Positioning Islamic Hotel Tourism

About the Book

Several factors contribute to the rapid development of tourism, such as strong economic growth. This result in more disposable income for travel, changing lifestyles and the expansion in transportation industry, which leads to cheaper travel costs and increased demand for tourism products and services is one of the largest and fastest growing economic sectors in the world. The growing demand for products and services comply with Islamic law, or shariah law is obvious and substantial in financial, food and travelling industry. Many scholars have identified religion as a stable factors influencing consumer buying behavior resulting in more demand for religious related product and services. In hospitality industry, scholars have highlighted the growing demand on Islamic Friendly Hotel (IFH) by Muslim tourists causing high commitment in developing such industry. This study found organizational factors including innovation champion, organizational context, and tangible resources and marketing strategy and environmental factors such as demand of Islamic hospitality, government ruling and incentives and competitors strategy were the key drivers to the implementation. These key drivers of implementation provides guidelines for hotels that intend to implement new services, reduced the learning time and promote innovative activities within hotels in Malaysia. Nonetheless, IFH implementation was challenged with high cost to maintain Halal certification, capacity management and international chain hotel status issues. Hotels intend to implement IFH should pay careful attention to the initial consequences such as decreasing non-Muslim customers thus resulting in decrease income at the early stage of introduction. This study has contributed on the development of IFH literature specifically Malaysia by providing popular and unpopular attributes of IFH in Malaysia. Therefore, if Malaysian hotels are to succeed and achieve competitive advantage, being able to address growing Muslim tourists’ needs are essential priorities.

About the Author

Nor Zafir Md Salleh is a Senior Lecturer of Marketing at Azman Hashim International Business School (AHIBS), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. She is currently Assistant Dean of Continuing and Transnational Education, where she headed a department of part time studies and transnational education of AHIBS where she oversees the platform for part time and overseas students. She is also the advisor to several programmes related to business and management at Sunway College Johor Bahru and Polytechnic Malaysia. She was exposed to some international experience including being international researcher at Akita International University focusing on Islamic Tourism research, an area she focused for her PhD. Dr. Nor Zafir has graduated 3 masters’ students and supervising 3 PhD students since 2016, authored many publications and numerous research and consultancy projects within her areas of expertise. Her social works entitled her as one of the Girl Guides Association Malaysia’s Executive Board for the state of Johor. She is currently the Captain for Girl Guides Troop in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. Abu Bakar A. Hamid is a Professor of Marketing and Supply Chain Management.at Putra Business School. He holds a PhD from University of Derby, UK. He has demonstrated an excellent record of teaching and supervision for more than 25 years in the academic field, both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Above all, his achievement in graduating more than 35 PhD candidates proves his ability, capability and passion in postgraduate supervisions. He has shown excellent records of impactful research and publications which directly has strengthened his expertise in the area of his interest. Profoundly he published more than 300 articles in competitive international journals, proceedings, books and book chapters. His notable contributions are recognized locally and internationally, as invited speaker, reviewer, and editor in journals, external assessor and examiner. With such calibre, he was pronounced “The Best Supply Chain Professor” by The Golden Tigers 2019. Noor Hazarina Hashim is an Associate Professor Universiti Teknologi Malaysia where she teaches a range of courses at both the graduate and undergraduate level focused on electronic marketing, marketing research and tourism marketing. She researches on how technology influences destination image formation and how technology changes traveler’s behavior. Hazarina’s research has been published in media outlets such as in Ehlite Magazine by Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne and in leading tourism and hospitality journals including Tourism Management and International Journal of Hospitality Management