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A rental company in Orlando, Florida, is offering "halal vacation homes" with curtained pool decks and rooms with prayer mats and copies of the Quran. A British company's app lists gourmet restaurants serving halal meat in London and Dubai, while a Boston-based developer's app offers travel guides for 90 cities with local prayer times and a compass pointing Muslims toward Makkah for daily prayers.
The so-called "halal tourism" market was once seen as a niche revenue stream, limited to pilgrimages like the multi-billion dollar-a-year revenue stream generated by Muslim travelers to Makkah.
But now there's a movement in the tourism industry to widen the "halal tourism" market to cater to Muslim travelers worldwide, particularly those from wealthy Gulf Arab states.
Travelers from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Oman will spend $64 billion traveling this year and are expected to spend $216 billion by 2030, according to a 2014 study for the travel tech company Amadeus. The study found that, on average, a traveler from these countries spends around $9,900 per trip outside the Gulf. For Emiratis, the figure reaches $10,400.
Ritz-Carlton hotels in Dallas and New York hired the Dinar Standard advisory firm to help them better serve Muslim guests, including Arab royalty. Now the two hotels serve halal meals upon request, have Middle Eastern chefs on staff, offer rooms with spaces that allow for gender-segregated settings and have trained frontline staff on other cultural norms.
Reem El Shafaki, a senior associate at Dinar Standard, says that the hospitality industry can market to Muslims without alienating non-Muslims. "What some hotels and destinations are doing is that they're using the term 'family friendly'," she said at a conference this week in Abu Dhabi, which brought people from across the budding industry to explore the topic.
Halal in Islam literally means that which is permissible. Observant Muslims typically avoid alcohol and areas where there can be excessive nudity, like beaches and nightclubs. For women who adhere to Islam's modest dress code, swimming can pose a challenge. That means resorts that offer gender-segregated beaches and pools have an advantage. |
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