Clustering visitors to a religious island : the case of Tinos

Tourists visiting religious destinations are usually influenced by religious motivations. However, this might not be the case for all tourists, since visitors to religious sites may visit a destination not only for pilgrimage, but also to satisfy various needs interlinked with social, cultural and recreational factors. This paper attempts to investigate the motivations and activities of tourists visiting Tinos, a Greek island known as a religious destination for Christian Orthodox, by undertaking a clustering approach. A self-administrated questionnaire was distributed to 97 visitors of Tinos during the summer of 2007. From the findings it is evident that although the island is considered as one of the main religious sites for Christian Orthodox, tourists are not a homogenous group. Instead, the analytical approach adopted produced three segments, namely the “cultural tourists”, the “vacationers” and the “religious tourists”.