"The population of Muslim worldwide is estimated to increase to 26 percent of the total population by 2030, giving opportunities to Islamic tourism sector to keep growing," the Division President Mastercard, Safdar Khan said here on Tusday.
Data from Mastercard-CrescentRating Global Muslim Travel Index (GMTI) 2016 shows the number of global Muslim tourist visits reaches 117 million in 2015.
The number is estimated to grow to 168 million by 2020 with a total expenditure value of US$200 billion.
Mastercard has established cooperation with HalalTrip in providing an internet platform for Muslim businesses engaged in tourism to launch and promote their products for Muslims tourists.
HalalTrip and Mastercard will launch HalalTrip City Pass that facilitates people to access the popular tourist destinations around the world.
Another product is HalalTrip Getaways which helps people to plan their trips according to their needs in Islamic way.
In addition to the two products, there is HalalTrip Homes which has a reference for halal accommodation for Muslim tourists.
"We hope these Muslim life style-based products will improve the payment landscape, boost cross-nation trading and support the establishment of new standard on general tourism industry," Khan remarked.
Meanwhile, the CEO of CrescentRating & Halal Trip, Fazal Bahardee, said these products are examples of the advancement of current Muslim tourist markets.
Earlier, the General Chairman of Indonesian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Kadin), Rosan Perkasa Roeslani, said the halal business is developing very fast at national and international levels.
According to Rosan, the development is not only due to the high growth of Muslim population, but also the strong tends of non-Muslim community who consider halal products are safe and qualified.
"Competition in gaining halal markets in the era of free trade at the moment is no longer a monopoly of Islamic countries or Muslim-majority population countries. The non-Muslim countries have been preparing facilities and meeting requirements of halal product that can be accepted by halal products consumers," he added.(*)
Editor: Heru Purwanto
Copyright © ANTARA 2016
