Halal tourism and coronavirus: understanding the influence of halal reputation and fear of COVID-19 on tourist’s revisit intention

Purpose - The existing halal tourism literature has paid insufficient attention in discussing the COVID-19 protocol as a marketing strategy tool for tourism managers. The COVID-19 protocol is one of the considerations for tourists in determining their destination when the global society enters the new normal era and people start to travel. This study aims to interpret the relationship between halal reputation, fear of COVID-19, COVID-19 protocols and tourist’s revisit intention, as well as to describe and discuss the empirical evidence. This study expands the theory on halal tourism while also offering critical insights into marketing practice in the tourism industry. Design/methodology/approach - The population of this study was Muslim tourists who have visited West Sumatra before the COVID-19 outbreak. The data were collected online for three months and received 451 responses, but after verification, only 395 respondents could be used for data processing. Hierarchical regression was applied to examine the direct relationship and moderating effect of the studied variables which met the sampling criteria. Findings - This study proves that halal tourists’ revisit intention is determined by a destination’s halal reputation. Subsequently, halal destinations should increase their reputation as excellent halal tourism providers. Furthermore, the COVID-19 protocol can reduce the fear of tourists visiting a tourist destination. Thus, this study gives some contribution to the tourism sector, especially on halal tourism, COVID-19 fear, and protocols and also tourist’s revisit intention. Originality/value - This paper explores the adoption of the COVID-19 protocol as a marketing strategy. Furthermore, there are still few papers that discuss the effects of COVID-19 on halal tourism. This paper attempts to fill this gap. This paper expands halal tourism literature by assessing the direct relationship and moderating effect of the variables related to COVID-19 on halal tourists’ revisit intention.