Search results

This study aims to ascertain consumption values of Muslim tourists, attitudes, satisfaction and loyalty towards a Muslim-friendly accommodation, which has gained recognition from the Malaysian Government. Subsequently, an overall Muslim-friendly image was examined as a moderating variable within the associated relationship.

A quantitative research design with a purposive sampling technique was chosen through a sample size of 378 people in Malaysia and distributed via social media. The respondents were selected based on the Muslim-friendly accommodation recognition (MFAR) initiatives, a procedure of accreditation which acknowledges Muslim-friendly accommodation for tourists. To obtain data from those travellers, structured questionnaires were used. SmartPLS was used for data analysis in this study.

The values which were found to have an influence on attitude towards a Muslim-friendly accommodation are related to social, emotional, economic, functional, monetary and epistemic elements. On the other hand, hedonic, conditional, Islamic and altruistic values were found to be insignificant in determining the attitude towards a Muslim-friendly accommodation. Subsequently, an overall Muslim-friendly image was found to moderate the relationship between social, monetary and altruistic values and its link concerning attitude towards the accommodation, while the rest of the relationships were not significant. More importantly, attitude seems to have an impact on satisfaction, as well as its loyalty towards a Muslim-friendly accommodation.

Firstly, it begins with understanding Malaysia, one of the developing countries in Southeast Asia. Secondly, data was collected from participants using a survey method, from purposive sampling which may limit the findings’ generalizability. Thirdly, this study focussed exclusively on the perceived value dimensions associated with Muslim-friendly accommodation, thus, disregarding consumers who may associate with other types of tourism and hospitality elements.

The results provide a fresh insight and a better understanding regarding the consumption values and all of its related components towards customer loyalty of the Muslim-friendly accommodation in Malaysia. In addition, the findings deliver new information and a deeper understanding of relevant values in Malaysia’s Muslim-friendly accommodation, which can be used as a standard guideline by industry practitioners, local and abroad.

This research supports service providers in developing effective brand management strategies for their own businesses. Apparently, this study discovers that emotional values tend to be the most important values in determining attitude towards Muslim-friendly accommodation.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the studies examining the overall perceived Muslim-friendly image within the consumption values that are relevant from an Islamic viewpoint. It provides policymakers, as well as the industry players, some reliable approaches for enhancing Muslim-friendly accommodation.

This paper is specifically developed on the basis of a pragmatic model for the Muslim-friendly medical tourism supply chain industry. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness and viability of the Muslim-friendly medical tourism supply chain practices in Malaysia.

A framework for the service supply chain management of the Muslim-friendly medical tourism with the effective outcomes was theoretically developed and explored in this study, using a structural equation modelling with the partial least squares technique. A structured questionnaire was developed, distributed and collected from 38 Islamic-friendly hospitals, 9 Muslim-friendly medical agencies and 44 Muslim-friendly hotels that will form the potential relevant associations of the medical tourism supply chain practices in Malaysia.

The findings provide reliable evidence that the effectiveness of the Muslim-friendly medical tourism supply-chain practice has a positive impact on the Muslim-friendly medical tourism supply chain. In addition, the Muslim-friendly medical tourism supply chain practice has also a significant and positive impact on the organizational performance as a whole. The result also demonstrates that collaboration is dependent on the demand management, whilst the productivity is not associated with it.

Practicing and implementing a Muslim-friendly medical tourism service supply chain is important, in the sense that the Muslim patients’ demand on the choice of halal practice of medical treatment and halal food consumption criteria. This investigation is the first to embark on the research on the Muslim medical tourism supply chain production network in Malaysia. This study provides practitioners with the important related data to improve their policies and their performances in the organization. The statistical results provide indispensable valuable information in comprehending the critical medical tourism supply chain practices and most specially to assist the Muslim-friendly medical tourism sector to offer quality medical tourism service that suits and attracts the Muslim medical tourists’ broad needs regionally and abroad.

Emerging interest in medical tourism products offers a lucrative market and opens doors for Malaysia in positioning itself as a Muslim-preferred halal medical care center point. In spite of the tremendous capability of this industry, the Muslim-friendly medical tourism practice is rationally new idea, with endeavors to clarify such tourism product is inadequate. This paper aims to investigate the promoting Muslim-friendly medical tourism market mechanism and its prospects and challenges.

As the purpose of this study is to investigate the perceptions of the Muslim patient’s inspiration towards Muslim-friendly medical tourism market mechanism in Malaysia. This study uses structural equation modeling (SEM) technique for data analysis. The target population for this research comprised Muslim medical tourists coming to Malaysia seeking Muslim-friendly medical tourism. A total sample size of 231 is gathered through non-probability sampling method during the period between July and December 2015.

The outcome confirms that Muslim tourist’s perceptions play a critical part in travel intention to Malaysia for Muslim-friendly medication. Along these lines, Malaysia needs to promote the success of such medical tourism endeavors with proper practice and services they offer to pull in more outside patients.

Malaysia is a country that has long been a stronghold for Muslim leisure visitors. Differences in general and spiritual values raise challenges to Muslim-friendly medical care services. A comprehensive research is required on the best way to advance and set up emerging Muslim-friendly medical tourism market mechanism.

Muslim-friendly medical tourism is a rising advertising discipline. It is confident that the findings could expand information on Muslim-friendly medical tourism service sector and improve providers’ capacity to take advantage of the developing business sector, offering quality medical care services and opportunities that suit the Muslim patients’ needs. In addition, it is essential to understand the most ideal approach to outline Muslim-friendly medical tourism market to make it more useful to various spiritual and religious accept.

This paper aims to examine the impact of religiosity on Muslim-friendly destination performance, customer engagement and customer satisfaction; the mediating impact of Muslim-friendly destination performance, customer engagement and customer satisfaction on the link between religiosity and word of mouth (WOM); and the moderating impact of religiosity on the relationship between Muslim-friendly tourism, customer engagement and customer satisfaction.

The population of this study was all tourists who visited West Sumatra Indonesia. By using a survey through questionnaires, this study has got 393 out of 450 collected responses (83.6%). This research used the structural equation modeling as the data analysis technique.

This research found that religiosity is a significant antecedent of Muslim-friendly tourism, customer engagement and tourist satisfaction. This study revealed that Muslim-friendly tourism, customer engagement and tourist satisfaction significantly mediate the link between religiosity and WOM. This research also found that religiosity significantly moderates the effect of Muslim-friendly tourism on tourist satisfaction.

This study was only conducted in Indonesia; hence, it lacks generality. Accordingly, future studies can expand to several other countries such as Southeast Asian countries which have big Muslim population. This study only focused on Muslim-friendly tourism industry as a whole. For future studies, it can be extended to several related industries, such as hotel, food and beverage and halal cosmetic.

This study has shown the important of manager knowledge about religiosity of customers. Accordingly, when they want to increase tourists’ WOM, they have to increase tourist perceived quality of Muslim-friendly tourism attributes which also have an impact on customer engagement and tourist satisfaction.

This study proposes the direct relationship between religiosity and Muslim-friendly tourism, the religiosity-customer engagement link and the religiosity-tourist satisfaction relation. This research has revealed the mediating effect of Muslim-friendly tourism, satisfaction and engagement on the link between religiosity and WOM. This study has also revealed the impact of religiosity in strengthening the link between halal tourism and tourist satisfaction which is limited previously.

This study aims to empirically test the influence of pull factors on the intention to engage in Muslim-friendly travel. This study proposes a distinct path between Islamic attributes and emotional value and scepticism, along with destination image and its functional value. This study also proposes the role of halal awareness in moderating the relationship between Islamic attributes and scepticism.

This study used a quantitative approach using an online survey. The authors purposively selected younger individuals who had travelled inside the country at least three times during the past five years. With a total of 416 valid responses, this study used variance-based partial least squares to test the hypotheses.

The results show that intention to engage in Muslim-friendly travel is positively influenced by emotional and functional values, but negatively by scepticism. Emotional value and scepticism are influenced by Islamic attributes, whereas functional value is influenced by destination image. More specifically, halal awareness is proven to moderate the relationship between Islamic attributes and scepticism, in which individuals with a higher level of halal awareness tend to be less sceptical about halal offerings.

This study supports a previous study in which emotional and functional values are considered differently by consumers. Furthermore, the dual role of Islamic attributes, as pull factors, is confirmed, providing a deeper understanding of its influence on emotional value and scepticism. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is also the first to investigate the role of halal awareness in increasing the level of scepticism among Muslim consumers.

On a global scale, the Muslim-friendly hospitality business has intensified hotel competition. Given the paucity of research on the important service quality characteristics of Muslim-friendly hotels, this study aims to identify the major themes encountered by tourists at Muslim-friendly hotels.

The research used content analyzes (qualitative) to examine 1,250 reviews using Leximancer software. Data were gathered from the online travel website booking.com. The top 10 Islamic hotels according to Crescent ranking were taken into a data set.

Qualitative (narratives) analysis showcased nine key themes, namely, “hotel,” “staff,” “food,” “room,” “location,” “pool,” “facilities,” “cleanliness” and “Wi-Fi.” Furthermore, the findings of this study contribute to filling research voids in the literature by distinguishing themes linked with halal hotel “satisfaction” from those associated with “dissatisfaction.”

The findings of this research offer valuable visions into halal-hotel travelers’ overall experiences based on user-generated content and facilitate the identification of the dominant themes linked with a different value for money ratings.

This study aims to investigate the perceived role of the Islamic medical care practice of Muslim doctors in Malaysian Muslim-friendly private hospitals.

Data were collection through self-administered questionnaires voluntarily submitted by the respondents. The survey covered selected major Muslim-friendly private hospitals in the country in the states of Kedah, Johor, Penang, Selangor, Kelantan and Kuala Lumpur. The non-probability purposive sampling was used, as the respondents and locations of the survey areas were predetermined.

Five dimensions of the Muslim-friendly medical care practice were identified, namely, medical etiquettes, physical examination, proper cleansing process of blood and body fluids, proper handling and treatment of infectious diseases and doctors’ advice to Muslim patients. The findings also indicate that the scale development analysis produced excellent results which can be used for reproducible or repetitive medical care purposes and for integration facts and figures for inclusion into wider medical care policy and practices.

The results from the study can further develop Islamic medical care practices and enable medical service providers to upgrade their performances to an enviable strategic status.

Islamic medical care is a new mode of healthcare service market, as there are very few studies on this topic from the perspective of Muslim patients or no obvious facts are known. This study has first explored Muslim doctors’ perceived role in Islamic medical care practice in Malaysian Muslim-friendly private hospitals. This empirical study can immensely contribute to the further development of Islamic medical care practice for Muslim doctors in particular and for the Muslim-friendly hospital service marketing strategy in general.

This paper aims at from the perspective of the social exchange theory (SET) gaining an understanding of how promotion of halal concept in Sweden is perceived by Swedish hoteliers.

A mixed-methods approach has been used consisting of 62 completed surveys with closed-ended and open-ended questions, follow-up comments and five in-depth interviews with hoteliers in the mid-Sweden region. Content analysis has been employed.

Three categories of meanings are the main findings: general perception, safeguarding Swedish secular values and financially unjustifiable have been discovered. Most of the respondents have been sceptical towards halal and Muslim-friendly hotel concepts due to financial and cultural challenges these two concepts have for the Swedish tourism and hotel industries. Based on the SET, this entails more costs than benefits and is especially at odds with Swedish-rooted secular values.

This study provides practical implications and increased knowledge for tourism stakeholders including hotels in Sweden.

This is one of the very few studies on halal tourism in Scandinavia and the first Scandinavian study on hoteliers' attitudes towards halal tourism.

This paper aims to present a theoretical account of the connection between artificial intelligence (AI) enabled technologies and Muslim-friendly tourism experiences (MFTX) using the customer experience (CX) theory, reference group theory and theory of tourism consumption systems.

A model research design is adopted to build a theoretical framework that predicts relationships between constructs. Critical assessment in tourism and AI literature is used to explore AI-enabled technologies in Halal-friendly tourism.

The findings of this paper have conceptualised the CX theory for Muslim travellers satisfying their religious needs in Halal-friendly tourism by suggesting a new construct called the MFTX. It also offered a theoretical model for using AI-enabled technologies to improve the MFTX.

This study provides a new theoretical model for using AI-enabled technologies to improve the MFTX. This paper is also expected to provide suggestions for tourism operators and service providers to cater to Muslim tourists’ needs using AI technologies.

This study aims to provide a comprehensive and systematic review of halal tourism structure using bibliometric analysis. Halal tourism interest has increased due to the high demand for tourism products adhering to Shariah law. Furthermore, the vast Muslim population has increased the demand for halal tourism products and destination factors in this niche tourism segment.

A network visualization through bibliographic coupling and co-word analysis, this review presents a science mapping analysis to reveal the knowledge structure of emerging and future trends in halal tourism.

The current and emerging trends demonstrate three themes: the fundamentals of halal tourism, communication via word of mouth in halal tourism and Muslim tourist satisfaction and loyalty. At the same time, the co-word analysis presents the four themes primarily associated with halal tourism challenges: tourist satisfaction, service quality and Muslim travellers’ attraction.

The findings serve as crucial implications, contributing to halal and general tourism theory and application.

This review serves as crucial fundamental knowledge for future studies in halal tourism and its relevant themes for further development in tourism management. The most significant emerging theme in halal tourism is the intervention needed to increase Muslim tourist satisfaction and loyalty through halal-friendly service, customer-service quality, foods and beverages, facilities and privacy. The co-word analysis suggests increasing tourists’ engagement in halal tourism by invigorating the religiosity domain among tourists, improving service quality and perceived value and discovering new Muslim-friendly attractions. The most crucial finding from this study is to ensure that halal and Muslim-friendly tourism are at the same level, to the extent of better service according to Islamic practice. This approach would elevate the value and status of halal tourism as a trending product in Muslim and non-Muslim markets.