According to the MasterCard – Crescent Rating Global Muslim Travel Index (GMTI) 2015, Malaysia has been named as the number one destination across the globe in the Muslim travel market. Malaysia took the top spot on the list, for the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) destinations, as per the results of the research. Malaysia is followed by, Turkey, UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Malaysia scored an Index score of 83.8, followed by Turkey at 73.8 and UAE at 72.1. As far as the non-OIC destinations are concerned, Singapore came first that also saw Thailand, UK, South Africa and France make the top five.
The GMTI created an overall index, looking at in-depth data covering 100 destinations, and based on a number of criteria. Muslim tourism is one of the fastest-growing tourism sectors in the world today, and this is one of the first times such thorough indexing has been made. This conscious effort will certainly provide travellers, governments, travel services, and investors’ comprehensive benchmarks across a number of important criteria enabling them to track the health and growth of this travel segment. It would also ensure various unexplored Islamic tourist destinations to come up with their claims to get listed in coming years.
The CEO of Crescent Rating and Halal Trip, Mr. Fazal Bahardeen said, “The MasterCard – Crescent Rating Global Muslim Travel Index has today set a real precedent for the tourism industry. Not only is it the most in-depth research that we have undertaken so far on the fast-growing Muslim travel market, but has provided all stakeholders with some invaluable insight into how the halal-friendly tourism sector is growing and developing from a global perspective. Crescent Rating has seen a recent huge shift towards more destinations targeting this sector like Japan and Taiwan, and it is a trend we expect to continue.”
The Islamic tourism industry segment was worth US$145 billion in 2014 with 108 million Muslim travellers representing 10 per cent of the entire travel economy as revealed by the study. It is forecasted that the numbers could grow to 150 million visitors by 2020 and 11 per cent of the market segment with a market value projected to grow to US$200 billion. With 10.2 million visitors, Saudi Arabia saw the highest number of Muslim arrivals into the country in 2014 followed by Turkey at 8.1 million.
Raghu Malhotra, division president, Middle East and North Africa, MasterCard said, “The ranking will also help our consumers make more informed decisions, based on their specific requirements.”