Muslim Friendly Tourism:

Developing and Marketing MFT Products and Services

In the OIC Member Countries

respect to the B2B travel websites, CrescentRating launched a MFT B2B platform “Muslim Travel

Warehouse” in 2015 for travel agencies that are interested in catering to Muslim travelers with a

portfolio of Muslim friendly tour packages, excursions and activities rated by CrescentRating.

Lagisatu, a Malaysian-Austrian B2C travel website,provides a hotel meta search with a Halal

filter. In 2014, the website featured 600,000 hotels from around the world, of which 10,000 were

Halal-rated. The site is available in a number languages including Arabic.

In 2016, a website

called Tripfez was launched in ITB Berlin; it allows MFT products and services providers to

The travel website “Muslim Break”, launched in 2015 and run out of London, provides hotels and

restaurants’ reviews and tailored holidays for Muslim travelers to cater to their needs for Halal

food and prayer areas. The website also provides links for a number of airlines that offer Muslim

friendly services including Halal meals and Islamic media content in some cases. Chatzisavva

launched her site after she personally witnessed the difficulties Muslim travelers had during a

family trip to Greece, she decided to create her site to “offer Muslims the opportunity to have

their dream holiday without feeling uncomfortable”.

Muslim Friendly Mobile Travel Applications

Mobile travel applications, developed by government agencies and MFT providers, are emerging

as a recent development on the MFT products scene. A number of government agencies have

launched mobile apps to help Muslim travelers locate Halal certified restaurants and Muslim-

friendly hotels as well as mosques and facilities that have prayer rooms. Thailand is one of the

countries that launched an app for both IOS and android platforms to help visitors find hotels

and shopping centers with prayer rooms as well as Halal certified restaurants. The “Halal Korea”

app, launched by the South Korean state food agency, provides information about Halal

restaurants and allows scanning of barcodes at supermarkets to check if its contents are Halal.

The app also provides information on nearby prayer areas.

A number of other Muslim friendly mobile apps such as ‘HalalTrip’ and ‘HalalMinds’ help Muslim

tourists locate Muslim-friendly hospitality products and services across the globe.

The

‘HalalTrip’ app, provided by CrescentRating, the company behind the ‘HalalTrip’ travel website,

available in both English and Arabic, helps Muslim travelers locate Halal restaurants and

mosques at various destinations and provides an in-flight prayer time calculator and travel

supplications.

The HalalMinds app, developed in Japan by an Indonesian student, provides

Muslim travelers to Japan with a Halal Restaurant Finder, Qibla Directions, and a Qur’an

database. Its recently released version 2.0, available for both Android and iOS platforms, allows

Halal scanning of the bar code of drugs, cosmetics, and food products.

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Healy, Melinda, “How Halal Tourism is Traveling in the Right Direction.” The National. 13 Aug. 2015. Web.

Lemon, Jason. “South Korea launches ‘Halal Korea’ app to draw Muslim tourists.” Stepfeed. 1 Nov. 2015. Web.

Battour, M., and Ismail, M.N. “Halal Tourism: Concepts, Practices, Challenges and Future

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Perspectives

(2015)

Halaltrip.com

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Ikeda, Masaru. "Japan’s Muslim App HalalMinds Wins Startup Award in Taiwan, Poised for Asian Expansion." The Bridge.

28 Aug. 2014. Web.