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Religious tourism is one of the oldest and fastest-growing segments. This study analyzes religious tourism through the pilgrimage of Muslims to the holy city of Mecca and has the following objectives: (1) establish the motivational dimensions of religious tourism; (2) identify the motivational dimensions that predict the satisfaction of religious tourism and (3) determine the motivational dimensions that predict return, recommend and say positive things about religious tourism applied to the pilgrimage to a sacred city.

The sample consisted of Muslim pilgrims who had visited Mecca. The sample was collected in Bahrain, a country located on the Persian Gulf, where most of its population is Muslim. A total of 380 valid questionnaires were obtained online. For the data analysis, factorial analysis and the multiple regression method enter were performed.

The results show that religious motivations are more important when visiting a sacred city than secular ones. Three motivational dimensions were found: religious, social and cultural and shopping. The three dimensions found have a significant relationship with satisfaction and loyalty. Likewise, it was found that the religious motivational dimension is the factor that most predicts satisfaction and loyalty in the behavior of religious visits to a sacred city.

The main limitation of the present study was the temporality in which the sample was taken because the demand may vary at another time of the year and therefore vary its results.

The authors of the study recommend that holy cities increase the religious motivations of these travelers by periodically researching their needs and organizing services to suit their desired spiritual experience. Also, to improve the social and cultural part, travel agencies and tourist companies to Mecca should promote social and cultural motivation among travelers in an appropriate way by providing service packages that involve visits to cultural and social sites such as museums and cultural centers.

This research will serve as a management guide for public institutions and private companies to develop more efficient planning in religious destinations and sacred cities.

This study is the first to analyze the construct of motivations in the pilgrimage to the city of Mecca, to then establish what the main motivations are that predict satisfaction and loyalty in a religious city. Thus, its results provide important information for tourist destination managers and tourism service providers.

Surface acoustic wave (SAW) sensors have attracted great attention worldwide for a variety of applications in measuring physical, chemical and biological parameters. However, stability has been one of the key issues which have limited their effective commercial applications. To fully understand this challenge of operation stability, this paper aims to systematically review mechanisms, stability issues and future challenges of SAW sensors for various applications.

This review paper starts with different types of SAWs, advantages and disadvantages of different types of SAW sensors and then the stability issues of SAW sensors. Subsequently, recent efforts made by researchers for improving working stability of SAW sensors are reviewed. Finally, it discusses the existing challenges and future prospects of SAW sensors in the rapidly growing Internet of Things-enabled application market.

A large number of scientific articles related to SAW technologies were found, and a number of opportunities for future researchers were identified. Over the past 20 years, SAW-related research has gained a growing interest of researchers. SAW sensors have attracted more and more researchers worldwide over the years, but the research topics of SAW sensor stability only own an extremely poor percentage in the total researc topics of SAWs or SAW sensors.

Although SAW sensors have been attracting researchers worldwide for decades, researchers mainly focused on the new materials and design strategies for SAW sensors to achieve good sensitivity and selectivity, and little work can be found on the stability issues of SAW sensors, which are so important for SAW sensor industries and one of the key factors to be mature products. Therefore, this paper systematically reviewed the SAW sensors from their fundamental mechanisms to stability issues and indicated their future challenges for various applications.