COVID-19: Exploring Pilgrims’ Travel Risks Perception

Abstract

The outbreak of COVID-19 has placed the world in a crisis like no other, which has a significant impact on the lives of people and the travel industry. Due to the increasing number of COVID-19 cases, this situation may also affect the pilgrims to travel for the annual Hajj and Umrah in mass gatherings as it can spread infectious diseases between pilgrims and the host community. Therefore, this study aims to determine the Hajj and Umrah pilgrimage's risk perception regarding the COVID-19 issues, which may contribute to the pilgrim's willingness to travel to Saudi Arabia after the pandemic ends. This study was conducted while COVID-19 cases were still high in Malaysia. The online survey was distributed to registered Umrah & Hajj pilgrims, and they were selected based on simple random sampling. The results showed that as tourists perceive more risks during religious mass gatherings of Hajj and Umrah, their willingness to travel decreases. Overall, this study might contribute in providing pilgrimage data to tourism practitioners.

Coronavirus and co-infections: A Saudi Arabian perspective

“…Saudi Arabia can be described as an international hub; attributed to mass migration during the annual Hajj and Umrah pilgrimages which are unparalleled mass gatherings in scale, with approximately 2.5 million travellers visiting the nation in 2019; from over 180 countries (Ahmad et al, 2006, Ahmed and Memish, 2020 , Ebrahim et al, 2020 , Azmi et al, 2021 ). In the latter period of 2019, a respiratory infectious disease termed coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) by the WHO, was recognized in the metropolis of Wuhan, China, with the causative pathogen designated as: severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), later on resulting in a pandemic ( Mungroo et al, 2021 ).…”