This is the third edition of the report, How Online Ready are NTOs for Muslim Travellers in 2022?, and a first-time research collaboration between the Islamic Tourism Centre (ITC), an entity under the Malaysian Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture tasked to develop the Islamic tourism segment, and Pear Anderson.
The report was launched at the 3rd World Islamic Tourism Conference (WITC), 17-19 October 2022, World Trade Centre, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
The report examines the online resources that National Tourism Organisations (NTOs) from 2019’s top 50 most visited non-Muslim destinations worldwide have created to support Muslim friendly travel, including information about Muslim friendly food, prayer spaces and hotels. These are scored and ranked according to our points framework. Through analysing the top 50, the overall importance on which NTOs are placing Muslim friendly travel can be gauged.
In 2022, Korea and Taiwan placed joint first, with Japan and Hong Kong jointly placing in second place, and Singapore in third place.
Out of the 50 destinations studied, 54% of them now have some level of Muslim friendly travel information, compared to just 36% in 2019’s inaugural report, and up from 46% in 2020, a signal of the continued importance destinations are placing on Muslim travellers to boost tourism recovery.
Countries which improved their scores in 2022 did so by:
- Adding more information, e.g. more Muslim friendly restaurants or places to pray
- Increasing the number of online resources, e.g. adding Muslim friendly information into their travel mobile apps
- Making Muslim friendly travel content easier to find
- Optimising their rankings for search engines
