Muslim Friendly Tourism:
Developing and Marketing MFT Products and Services
In the OIC Member Countries
122
targeting Muslim travelers, help develop Malaysia’s brand identity as a MFT with a unique
tourism experience to offer.
Joint promotions with airlines. For example the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) launched a
marketing partnership with Etihad Airways to promote travel to Thailand from priority markets
including Iran, Kuwait, and the UAE.
Aggregating promotions. In Japan more than twenty accommodation facilities cooperated in
creating and launching a website targeting Muslim travelers that aggregated the promotions of
the different facilities.
Bilateral Cooperation
Technical knowledge exchange and joint promotion of destinations are some of the forms of
bilateral cooperation. The Malaysian and Indonesian governments have cooperated in technical
knowledge exchange in the area of MFT as well as in jointly promoting their destinations.
Global Cooperation
Standardization There are some efforts to standardize MFT products and services across
different countries, but they are still in their infancy. The market is in need of a global standard,
or at least regional standards that define MFT products and services.
Body to advocate for Muslim traveler rights. Another gap is the absence of a body to stand up
against Islamophobia attacks on Muslim travelers and stand up for their rights.
SME Support
Governments supporting mainstream sector tourism SMEs provide a wide range of support,
from developing a portal dedicated to tourism SMEs that includes useful tools to providing
training services, to marketing support.
Some of the gaps and opportunity areas for the MFT travel sector is training tourism suppliers,
facilitating Halal certification, providing subsidies to SME’s and establishing a portal that includes
useful tools for tourism suppliers. Additionally, governments can encourage the inclusion of MFT
travelers as a special segment in tourism and hospitality related courses.