Assessing Food Quality for Pilgrims of Indonesia in Medina, Saudi Arabia

Abstract

The spirit of Indonesian muslims to perform hajj in Mecca Saudi Arabia as one of five pillars of Islam, has risen significantly. In the year 2012 (1433 Hijriyah), about 221.000 worshipers or about 1% of the total Indonesian population went to Saudi Arabia to perform hajj. In Saudi Arabia, Indonesian pilgrims has to stay for more than 30 days in Mecca, 9 days in Medina, 2 days in Arafat and and 4 days in Mina. The government of the Republic of Indonesia through the Ministry of Religion, continues to improve their services for the Indonesian regular pilgrims, including catering service in Indonesia before hajj departure, and in Saudi Arabia such as in Medina, Arafat and Mina. However, the food served should have a good quality, so that consumer satisfaction is achieved. In this research, the quality of food was assesed by pilgrims as panelists, whose used their senses of sight, smell, tasting, touch and hearing to perform organoleptic test. In this study, the panelists were 100 Indonesian regular pilgrims came from Bandung West Java, who performed their hajj in 2012. The data was collected through observation, interview and questionaires. The research was conducted to the Indonesian regular pilgrims whose experienced food service in Medina, Saudi Arabia. Key words: Indonesian regular pilgrims, quality of food, food quality aspects, organoleptic test