Muslim Friendly Tourism (MFT):
Understanding the Supply and Demand Sides
In the OIC Member Countries
110
4.8 Developing an environment for innovation and entrepreneurship on MFT
related products and services
The environment in which tourism companies operate today is rapidly changing and there is
generally more volatility, uncertainty and complexity. New technologies have created new
industries and disrupted old ones. The “sharing economy” players like Airbnb and Uber are
disrupting business models and OIC needs to become innovators in this space. Companies
need to innovate to remain competitive and relevant. In this regard OIC member states either
at OIC level or at national level need to initiate programs to encourage entrepreneurship and
innovations, especially in the digital space. This could include the following:
- Develop an incubation setup to encourage startups and entrepreneurs to develop
products and services for the MFT market. Such an initiative could also be looked at
from ICDB(Integrated Communications Database) perspective.
- Establish a “Tourism Technology Fund” to encourage technology innovation and
adoption in the tourism sector.
- Establishing platforms for prototyping and test-bedding of new technologies,
development of technology products or services with a clear MFT focus.
4.9 Developing unique MFT based destination positioning and marketing
Currently very limited efforts have been made by OIC member states to reach out to the
Muslim travelers with a clear MFT centric destination positioning. Exceptions are Malaysia,
UAE and Indonesia. This is a broad area and requires the development of a comprehensive
plan to position and promote the OIC destinations as the choice destinations for Muslims,
especially the leisure travelers. This entails branding, content development and promotion as
suggested below:
 Develop a unique branding/slogan targeted at the Muslim Market, positioning OIC
member states as a Muslim friendly holiday destination. This should convey the
message of OIC destinations as providing a unique experience for Muslims travelers
and hassle free destinations when it comes to faith based needs of Muslim travelers.
There could be a OIC wide slogan as well as destination specific slogan.
 Apart from a few OIC countries, the status of online information and website are not
state of the art. All OIC member states need to enhance the information/marketing
content including Muslim visitor guides for both online and offline use.
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