Muslim Travellers’ Needs: What Don’t We Know?

This study seeks to alert those who interact with Muslim travellers to a potentially larger range of needs and issues than has previously been captured by a theoretical and descriptive work.

Muslim travel is a fast-growing market. The challenge in working with this market is have we understood the important needs of Muslim tourists? Answering this challenge drives the present study. A theoretically informed approach to studying this significant market is introduced. The approach is consistent with the recent work of Ryan(2016) who suggests that new work on this topic needs to pursue more sophisticated forms of analysis. The coordinated management of meaning theory to understand cross cultural encounters in tourism is discussed and employed to test the compass of concerns identified in the existing studies. Using this approach, the study seeks to alert those who interact with Muslim travellers to a potentially larger range of needs and issues than has previously been captured by a theoretical and descriptive work. Throughout this paper, the term Halal tourism will be used as a synonym for Muslim travel. It refers to products, lei-sure, recreation and social purposes that comply with Islamic teaching.

Halal tourism, a term widely used as a synonym for Muslim travel, refers to products, leisure, recreation and social purposes that comply with Islamic teaching. This study considers the needs of this increasingly large travel market. Existing studies repeatedly emphasise the needs for Halal food, Halal restaurants, religious practices, and Halal compliant accommodation, tours, and destinations. By contrasting existing studies with the key cultural facets of interaction and communication derived from the Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM) theory, the researchers found the need to better identify Muslim travellers’ needs from the Culture norms, Verbal and non-verbal communication, Life Scripting, and Relationships domains. Proposed studies include understanding the role of travel for individual well-being in Islamic life, identifying the specifics of verbal and non-verbal interaction with Muslim tourists, investigating the management of the segregation of the sexes in public recreational areas, and supporting Islamic religious and cultural events.

Bibliographic Information

Title: Muslim Travellers’ Needs: What Don’t We Know?

Authors: Hera Oktadiana, Philip L.Pearce, KayeChon

Published in: Tourism Management Perspectives, Volume 20, October 2016

 Language: English

Length: 7 pages

Muslim Travellers’ Needs: What Don’t We Know?