The impact of accommodation entrepreneurship activities on Islamic tourism (Umrah) development: An empirical evidence from Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Currently, academics have given an intense interest in investigating the factors that promote the tourism industry as evidenced by the growing studies which investigate the impact of accommodation services as one of the main factors in the tourism industry. However, this investigated impact is missing in the Islamic tourism industry. For this reason, this paper is filling this gap by investigating the impact of accommodation entrepreneurship activities on Islamic tourism (Umrah pilgrimage) in Saudi Arabia. This paper applied a robust non-parametric approach of bootstrapped quantile regression to estimate the effect of accommodation entrepreneurship activities on Islamic tourism (Umrah pilgrimage) using a sample of the total Umrah pilgrims (Islamic tourists) as a proxy for Islamic tourism (Umrah pilgrimage) development and total accommodation entrepreneurship activities as an independent variable covering a period from 2010 until 2018. The findings demonstrated that accommodation entrepreneurship activities are promoting Islamic tourism (Umrah pilgrimage) industry in Saudi Arabia. The findings also indicated that accommodation entrepreneurship activities are one of the main factors that promote Islamic tourism (Umrah) in Saudi Arabia alongside Islamic life and belief, and religious loyalty.