Sandra Patricia Miranda Salazar
Ecuador: our journey in religious tourism
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Sandra Patricia Miranda Salazar
Ecuador: our journey in religious tourism
In Riobamba, as in many cities and communities across Ecuador, a religious celebration begins long before a procession takes to the streets. It begins at meetings, within families who keep a tradition alive, and among those who care for a sacred image, prepare an altar, organise a route or renew a vow. When visitors finally arrive, they encounter the visible expression of something that has been taking shape for days, months and, in truth, generations.
Understanding this dimension has been fundamental since I became Ecuador’s National Coordinator for the World Religious Tourism Network in 2024. From the outset, this responsibility raised a question that continues to guide our work: how should we approach religious tourism in a country where many religious traditions were never created for tourism, but instead emerged—and endure—through the faith, memory and collective efforts of their communities?
The answer began with research.
Ecuador possesses an extraordinarily diverse religious heritage. Churches, shrines, temples, convents, devotional images and museums are part of it, as are pilgrimages, processions, festivals, routes, music, food, stories, vows and community practices that continue to be passed down through generations. Reducing this richness to an inventory of buildings or attractions would mean overlooking precisely what gives it life: people and the meanings they create around these expressions, the vast majority of which are recorded in Ecuador’s National Cultural Heritage System.
Through the National Coordination Office, we have therefore established three interconnected areas of work: research, conservation and outreach. We research to understand; conserve what communities recognise as meaningful; and share this heritage responsibly, seeking to ensure that visitors’ presence does not ultimately alter the very things that drew their interest.
This perspective aligns with the World Religious Tourism Network’s own broad understanding of religious tourism, encompassing pilgrimages, places of worship, celebrations, museums and interpretation centres, religious historic sites and other experiences, alongside principles of sustainability and responsible tourism. The Network’s objectives also include research, collaboration with religious communities, conservation and training.
Riobamba has been our first area of work. We chose it because the National Coordination Office is based in the city, but also as a methodological decision: before attempting to understand religious tourism on a national scale, we needed to observe it in a specific place, follow its processes and get to know the people involved.
The Escuela Superior Politécnica de Chimborazo (ESPOCH) has played an important role in this journey. Two university degree projects provided an initial exploration of religious tourism, while other cultural heritage research initiatives offered insights that broadened our perspective. Our experience with safeguarding Holy Week in Riobamba also helped us understand that a religious tradition cannot be studied solely in terms of the crowds it attracts or the tourism opportunities it might generate.
Holy Week exists, first and foremost, because there is a community that lives it.
The procession of the Señor del Buen Suceso, held on Holy Tuesday in Riobamba, makes this especially clear. For a few hours, the everyday city is transformed. Streets take on a different meaning, sacred images and symbols appear, delegations take their assigned places, and hundreds of people participate through faith, tradition, family memory or observation. In 2026, around 110 delegations took part in the procession, which followed a route of approximately 44 city blocks. Behind those figures, however, lie stories, relationships, decisions and meanings that are currently being researched.
This is precisely where a significant part of our work now lies: observing, interviewing, documenting and understanding how these traditions temporarily transform a place, and how people build a sense of belonging, memory and identity around them.
Riobamba, however, is not intended to explain Ecuador as a whole. It is the first place from which we are learning.
The challenge now is to extend our research progressively across a country whose religious expressions differ profoundly from one region and community to another. The pilgrimage of the Virgen del Cisne in Loja, devotion to the Virgen de la Nube in Azogues, pilgrimages to El Quinche, Holy Week celebrations in different cities, and the many religious festivals held in parishes and communities each need to be understood within their own contexts. This is why our National Coordination Office is part of Ecuador’s Network of Tourism Observatories and Research (ROITE).
Our aim is not to compile a catalogue of religious sites as quickly as possible. We seek to identify who keeps these traditions alive, what they mean to those involved, how they are organised, who makes decisions about them, what changes they are undergoing, and how they currently relate to visitors, tourists and pilgrims.
This distinction is essential, because not all religious heritage needs to become a tourism product.
There are moments, spaces, objects and practices that require protection. Before asking how to promote a tradition, we must therefore ask what can be shared, who should make that decision, under what conditions encounters with visitors can take place, and how that process can contribute responsibly to the local area.
We also need a better understanding of those who travel out of faith. The available figures provide a starting point, but we still need specific information that allows us to distinguish between pilgrims, visitors and religious tourists, understand their motivations, and examine their relationship with the places through which they travel.
No single institution can undertake this task alone. It requires religious communities and institutions, universities, decentralised autonomous governments, researchers, heritage managers, guides, tourism businesses and local organisations. The World Religious Tourism Network itself embraces this broad collaboration, bringing together public authorities, destinations, religious institutions, businesses, travel agencies, universities and organisations connected with heritage and pilgrimage routes.
After these first few years, Ecuador’s experience has left us with one firm conviction: before we promote, we must understand.
Religious tourism can foster encounters, knowledge and opportunities for local communities, but its responsible development begins by recognising that what one visitor sees as heritage, a photograph or an experience may represent a vow, a family memory, an identity or a profound act of faith for someone else.
Riobamba has allowed us to begin learning this lesson. Now we face the challenge of looking across Ecuador, listening to its communities and building knowledge alongside those who keep this heritage alive.
Perhaps the true starting point for religious tourism is not to ask what we can show the world, but first to understand what the heritage we wish to share means to the community to which it belongs.
Author: Sandra Patricia Miranda Salazar
National Coordinator for Ecuador, World Religious Tourism Network
The authors are responsible for the choice and presentation of the facts contained in this document and for the opinions expressed therein, which are not necessarily those of Tourism and Society Think Tank and do not commit the Organization, and should not be attributed to TSTT or its members.
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