What is Islamic Tour Operator

As religious tourism developed, some stakeholders have focused on the religious guide as a spiritual leader of the pilgrimage to supply religious knowledge and deepen the spiritual experience of the participants. In fact, the customers of religious tour operators seem to recognise religious guides as the important element in selecting a religious tour, and religious tour operators actively promote these religious figures as a significant element in their tour services. This chapter, therefore, considers the social context of religious guides in the Islamic religious tourism industry by mapping them in the structure of the marketplace from the perspective of the flow of ‘religious capital'. Particular focus is placed on clarifying the flow of the religious guide's religious capital in the religious tourism industry, and the social networking emerging from the religious tourism industry through considering the novel use of financial and physical resources in the marketplace for religious tourism.