This research is backgrounded by increasing the umrah pilgrims from year to year. The Mabrur Tour and Travel Jepara branch is one of the umrah bureaus that has increased the number of umrah pilgrims, even though this bureau is a new umrah bureau. Strategic management can help the umrah bureau achieve its goals. This study aims to explain the strategic management process in increasing the number of pilgrims and the reasons for the increasing number of umrah pilgrims at the Mabrur Tour and Travel Jepara branch. This type of research uses a qualitative descriptive method. While the data collection techniques are interviews, observation, and documentation. Data analysis techniques in this study are data reduction, data display, and conclusions.
The results of this study indicate that the strategic management process of the Mabrur Tour and Travel Jepara branch uses the Wheelen and Hunger theory where the strategic management process includes environmental analysis, strategy formulation, strategy implementation, and evaluation and control. Researchers use a SWOT analysis approach to see the external environment and internal environment. The strengths are having good service, namely self-served, self-guided and self-guided, having a strategic location, and having a good program. The opportunities are having a large market share and extensive social network because the head of the Jepara branch of Mabrur Tour and Travel is a dai, trader, and pilgrimage priest. The weaknesses are the lack of firmness from the company to collect debts from umrah pilgrims that have not been paid for so long and lack of human resources to help the company and don’t take advantage of existing technology. And the threat is many umrah bureaus take advantage of existing technology. In making a strategy, the Mabrur Tour and Travel Jepara branch makes missions and objectives so that existing programs can refer to the mission of the Mabrur Tour and Travel Jepara branch. The missions are everyone feels umrah without exception, teachers who have long served are dispatched together with the educational foundation managed by the head of the Mabrur Tour and Travel Jepara branch, connecting the friendship of alumni, and the last is departing the guest of Allah is the most effective preaching. The strategy used by the Mabrur Tour and Travel Jepara branch uses an expansion strategy. In implementing the strategy, the Mabrur Tour and Travel Jepara branch has programs namely umrah savings, sharia bailouts, financing at educational institutions, and umrah down payments gift. As for the budget, the Mabrur Tour and Travel Jepara branch uses money per pilgrim for operational costs of 75% and company profits of 25%. The things that were evaluated by the head of Mabrur Tour and Travel were adding administrative staff and tightening the sharia bailout program. Mabrur Tour and Travel Jepara branch added one administrative staff to manage infrastructure and communication with the government regarding the administration of umrah pilgrims and also tightened sharia bailouts.
The reasons for the umrah pilgrims choosing the Mabrur Tour and Travel Jepara branch are known to be two factors, external factors, and internal factors. External factors are strategic location factors, cultural factors where there are similarities in religious beliefs, good service factors due to being guided starting from registration requirements until the end, and recommendation factors from people around. In addition to external factors, there are also internal factors from the umrah pilgrims namely the comfort factor because they are self-guided by the head of the Mabrur Tour and Travel Jepara branch and the trust factor because they are familiar with the head of the Mabrur Tour and Travel Jepara branch so that the umrah pilgrim is more confident to join the umrah bureau.