism tend to assume that charismatic rule is natural and that the full realization of democratic norms is unlikely. Authority, in this view, emanates from rulers unbound by popular constraint. I argue that, in fact, authority draws both its mandate and its energy from the public, and that rulers depend on the loyalty of their subjects, which is never assured. So charismatic claimants are dependent on popular choice, not vice versa.

I advocate a “culturalist” interpretation of Weber, which runs counter to the dominant “personalist” account. Conventional interpreters, under the sway of theology or mass psychology, misread Weber as a romantic, for whom charisma is primal and undemocratic rule is destiny. This essay offers a counter-reading.