To read this content please select one of the options below:

Sustainability of religious travel and tourism: a profile deviation perspective

Ghada Talat Alhothali (Department of Marketing, College of Business, University of Jeddah, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia)
Felix Mavondo (Department of Marketing at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia)
Islam Elgammal (Department of Business Administration, College of Business, University of Jeddah, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and Tourism Studies Department, Faculty of Tourism, Suez Canal University, Ismailia, Egypt)

Journal of Islamic Marketing

ISSN: 1759-0833

Article publication date: 25 April 2022

Issue publication date: 11 May 2023

353

Abstract

Purpose

In recent days, there has been an increasing interest towards achieving sustainable tourism objectives globally and specifically in Saudi Arabia. The benefits can be maximized if the government is successful in attracting current pilgrims and influence their future intention to revisit the country as tourists. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to measure pilgrims’ revisit intentions to understand more about the possibility of their potential contribution towards the Saudi tourism and hospitality industry in the evolving circumstances.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper uses configuration theory to identify the “ideal” type of the pilgrims and compares this to the rest to establish if they differ and if that difference matters. Data were collected from 278 visitors to the Holy Mosque in Makkah, Saudi Arabia, to perform Umrah.

Findings

The findings show that a large deviation from the “ideal pilgrim” is negatively related to revisiting intentions and dissemination of positive word of mouth (PWOM).

Research limitations/implications

The development of profiles gives a better understanding of organizations or people across several dimensions looked at holistically. Fundamental to the theory is that there are only a limited number of configurations that achieve optimal performance (however defined).

Originality/value

The analytical approach adopted in this paper leads to achieving verbal and statistical correspondence in tests of “gestalts”. The interest is in establishing whether this difference matters to intentions to revisit and providing PWOM.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

This work is funded by the Deanship of Scientific Research (DSR), University of Jeddah, Jeddah, under grant no. (Uj-02–18-ICP). The authors, therefore, acknowledge with thanks DSR technical and financial support. The current data set draws from a larger research project aimed at understanding factors related to the religious servicescape.

Citation

Alhothali, G.T., Mavondo, F. and Elgammal, I. (2023), "Sustainability of religious travel and tourism: a profile deviation perspective", Journal of Islamic Marketing, Vol. 14 No. 6, pp. 1551-1576. https://doi.org/10.1108/JIMA-09-2021-0312

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited

Related articles