Issues and Challenges Faced by Malaysian Umrah Travel Agencies in Providing Excellent Marketing Mix Services to Umrah Pilgrims

Deregulated and open markets have shaped an increasingly turbulent and uncertain environment especially for the travel agent. Notably, most companies nowadays focus on an effective service marketing mix to enhance the quality of their services. Therefore, this paper aims to discuss issues and challenges faced by Umrah travel agencies in Malaysia, and proposes a newly developed marketing mix to be adopted by the Umrah travel industry. The service marketing mix model extends the current 7Ps marketing mix; by the inclusion of the new P which is Pleasure. The services delivered through 8 Ps will result in a better performance of knowledge and skill enhancements which subsequently will enable the Malaysian Umrah travel industry to compete globally thus producing a high degree of satisfaction among stakeholders. This paper ends by drawing some conclusions and identifying areas for further research.