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The purpose of this paper is to build a better understanding of the concept of Halal tourism as expressed by Muslim Jordanian tourists who want to comply with the Islamic law. The study also examines Jordan as a Halal tourism destination as perceived by those tourists. Implications of marketing Jordan as a Halal tourism destination are among the research questions.

The paper is empirical and quantitative in nature with a survey type. The sample of the study is Muslim Jordanians in the cities of Amman and Irbid. Respondents were chosen randomly in shopping malls, gardens and public places. A self-completion questionnaire was administered to collect the data for the research and 920 questionnaires were returned. The data were analysed using descriptive and reliability and explanatory factor analysis in addition to certain tests such as one sample t test and two samples chi-square tests.

Halal tourism in Jordan is established but needs more enhancements and promotion. Jordan was evaluated positively in 14 Halal services and was unsuccessful in ten others. The motives for Jordanian Muslim tourists who want to comply with the Islamic law, to travel to Halal destinations were destinations that offer Halal-friendly services; to know Islamic religious sites; and to learn about Islamic history. Jordanian tourists were knowledgeable of local and international Halal destinations (78.2 and 67%, respectively). More than half of the sample experienced Halal destinations in Jordan and only 26.4% abroad. From a marketing point of view, the results of this study reveal good awareness of potential Jordanian tourists towards Halal tourism and Halal services. The study revealed that Jordanian Muslim tourists who want to comply with the Islamic law showed significant positive motives to travel Halal tourism destinations. In addition, the study showed statistically significant knowledge and experiences in local Halal destinations, but not in foreign Halal destinations.

The lack of research on Halal tourism in Jordan gives limited in-depth discussion. In addition, the study sample was chosen from two major cities in Jordan; therefore, further research is needed to include a representative sample of the whole country.

The paper includes marketing implications on Halal tourism in Jordan. The authors suggest marketing strategies should be launched to emphasise the importance of Halal tourism and marketing Jordan as Halal tourism destination. The recommendations of this study provide positive and negative results on Jordan as a Halal tourism destination. The negative evaluation of Jordan in terms of Halal services should be redressed by the Jordanian Government and the Jordanian private tourism and hospitality sectors to build a positive image of Jordan as a potential competitive Halal destination for Muslim tourists who want to comply with the Islamic law.

The paper is among the first of its kind, which empirically examined the motives of Jordanian Muslims who want to comply with the Islamic law to travel to Halal tourism destinations as well as evaluating Jordan as a Halal tourism destination. This study fills the gap in literature about Halal tourism in Jordan and presents Halal tourism as one of the alternative forms of tourism of high potential for Jordan to compete in this market segment.

Many studies have examined the influence of travel motivation on destination preferences; however, little is known about Muslim tourists’ leisure travel behaviour. This study aims to examine the influence of travel motivation on destination preferences using the moderating effect of religiosity from the perspective of Iranian and Malay Muslims.

Data were collected from 422 Malay and Iranian Muslim students using a purposive sampling technique, and later analyzed using Amos.

Results indicated that generic, Islamic and non-Islamic motivational factors influence social, religious and hedonic avoidance travel preferences. Muslims who are motivated by generic and non-Islamic motivations avoid travels to destinations with the presence of Islamic service and products, while those who are motivated by religious factors prefer destinations with Islamic attributes.

The results of this study highlight the importance of Islamic-related features in destinations for Muslim tourists.

The World Islamic Tourism Mart in Malaysia has been attracting Muslim tourists from all over the world to choose Malaysia as their Islamic tourism destination. This paper aims to implement the concept of the travel career ladder (TCL) with the main purpose of the antecedents of travel motivation toward Malaysia for Islamic tourism destination (MMITD).

The theoretical model was tested using the structural equation modeling technique with partial least squares. A self-administered questionnaire was designed, distributed and collected from 180 effective participants who had visited Malaysia.

The findings revealed that the Islamic compliance with self-esteem needs, the Islamic compliance with relationship needs and the Islamic compliance with physiological needs have significant effects on Malaysia My Islamic tourism destination.

The scope of this research paper is limited to TCL including the Islamic compliance issues with self-fulfillment, self-esteem, relationship, safety and physiological needs. A small sample size was obtained with participants from the Muslim countries. A future study should be comprehensively conducted on larger and diverse sampling methods with participants from the Muslim and the non-Muslim major countries, as this paper particularly discusses the theoretical and managerial implications for the anticipated future studies.

The study yet attempts on the part of academicians in Malaysia, what travel motivational factors influence Islamic tourists to travel MMITD. Based on the previous literature and researcher’s experience, it is a new phenomenon and investigation on MMITD.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the influence of travel motivation, Muslim-friendly amenities and lifestyle, cognitive and affective destination image and quality of service on Kuwaiti travelers’ intentions to visit Islamic tourism destinations.

A self-administered questionnaire consisting of multiple-item scales was developed. A convenience sample of 224 Kuwaitis was surveyed. The hierarchical regression analysis tested whether and how much the influencing factors predicted a significant amount of the variance in travel. The analysis was controlled for the effects of demographic variables.

Travel motivation and cognitive and affective image had the largest significant effects on the Kuwaiti travelers’ intention to visit Islamic destinations. Contrary to expectations, the findings suggested that Muslim-friendly amenities and quality of service did not affect Kuwaitis’ travel decisions.

This study provides a starting point for future empirical research into Islamic tourism in the Middle East. It provides an understanding of the importance of travel motivation and destination image in attracting Kuwaiti travelers to Islamic destinations.

The aim of this paper is to present a model in which the relationship between Muslims’ involvement with traveling to Islamic destinations and Islamic destination brand equity is investigated.

Based on the existing theoretical and empirical research on involvement and brand equity in tourism marketing and the literature on Muslim tourists’ needs and culture, a conceptual model for Muslim tourists is developed. The model investigates the relationships between Muslims’ psychological motivations for traveling to Islamic destinations and the evaluation of destination Islamic brand.

The study shows that the more Muslims are involved in traveling to Islamic destinations, the more likely they evaluate the key dimensions of destination Islamic brand. This is demonstrated by the influence of Muslims’ involvement on their awareness of Islamic destinations, their image of the Islamic destination attributes, the perceived quality of Islamic offerings, the perceived Islamic value and their loyalty toward Islamic destinations.

The study evaluates the Islamic brand equity in the context of Islamic tourism destinations and in relation to Muslims’ interests in traveling to Islamic countries. The study contributes to better understand the Islamic destinations and how to maximize the benefits of their Islamic attributes. It is suggested that Islamic attributes should be highlighted more for Muslim tourists interested in traveling to Islamic countries. Investigating the concepts analyzed will help tourism destinations to integrate marketing and promotional campaigns and build a more powerful Islamic brand in Muslim markets.

The relationship between involvement and brand equity has not been yet explored adequately, especially in the context of Islamic branding. This study adds to the previous studies in which the link between personal involvement with a specific destination and destination brand equity was explored. The role of Islamic values in this relationship is highlighted. The study contributes to destination branding studies by being one of the primary works, which applies the concept of brand equity to Islamic destinations.

This study aims to present the push-pull motives of Islamic tourism and how these provide the basis for promoting and developing Islamic tourism practices in Ghana’s tourism industry. As Islamic tourism is considered as a niche market with new needs and wants globally, this study makes the effort to identify the prospects of this form of tourism in a non-Islamic developing nation.

The study has used a convenience sampling approach in gathering data from 337 Muslim tourists, adopting existing scale instruments of push-pull motives, satisfaction, word-of-mouth of tourists and Islamic practices. The structural equation modelling was used to establish relationships and effects of the studied variables.

The results revealed the significant effects of push-pull motives of Ghanaian Muslim tourists on satisfaction as well as the significant influence of tourist satisfaction on word-of-mouth. In addition, the significant moderating effects of Islamic practices on the relationships between push-pull motives and tourist satisfaction were established.

The conclusion and recommendations of this study might not be consistent with factors that motivate Muslims tourists in other countries.

The results of the study validate the viability of Islamic tourism practices and possible spread of positive word-of-mouth among potential Muslim tourists for future Islamic tourism market in Ghana.

This paper provides the first insight into push-pull motives of Muslim tourists’ choice of Islamic destination in non-Islamic developing country context. The insight will be valuable to tourism authorities, industry, academics, businesses, managers and practitioners, as the results will enhance product and service delivery to Muslim tourists when they are on vacation.

This study aims to identify the terminology that is in accordance with the reality of Muslim tourism market, especially from the perspective of Sharia motivation, between Halal tourism and Islamic tourism; provide information on the special needs of Muslim travelers based on the dominant motivational differences; and find the impact of Sharia motivation and the special needs of Muslim tourists to their satisfaction.

The target population in this study is Muslim traveler at least 18 years old who has been traveling throughout Indonesia. Paired sample t-Test, multivariate analysis of variance and the multiple linier regression are applied for data analysis.

This study finds that Sharia motivation is less dominant in encouraging Muslims to travel; Sharia motivation has no impact on the importance of Sharia transportation, generic transportation and generic activities; and the dominance of Sharia motivation does not affect Muslim tourist satisfaction. However, the dominance of Sharia motivation has an influence on the importance of Sharia accommodation and Sharia activities, where both variables have positive effect on satisfaction. In the end, this study concludes that it is better to use the concept of Halal tourism than Islamic tourism.

This paper investigates the term of Halal tourism and Islamic tourism that are still ambiguous; even some researchers consider that the definition of both is similar.

This paper aims to investigate the socio-demographic variables that affect the motivation of Muslim tourists in Malaysia, and to examine the travel characteristics factors that affect the motivation in decision making of Muslim tourists travelling to Malaysia.

The study surveys questionnaires for data collection. Convenience sampling technique was used on the selected sample. The study was conducted in Malaysia, where the target respondents included Muslim family tourists with ages ranging from 18 to 64 years.

The findings show that motivation differs significantly among different levels of the socio-demographic characteristics except for gender and income. The result also reported that a majority of tourists’ travel behaviour was significantly different unless when it comes to seeking accommodation. Results also revealed a tendency for long holiday stays among Muslim tourists in Malaysia.

In this study, the examination of motivation on the Muslim family tourists has provided significant influence in managing the family tourist experience. On the other hand, most previous studies have shown that motivation is positively guided by general “push and pull” factors. However, this research demonstrates that components such family financial income and age of respondents has an effect on Muslim family tourists’ motivation, thus justifying the experience effect.

It is crucial for the service provider and destination management organizations to differentiate their products and services so that the packages and experience will be more meaningful.

Destination packages should be appropriately designed and positioned in the target markets to meet the needs and wants of different Muslim family groups. Communication should emphasize not only the most distinctive characteristics but also the most suitable holiday packages that the family tourist can afford to pay. This would assist the family in the decision-making process and choice processes and facilitate the family’s expectation.

This research paper related to Islamic tourism marketing which can be used to formulate appropriate marketing strategies, build a viable market segment and design practical marketing strategies to attract potential Muslims travellers.

This paper aims to highlight the significance of partnership among stakeholders as a marketing strategy for Islamic spiritual tourism. Partnership as a marketing strategy is studied by interviewing stakeholders on the supply side of Islamic tourism. Only recently, Islamic spiritual tourism has been identified, not recognised yet, as a growing segment of Islamic tourism that needs to be effectively marketed.

Convenient sampling was used in this exploratory research to select and interview tourism operators selling in-bound and out-bound Islamic spiritual tourism in Australia and Pakistan. Cross-case content analysis was used to identify critical themes related to marketing Islamic spiritual tourism.

Three issues emerged from the content analysis in this study: political, commercial and religious. The management of these three issues is found necessary to effectively build and implement horizontal partnerships among stakeholders on the supply side in Islamic spiritual tourism.

The selected sample is not the representation of the population based in the two countries. Only few potential participants agreed to be interviewed due to the perceived threat of manipulation of their views. Findings of this research contribute to the theory of marketing Islamic tourism specifically, and tourism in general.

The three issues found in this study provide a guideline for crafting strategies to market Islamic spiritual tourism based on local and global partnerships.

The three issues found in this study provide a platform for cultural understanding and coherence.

This original study advocates partnerships among tourism operators, government bodies, destination managers and religious organisations involved in Islamic spiritual tourism. The structure and implementation of partnerships should critically consider the political, commercial and religious issues.

Many non-Islamic countries are approaching halal tourism as the tourism strategy. However, studies examining Muslims’ attitudes and intentions to visit non-Islamic countries remain scarce. The purpose of this study is to test what factors influence Muslims’ intention to visit non-Islamic countries by considering their perception of halal risk and Islamic value of non-Islamic country destinations.

By distributing questionnaires to Muslim respondents, in total, this study collected 436 respondents. The hypotheses are tested using a structural equation modeling approach.

Results revealed that religiosity significantly affects perceived risk, but it does not have an effect on perceived Islamic values and attitude. It is also found that Muslims’ intention to visit non-Islamic countries are mainly influenced by their attitudes. Perceived halal risk and Islamic value strongly affected their attitudes toward non-Islamic countries. Interestingly, the results show that Muslims’ intention to visit non-Islamic countries is not directly influenced by perceived halal risk and Islamic value but indirectly through attitudes.

The equal distribution of respondents becomes the main challenge to achieve. It cannot be controlled by researchers. Thus, the disproportionate respondents’ distribution in terms of age, gender, occupation and, most importantly, the country selection becomes the limitation of this study.

This study contributes to the literature by evaluating perceived Islamic value and perceived halal risks in influencing Muslims’ intention to visit non-Islamic country destinations.