As a form of spiritual tourism, the Pilgrimage or Hajj is the fifth core pillar of Islam, which involves the global mass gathering and movement of travelers from around the globe to the holy lands in Saudi Arabia. Hajj event is one of the worldwide hubs of health risk in the COVID-19 era, which suspends or limits this annual event for the past two seasons. Towards dealing with this protracted crisis and ensuring the sustainability of this critical event and its resilience to deal with any future concerns, this chapter discusses Hajj-related COVID-19 threats and realities across the chain of Hajj management. Further, it analyses the future outlook of the interlinked domains of health, logistical, and technology, as it provides the feasible, practical strategies and manifestations for the pre-departure processes, management of pilgrims in the holy lands, and post-return processes. The relevant governments and stakeholders can directly consider these strategies to overcome the current crisis and sustain Hajj in the future.
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Hajj is the fifth core pillar of Islam of which each Muslim should perform if they are capable of doing so. Despite the significant impact of Hajj on the individual identity of Muslims, the gathering of pilgrims itself is one of the core sublime meanings and aims of Hajj. Muslim, in turn, meeting with other millions of Muslim pilgrims, who came every year from all over the world and met in the holy city of Makkah, to gather and practice the notion of unity with each other beyond the social differences, origins, and cultures under a unified umbrella of justice and solidarity. Moreover, to practice unified activities within limited geographical areas, in unified timeframes, with the same physical appearance, and all in line with the specific significance given by Islam to the public customs. Whereas, among the other forms of Islamic worship, Hajj involves specialised forms of interactions among Muslims. For instance, the gathering of different sexes in the same locations, and the interactions among different nationalities is intensive.
In addition to the spiritual dimension of Hajj in Islam, it includes the performing of kinetic activities. Most of these activities are compulsory and timed activities, in which this worship is not valid without performing them, while some other activities are voluntary activities and where pilgrims seek a reward from God according to the holy Quran. The gathering of pilgrims in Saudi Arabia extends for more than three months, where pilgrims travel to Makkah and stay there for visiting the holy places during their presence in the holy land. However, the most concentrated gathering of more than three million pilgrims takes place for four to five days in certain districts of Makkah.
During the first compulsory day of Hajj, pilgrims travel to Arafat and stay until the sunset and then move to Muzdalifah. On the second day, pilgrims travel to Mina, stone the symbol of Satan, and visit Makkah to perform the Tawaf and the Sa’y. In the third, fourth, and optionally fifth day, they sleep in Mina for two to three nights, stone the symbol of Satan, sacrifice an animal, return to Makkah, and perform the farewell Tawaf.
Further to travel for Hajj, pilgrims can also travel to the holy city of Makkah for Umrah. Unlike Hajj, Umrah can be performed in a couple of hours in the holy mosque in Makkah in any time slot. Therefore, Saudi Arabia receives tens of millions of Muslims to perform Umrah throughout the year in addition to the concentrated gathering of Hajj, which makes this industry one of the most valuable economic industries for Saudi Arabia and all Islamic countries alike. Likewise, for various industries such as tourism agencies, airline companies, operators (Ebrahim et al., 2020). This chapter, however, focuses on Hajj with taking into consideration that what is successful for Hajj is almost applied to Umrah as well.
With the annually increasing number of pilgrims, and the expectations of receiving more than ten million pilgrims from around 180 countries by 2030, the management of Hajj becomes extremely complex and causes various forms of challenges for the Saudi authorities and all stakeholders engaged in Hajj management. Management of this mass gathering entails several complexities that can be in the forms of loss of people in Hajj ritual places (Noor et al., 2020), lack of information and respect of schedules, supply chain management (Makrum, 2020), the multiplicity of ethnics, behaviours, and cultures (Marmot, 2017), and most recently, the complexities and risks of such crowded mass gathering within the current realities of COVID-19 era.
Hajj is considered a major global mass gathering event, and in turn, a risky event on the global epidemic situation. Hence, Saudi Arabia has suspended the Hajj seasons in 2020 and 2021 based on the recommendations of experts since the onset of the pandemic. Despite the acknowledgement of this suspension, more needs to be unpacked on how the mass gatherings and Hajj, in particular, can be managed and sustained during this era and during any similar crises in the future. This, however, requires more understanding of the boundaries and determinants of feasible and sustainable preparedness and response systems (Tambo et al., 2020). As such, to better understand, and therefore, mitigate the challenges faced by the spiritual journeys and spiritual tourism.