Indonesian hotel group Archipelago International has formed a new partnership aimed at improving its services for Muslim travellers.
The company has teamed up with Salam Standard, which measures hotels readiness to cater to Muslim travellers, in an effort to improve its products and services in this growing sector.
The programme offers three levels of certification ? gold, silver and bronze ? depending on the hotels amenities. Bronze standard means that hotels provide in-room Kiblat signs, Muslim prayer carpets and a Quran on request, while the Silver standard requires hotels to remove alcohol from their mini-bars and provide information on local Halal restaurants. The Gold standards means that hotel restaurants have been certified as Halal by a recognised body.
More than 60 of Archipelagos hotels are now certified by the Salam Standard, with 31 achieving bronze level, 21 silver and 16 gold.
Indonesia has the highest Muslim population in the world, making them also our largest segment of customer to our hotels in Indonesia, explained Tenaiya Brookfield, Archipelagos vice president of sales & marketing.
We understand it can be cumbersome for travellers to hunt and filter through information to find the best hotel for them and their family and their religious needs. We hope this new standard will help to make the search easier.
Salam Standard was launched last year, based on the feedback of 50,000 Muslim travellers around the world. Globally, Muslim travellers are expected to represent 25% of global travel spending by 2020.