Muslim Friendly Tourism:
Developing and Marketing MFT Products and Services
In the OIC Member Countries
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distribution channels is 30 percent, of which 70 percent comes from Bera’s long term travel
agency distributors, and the other 30 percent comes from other online booking
websites.308309
Our interviewees, such as Çırağan Palace Kempinski, IC Hotels and Bera Alanya Hotels have
confirmed similar percentages. Bera Hotel’s main distribution channel is its phone
reservation center, which takes nearly 70 percent of its own reservations, and employs 12 call
center staff with its website taking 30 percent of its own reservations.
The second biggest distribution channel for MFT products and services is travel agencies.
Travel agencies play a key role as they are in two categories, local and foreign.
The third is online booking websites. There are about 15 MFT hotel booking websites
operating in Turkey. MFT hotels also try to attract customers through traditional booking
websites such as Trivago,com, and .
There are more than 15 different online travel agencies featuring Muslim-friendly hotels
There are 50 to 200 different MFT hotel in each websites.
6. Promotion
As customer focus shifted from newspapers to social media in recent year, MFT hotels also
started to use Facebook, Instagram and Twitter actively.
Easing financing by instalments is an attraction selling point. Holiday packages sold to
tourists in three, six, or nine monthly instalments if they have a credit card. Credit card
instalments of up to nine months are a very common method of payment in the Turkish
market from white good sales to room sales. Both direct sales and online channel sales can
apply instalments if the customer wishes. This method allows credit card owners to stay
longer days in the hotel as they distribute total payment over a nine-month period after
ending his or her holiday. If the customer prefers to pay cash, he or she can get a small
discount of about 5%.
Direct marketing, email marketing, phone, and SMS are actively in use. Generally, hotels set
the new season’s prices by February each year and their advertisements go public by March.
Distribution occurs during the main travel season which is between May and September.
Islamic newspapers, magazines, radio and television channels, are major distribution
channels for the promotion of MFT products and services.
7. Pricing
Pricing is inconsistent within the MFT beach resorts market for two reasons. First, the market
is a niche market, and most resorts are newly converted from conventional resorts to MFT
ones because of the appeal of being able to charge higher rates to MFT guests. The second
reason is that several new entrants to the market are inexperienced have a random pricing
structure. Bera Hotel is known as the price setter in the MFT beach resort market. Each
Spring, it releases that year’s pricing, then other MFT hotels announce their prices. 310
308 From the face to face interview with Dilek Çağla Üner, Sales and Marketing Chief, Bera Alanya Hotel, May 2016.
309 From the phone interview with Mr. Kemal Tozlu, Ex Consultant to Adenya Hotels.
310 From the face to face interview with Dilek Çağla Üner, Sales and Marketing Chief, Bera Alanya Hotel, May 2016.