Based on the principles of geography, there exists increasing interaction and mutual influence between two main things: location-space and human functions. In fact, humans’ perception of environmental conditions influences his behavior and decisions. New behavior creates new conditions which will provide the present and the next generation with a new image of the environment. The role of many of the disciplines involved in development planning is to help create suitable locational-spatial conditions via coherent and synergetic effort. In this regard, geography has been able to play a constructive role due to its relative familiarity with environmental conditions and problems. This role has been especially important in tourism development in today’s world due to its wider dimensions and its increasing locational-spatial effects. The present research has investigated the role of locational-spatial factors in the development of religious tourism in rural areas of Mashhad metropolis, adopting an applied, descriptive-analytical methodology. The dependent variable (i.e. religious tourism) consists of nine components and the independent variable (locational-spatial factors) consists of seven components including both changeable and non-changeable factors. The Rapport Pattern was used to identify tourist sphere of influence in Mashhad, and 10 villages were selected as the sample; the Cochran’s formula was also used to identify sample size, based on which 196 people were selected. The unit of analysis was “the village”, and the data gathered via questionnaires were statistically analyzed using SPSS. The findings indicate that if locational-spatial factors (especially changeable ones) are improved, religious tourism will be developed more (up to 0.82 percent). The results show that the development of changeable factors such as the quality of access roads to holy buildings and services will influence the development of religious tourism.