Muslim Friendly Tourism:
Developing and Marketing MFT Products and Services
In the OIC Member Countries
27
 Viator is a booking website for tours and activities globally, with activities in over 150
countries. Viator was founded in 1995 and acquired by TripAdvisor for $200 million in
2014.
 WildChina is a tour company in China founded in 2000, which provides adventure travel
tours through China, which can be customized by users.
 Peek is an innovative activity booking site, founded in 2012, which has raised $6.9
million in 3 rounds of funding to provide a sustainable consumer technology, which
empowers operators to manage and grow their business.
 Trending activities include culinary tasting tours popular in Eastern Europe and safari
tours in South Africa.
Travel Services include travel agencies and ancillary service providers. Travel agencies are the
primary entities that handle the full suite of services to travelers including transportation,
accommodation and activity reservations, as well as travel insurance. Online travel agencies have
become prominent in recent years and traditional travel agencies have been facing challenges.
Ancillary service providers also handle travel insurance, in addition to passport or visa services,
currency exchange, and health insurance. Travel arrangement and reservations account for 6
percent of the global tourism products and services market share according to IBISWorld. 27
Online travel bookings and travel sector applications are growing rapidly as online travel
agencies offer the best rates for transportation and accommodation bookings. Online travel
agencies are expected to account for 39 percent of online travel spending in 2017, according to
Travel Weekly.28 According to SKIFT, the top online travel booking sites include ,
TripAdvisor, and Expedia29:
 , which is owned by Priceline, was founded in 1996 and is an online
accommodation booking website, which has reached 21 million rooms listed in 2015.
The site has over 800,000 properties listed currently globally.
 TripAdvisor is a travel related content site, which hosts interactive forums and
incorporates user-generated content. TripAdvisor was founded in 2000, acquired by
Expedia in 2004 and, and spun off as a public company in 2011. TripAdvisor originally
sourced revenue from digital advertising, but has recently launched a booking platform.
 Expedia is a global online travel brand with $5.8 billion revenue in 2014. Expedia is the
parent company for , , trivago, Egencia and more.
 Google plans to roll out a travel assistant mobile application for Android and iPhone in
2016 to build out a platform to facilitate peer- to- peer tours. 30
Source: Listed companies compiled based on review of aforementioned reports, including IBIS World, supplemented
by review of individual company websites and annual financial reports
27 “Global Tourism Report.” IBISWorld, 2015.
28 “Phocuswright: OTAs beating hotels badly in mobile technology”, Travel Weekly, 08 March 2016
29 “The Most Popular Online Booking Sites in Travel, 2014 Edition”, Skift, 17 June 2014
30 Schaal, Dennis. “Google is Planning on launching a Travel Assistant App.” Skift. 25 Apr.2016