Development of Pilgrimage Tourism as an Application for Supporting Local Religious People
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Abstract
Hajj and Umrah are both Islamic pilgrimages in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, which are the main activities for Muslims. These are also required by Muslims in Thailand, and the trend is increasing every year. Typically, the number of pilgrims who can perform Hajj is limited by Saudi Arabia. In 2022, Thailand received a quota of 13,000 people, and the Committee for the Promotion of Hajj Affairs in Thailand will distribute the quota to entrepreneurs and religious leaders who have licenses to lead pilgrimage tourism. However, there are some difficulties in a pilgrimage tour, such as visa applications, accommodation bookings, flights, and so on. These processes need a lot of paperwork, so entrepreneurs and religious leaders will present to support pilgrims. There have been reports of pilgrimage tourism, including high service charges, poor management, and fraud by scammers. To the best of our knowledge, there is no digital platform to help local religious leaders organize the tour and provide online services for pilgrims. Therefore, we design and develop a novel application for pilgrimage tourism to facilitate religious leaders in handling paperwork for the Committee for the Promotion of Hajj Affairs in Thailand and support pilgrims in booking pilgrimage tours through a mobile web application, namely https://www.hajestic.com. The key development of the application is a user-centric, e-marketplace-based structure integrated to secure online payments and ensure compliance for users. In addition, we also designed 3 qualitative questionnaires based on the technology acceptance model (TAM) to guarantee the application meets users’ requirements and satisfaction.
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