COVID-19: Impacts and perspectives for religious tourism events. The case of Lourdes Pilgrimages

Figures & data

Table 1. The use of Facebook in Research.

Authors and year	Source	Title article	How Facebook was used
Mkono, M., & Hughes, K. (2020)	Journal of Sustainable Tourism	Eco-guilt and eco-shame in tourism consumption contexts: Understanding the triggers and responses	Reviews of posts on Facebook stories regarding Greta Thunberg attendance to the U.N. Climate Action Summit in August 2019.
Möllera, C., Wang, J., & Nguyen, H.T. (2018)	Tourism Management	#StrongerthanWinston: Tourism and crisis communication through Facebook following tropical cyclones in Fiji	Facebook posts have been used to communicate with customers. Both, the communication strategy and reaction of customers have been analyzed.
Villamediana, J., Küster, I., & Vila, N. (2019)	Annals of Tourism Research	Destination engagement on Facebook: Time and seasonality	Engagement of customers following posts on Facebook is analyzed
Marder, B., Archer-Brown, C., Colliander, J., & Lamber, A. (2018)	Journal of Travel Research	Vacation Posts on Facebook: A Model for Incidental Vicarious Travel Consumption	Holiday makers Facebook posts are analyzed to identify their consumption behavior

Source: The authors.

Table 2. Data collection sources.

Facebook page	Language	Nb. of Followers	Nb. of Likes	^1Nb. people checked in Lourdes	Nb. of comments Analyzed (from July/August posts)
https://www.facebook.com/ndlourdes	French	815774	727730	171082	5 (barely any comments on the page is about COVID-19 or Online delivery of ceremonies)
https://www.facebook.com/Santuarionostrasignoradilourdes	Italian	1354	1324	96	15 (barely any comments on the page is about COVID-19 or Online delivery of ceremonies)
https://www.facebook.com/Santuarionuestrasenoradelourdes	Spanish	1266	1227	1	20 (barely any comments on the page is about COVID-19 or Online delivery of ceremonies)
https://www.facebook.com/Santuariodenossasenhoradelourdes	Portuguese	669	651	10	20 (barely any comments on the page is about COVID-19 or Online delivery of ceremonies)
https://www.facebook.com/Sanctuaryofourladyoflourdes	English	211	135	0	50 (barely any comments on the page is about COVID-19 or Online delivery of ceremonies)

Source: The authors (data collected on 11.10.20)

¹ Facebook Check-Ins provide all the information a potential customer would look for – your location, ratings, and a link to your Facebook page for more details. More importantly, Facebook Check-Ins serve as a personal referral from one friend to another. By checking in, a Facebook user is endorsing a business. Facebook check-ins are typically seen by at least 200 friends of the person checking in (causely.com [Online]).

Table 3. NVIVO coding.

Thematic categories	Frequency
Request for all kinds of help	39
COVID-19 and online delivery of the event	30
Thanking God for all his blessings	13
Interjections	12
Complaints	4

Source: The authors.

Appendix 1. Systematic literature review COVID-19/tourism and cognate sectors

Author(s)	Year	Title article	Journal	^1OP	^2RN	^3FP	Key points
Baum & Hai	2020	Hospitality, tourism, human rights and the impact of COVID-19	International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management			X	Impacts of COVID-19 on peacetime
Wen, Kozak, Yang & Liu	2020	COVID-19: potential effects on Chinese citizens’ lifestyle and travel	Tourism Review			X	Impacts of COVID-19 on the future of the tourism industry
Séraphin & Dosquet	2020	Mountain tourism and second home tourism as post COVID-19 lockdown placebo?	Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes		X		In the post-COVID-19 lockdown context, second home tourism and mountain tourism could play the role of placebo.
Gossling, Scott & Hall	2020	Pandemics, tourism and global change: A rapid assessment of COVID-19	Journal of Sustainable Tourism			X	Impact of COVID-19 on the different sector of the tourism industry / strategy for the future
Higgins-Desbiolles	2020	Socialising tourism for social and ecological justice after COVID-19	Tourism Geographies			X	COVID-19 offers the tourism industry an opportunity to reinvent itself
Lapointe	2020	Reconnecting tourism after COVID-19: the paradox of alterity in tourism areas	Tourism Geographies	X			These changes points to a relinking of tourism to the needs of the host communities as part of a survival strategy in a time when there are no tourists, and could become, in the long run, a resilience strategy.
Zeng, Chen & Lew	2020	From high-touch to high-tech: COVID-19 drives robotics adoption	Tourism Geographies	X			Robotics, artificial intelligence, and human-robot interactions have gained an increased presence to help manage the spread of COVID-19 in hospitals, airports, transportation systems, recreation and scenic areas, hotels, restaurants, and communities in general.
Carr	2020	COVID-19, indigenous peoples and tourism: a view from New Zealand	Tourism Geographies	X			The COVID-19 pandemic’s impact is predicted to be long-lasting with intergenerational impacts for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.
Ioannides & Gyimothy	2020	The COVID-19 crisis as an opportunity to escape the unsustainable global tourism path	Tourism Geographies	X			The COVID-19 pandemic has halted mobility globally on an unprecedented scale, causing the neoliberal market mechanisms of global tourism to be severely disrupted.
Cheer	2020	Human flourishing, tourism transformation and COVID-19: a conceptual touchstone	Tourism Geographies	X			The concept of ‘human flourishing’ offers merits as an alternative touchstone for evaluating the impacts of tourism on host communities. Human flourishing has the potential to offer more nuanced sets of approaches by which the impact of tourism on host communities might be measured. The challenge remaining is how to develop robust indices to calibrate human flourishing policy successes.
Prideaux, Thompson & Pabel	2020	Lessons from COVID-19 can prepare global tourism for the economic transformation needed to combat climate change	Tourism Geographies	X			Many of the lessons that emerged from the pandemic can be applied to strategies to deal with climate change.
Brouder	2020	Reset redux: possible evolutionary pathways toward the transformation of tourism in a COVID-19 world	Tourism Geographies	X			COVID-19 presents a once in a generation opportunity where the institutional pump is primed for transformation.
Everingham & Chassagne	2020	Post COVID-19 ecological and social reset: moving away from capitalist growth models toward tourism as Buen Vivir	Tourism Geographies			X	In relation to tourism, the pandemic provides an opportunity for reimaging tourism otherwise, away from exploitative models that disregard people, places, and the natural environment, and toward a tourism that has positive impacts.
Haywood	2020	A post-COVID future: tourism community re-imagined and enabled	Tourism Geographies			X	Such undertakings represent a ‘coming together’ of all stakeholders, a role that academicians are urged to embrace, especially through action research, curriculum change and creation of ‘daring classrooms’.
Galvani, Lew & Perez	2020	COVID-19 is expanding global consciousness and the sustainability of travel and tourism	Tourism Geographies	X			The pandemic will stimulate growing numbers of people, businesses and governments to adopt new ways of thinking, behaving and operating that are more closely aligned with the goals of sustainable development.
Rowen	2020	The transformational festival as a subversive toolbox for a transformed tourism: lessons from Burning Man for a COVID-19 world	Tourism Geographies	X			As borders reopen and mobility and recreation recommencs, the capacity of transformational festivals both within and beyond their highly porous time-spaces to transform their participants offer lessons for the blurring, if not the outright obliteration of the demarcation between guests and hosts.
Renaud	2020	Reconsidering global mobility – distancing from mass cruise tourism in the aftermath of COVID-19	Tourism Geographies	X			Host territories, relying on national and regional governance, should gradually ban or restrict the arrival of mega-cruise ships, implement policies that promote the development of a niche cruise tourism industry (NCTI) with small ships and develop a fleet controlled by local actors.
Crossley	2020	Ecological grief generates desire for environmental healing in tourism after COVID-19	Tourism Geographies	X			In this context, animal reclamation of urban spaces can be identified as a motif of environmental hope that symbolizes life, regeneration and resilience, the understanding of which may contribute to the project of hopeful tourism in the post-COVID-19 era.
Niewiadomski	2020	COVID-19: from temporary de-globalisation to a re-discovery of tourism?	Tourism Geographies	X			The path of re-development and transformation which the global tourism production system will follow once the COVID-19 crisis has been resolved is yet to be determined.
Brouder, Teoh, Salazar, Mostafanezhad, Pung, Lapointe, Higgins-Desbiolles, Haywood, Hall & Clausen	2020	Reflections and discussions: tourism matters in the new normal post COVID-19	Tourism Geographies			X	No abstract provided
Romagosa	2020	The COVID-19 crisis: Opportunities for sustainable and proximity tourism	Tourism Geographies	X			No abstract provided
Nepal	2020	Travel and tourism after COVID-19 – business as usual or opportunity to reset?	Tourism Geographies	X			No abstract provided
Tremblay-Huet	2020	COVID-19 leads to a new context for the “right to tourism”: a reset of tourists’ perspectives on space appropriation is needed	Tourism Geographies				No abstract provided
Hall, Scott & Gossling	2020	Pandemics, transformations and tourism: be careful what you wish for	Tourism Geographies			X	It is concluded that the selective nature of the effects of COVID-19 and the measures to contain it may lead to reorientation of tourism in some cases, but in others will contribute to policies reflecting the selfish nationalism of some countries.
Edelheim	2020	How should tourism education values be transformed after 2020?	Tourism Geographies	X			Values and axiology are necessary components for successful and meaningful tourism education and research. They especially need to be revisited in considering the future of higher education in a COVID-19 world.
Cooper & Alderman	2020	Cancelling March Madness exposes opportunities for a more sustainable sports tourism economy	Tourism Geographies	X			COVID-19 offers an opportunity to bring about an alternative, more sustainable sports tourism economy.
Cave & Dredge	2020	Regenerative tourism needs diverse economic practices	Tourism Geographies	X			Calls for a new relationship between tourism and capitalism have intensified as a result of COVID-19.
Stankov, Filimonau & Vujicic	2020	A mindful shift: an opportunity for mindfulness-driven tourism in a post-pandemic world	Tourism Geographies	X			Many see the COVID-19 pandemic as a turning point for tourism, a chance to reflect on the pressing environmental and socio-economic concerns of the industry, and an opportunity to pinpoint a more desirable direction.
Benjamin, Dilette & Alderman	2020	We can’t return to normal”: committing to tourism equity in the post-pandemic age	Tourism Geographies	X			A resilient post-pandemic tourism must be more equitable and just, in terms of how it operates, its effects on people and place, and how we as scholars teach, study and publicly engage the travel industry particularly in preparing its current and future leaders.
Pernecky	2020	Critical tourism scholars: brokers of hope	Tourism Geographies	X			The hope driving post COVID-19 visions of tourism is argued to lie in more thoughtful and responsible engagement with tourism, and in our ability to positively transform it.
Tomassini & Cavagnaro	2020	The novel spaces and power-geometries in tourism and hospitality after 2020 will belong to the ‘local’	Tourism Geographies	X			This crisis has spread novel uncertainties and fears about the future of our world, but at the same time, it has also set the ground to rethink the future scenario of tourism and hospitality to bring about a potentially positive transformation after 2020.
Ateljevic	2020	Transforming the (tourism) world for good and (re)generating the potential ‘new normal’	Tourism Geographies	X			With or without the global COVID-19 pandemic to promote and envision a meaningful and positive transformation of the planet in general, and tourism specifically, a wake-up call is long overdue.
Yang, Zhang & Chen	2020	Coronavirus pandemic and tourism: Dynamic stochastic general equilibrium modeling of infectious disease outbreak	Annals of Tourism Research		X		Model to examine the impact of COVID-19 on the tourism industry
Nanni & Ulqinaku	2020	Mortality threats and technology effects on tourism	Annals of Tourism Research			X	It opens the door to future research on what tourism can do to help people when they are faced by mortality salience due to a series of events: pandemics, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters
Yu, Li, Yu & Zhou	2020	Communication related health crisis on social media: A case of COVID-19	Current issues in Tourism		X		Impacts of COVID-19 on customers’ perception of tourism products and services
Chen, Huang & Li	2020	A content analysis of Chinese news coverage on COVID-19 and tourism	Current issues in Tourism			X	News coverage plays a significant role in the tourism industry. 2019 Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) has severely affected the tourism-related businesses and has been featured in Chinese news coverage.
McCartney	2020	The impact of the coronavirus outbreak on Macao. From tourism lockdown to tourism recovery	Current Issue in Tourism		X		The economic consequences to the casino industry, which supplies 85% of the government’s total tax revenues, have been dramatic, as casino revenues continue to spiral downwards by over 80% in both February and March.
Zheng, Goh & Wen	2020	The effects misleading media reports about COVID-19 on Chinese tourists’ mental health: a perspective article	Anatolia	X			COVID-19 and its impacts on Chinese tourists’ mental health + stigmatization of individual Chinese
Wen, Wang & Kozak	2020	Post-COVID-19 Chinese domestic tourism market recovery: potential influence of traditional Chinese medicine on tourist behavior	Anatolia	X			Tourism industry recovery is important to discuss amidst COVID-19. Findings can provide insight and possible solutions for stakeholders in various destinations.
Naumov, Varadzhakova & Naydenov	2020	Sanitation and hygiene as factors for choosing a place to stay: perceptions of the Bulgarian tourists	Anatolia		X		How the tourism industry has been hit by the tourism industry
Rivera	2020	Hitting the reset button for hospitality research in times of crisis: COVID19 and beyond	International Journal of Hospitality Management	X			Opportunities for academic research tourism/COVID-19
Parnell, Widdop, Bond & Wilson	2020	COVID-19, networks and sport	Managing Sport and Leisure			X	Impact of COVID-19 on events
Hammami, Harrabi, Mohr & Krustrup	2020	Physical activity and Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19): Specific recommendations for home-based physical training	Managing Sport and Leisure			X	COVID-19 and impacts on physical activities
Wen, Wang, Kozak, Liu & Hou	2020	Many brains are better than one: the importance of interdisciplinary studies on COVID-19 in and beyond tourism	Tourism Recreation Research		X		Promotion multidisciplinary research into global health problems as a way to enhance social welfare.

Source: Séraphin (2020).

Date: Data collected on 26.05.20.

¹ Opinion paper.

² Research note.

³ Full paper.

Séraphin, H. (2020). Covid-19: An opportunity to review existing grounded theories in event studies. Journal of Convention and Event Tourism, 22(1), 3-35. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/15470148.2020.1776657

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