ID :
421099
Thu, 10/20/2016 - 11:05
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Islamic Tourism Shows Excellent Achievement- Malaysian Tourism And Culture Minister

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 20 (Bernama) -- The Islamic tourism industry has shown an excellent achievement in Malaysia with almost one in every four (1:4) tourist arrivals is a Muslim, Tourism and Culture Minister Mohamed Nazri Abdul Aziz said Thursday. He said Malaysia received 5.2 million Muslim tourists last year and had been named as the number one destination for Muslim travelers in the Global Muslim Travelers Index (GMTI), a report jointly produced by MasterCard and Crescent Rating for 2015 and 2016. "The factors that contributed to Malaysia’s success in this regard are the availability of many halal certified food outlets, the many prayer facilities throughout the country, the Muslim friendly services provided by the hotels and the country’s stability," he said in conjunction with the World Islamic Tourism Conference and Expo (WITCX) 2016, at Putra World Trade Centre, here Thursday. His speech text was delivered by Tourism and Culture Deputy Minister Mas Ermieyati Samsudin during the official launching of WITCX 2016. Mohamed Nazri said another key strength was the government’s commitment to identify the Muslim market as a priority market and one of the first actions taken to this commitment was establishing the Islamic Tourism Centre in February 2009 to develop Islamic tourism for the country. The government had also been working continously to improve the services provided at all tourism facilities to match the expectations of the Muslim visitors and their families, he said. Furthermore, he said he was also proud to see other Islamic countries like Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia were making progress in Islamic tourism industry, besides Malaysia. Looking at a different angle, he said, there was an increasing number of countries from outside the Muslim world such as China, Japan and Korea aggressively targeting tourists from Islamic countries and were establishing their own Halal certification programmes. These countries were also pursuing programmes to quantify the needs of Muslim travelers and then qualify their various facilities to respond to these needs. Therefore, WITCX 2016 is a significant platform to clarify the Islamic criteria which matters the most to Muslim travelers in helping the non-Islamic countries in establishing their own Halal certification programmes. WITCX 2016 was held in conjunction with the 7th Muslim World Biz 2016 Summit organised by OIC International Business Centre Sdn Bhd, from Thursday until Saturday (Oct 18 to 22). -- BERNAMA

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