Economic and Commercial Value Comparison Between Syariah Compliant and Muslim Friendly Approach in Hotel Industry

Abstract

The tourism sector contributes a lot to the income of a nation, provided that they can meet the travellers’ expectations. With the industry worth trillion dollars worldwide, meeting expectations of the travellers able to provide advantages for a country on gaining a significant portion of the value. With the rise on the number of Muslim travellers in the world, which contributed to the rise of halal-based tourism demand, various parties start to improve their businesses so that they can have a piece of the action. Numerous changes need to be done to the services, as the concerns of Muslim travellers extended beyond the halal status of foods served only. In recent years, various approaches have been adopted to promote Halal tourism, including the introduction of Syariah compliant and Muslim friendly recognitions on hotel industry in Malaysia. Such approaches, even though yet to receive government-level approval, have been used by numerous hotels in Malaysia. Although those two recognitions’ aim is similar, which is to be used as the attraction to Muslim travellers, but each of them carry different advantages, economically and commercially. This paper aims to look into the differences of values between Syariah compliant hotel and Muslim friendly hotels, from the aspect of economic and commercial values. The content analysis method was applied in this study to fully understand the economic and commercial value comparison between syariah compliant and muslim friendly approach in hotel industry. As a result of the economic and commercial value comparison between Shariah-compliant hotels and Muslim-friendly hotels,, they able to provide service providers on which approach that is suitable to be used, in the effort to increase not only its visibility to the world, but also the business opportunities in years to come.