TOURISM SEGMENTATION BASED ON SPIRITUALITY

The island of São Miguel, in the Azores (Portugal), is characterized in terms of religious belief by the expressions of faith of its people. No doubt the best known one in the Azores is the Ecce Homo Festivities - Senhor Santo Cristo dos Milagres, which take place in the fifth week after Easter and culminates with the procession on the Sunday before the Ascension. This paper aims at understanding the tourist movements in the Azores based on religious motivation, as well as the potential and the best strategies for developing religious tourism. The analysis that follows aims at drawing the profile of tourists who attended the event in 2010, regarding, in particular, the several variables that allowed segmenting them in three different groups named as "Spiritual", "Religious" and "Moderately Religious". The paper is structured in two main parts: the first explains the methodology generally used in this type of studies, presenting the data collection method that was adopted and the structure of the questionnaire; in the second part, we present the data analysis for each of the three referred segments. Finally, we will present the main conclusions, in which some problems relating to the influence of spirituality in the tourists coming for the Ecce Homo Festivities will be approached.