Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on religious tourism amongst Muslims in Iraq

Abstract

Tourism, as an industry, has become one of the most dynamic sectors of the world economy these days and has specific features that are different from other industries. In the tourism industry, production and consumption points occur spatially at the same time. In addition, the tourism industry contributes to the economic growth of developed regions and can simultaneously distribute the wealth created geographically. It is notable that the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused many challenges in the tourism industry regarding the presence of tourists in tourism centres and the closing of all tourism service chains, including food, entertainment, transportation and travel services worldwide. Tourism-related businesses, which are considered as invisible export and one of the engines of development and occupation, have been rendered obsolete. In other words, the businesses, as well as multiple units and activities in the related chain, have been damaged and employees of this industry have lost their jobs. This has led to the recession and regressive course of the developing and large industry of tourism in the world. It is worth noting that the tourism industry includes various sections, the most important of which is religious tourism. All religions in the world have different religious places, works, traditions and customs, which have become amongst the most important tourist attractions. Meanwhile, Muslims and the religion of Islam play a significant role in this branch of tourism. The Hajj, pilgrimage to holy places and the existence of mourning ceremonies or religious celebrations of Muslims are amongst the largest religious tourism events in the world. Given the importance of this issue, the present study aimed to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on religious tourism in Iraq in 2021. This field study was conducted on 4500 Muslim managers and staff of restaurants, hotels, grocery stores, clothing stores and souvenir shops around the holy shrines of imams and religious places in Karbala, Najaf, Kufa, Samarra and Kazemi. According to the results, the tourism of Iraq, which is mainly limited to Muslim religious sites in several major Iraqi cities, has also seen a decline in the number of religious tourists. The negative effects of COVID-19 on religious tourism have also been proved statistically by the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), as µ ≥ 3 has been counted in all indices.Contribution: Our findings offered new insights into the impact of COVID-19 on tourism, based on statistical analysis. In this study, the authors showed how COVID-19 affects various aspects of religious tourism, which has not been addressed in previous researches.

The impact of religious tourism on the economy and tourism industry

“…Religious tourists can be divided into two groups: firstly, those whose purpose of travelling is to do religious things based on religious beliefs, and the time and duration of their stay is not dependent on an era or a historical person. Secondly, those who, in addition to religious visits, visit other recreational facilities and spend their free time; in other words, their travel goals are multipurpose with religious priority (Partono Prasetio et al 2022).…”

Modelo de la conducta planificada para la promoción del turismo civilizado: caso Villa de Leyva (Boyacá, Colombia)

“…El turismo es una actividad importante dentro de las regiones, ya que propicia la atracción del gasto e inversión (Prasetio et al, 2022), convirtiéndose en un renglón relevante para el crecimiento y desarrollo económico (Schubert et al, 2010, citados en Brida et al, 2014Ibáñez y Rodríguez, 2012;Gambarota y Lorda, 2017;Uriostegui-Díaz et al, 2019;Gazal et al, 2022;Vieira et al, 2020;Bailoa y Cravo, 2020), al punto que la Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL, 2020) lo considera como un eje fundamental que contribuye a las exportaciones, al producto interno bruto y al empleo. Por tanto, de acuerdo con el último Barómetro del Turismo Mundial de la Organización Mundial del Turismo (OMT, 2022), el turismo en el mundo se sigue recuperando de los efectos que le trajo la pandemia por la COVID-19 y, para el primer trimestre de 2022, los destinos en general recibieron casi el triple de llegadas internacionales (117 millones de llegadas internacionales) en comparación con el mismo periodo para 2021 (41 millones de llegadas internacionales).…”