Abstract
Muslim travelers’ growth is an emerging sector of the global tourism industry. Yet, little has been discovered about their behaviors and perceived inconveniences in a non-Muslim destination. The present research was an attempt to identify international Muslim travelers’ loyalty generation process for the non-Muslim destination by considering the effect of inconveniences that they possibly perceive while traveling to the non-Muslim destination. An empirical approach comprising a field survey method was used to collect the Muslim travelers’ views in a non-Muslim destination (Korea). Our result revealed that halal-friendly image, emotional experiences, and desire played a significant role in building Muslim travelers’ loyalty. In addition, a moderator test result of Muslim travelers’ perceived inconveniences at the non-Muslim destination significantly weakened the effect of desire and halal-friendly image on loyalty. The comparative importance of emotional experiences at a destination was identified. Our findings help non-Muslim destination marketers to develop effective attraction and retention strategies for international Muslim travelers.
Highlights
Global tourism growth has proven the large-scale development of its exclusive services and products to cover a wide range of global markets during the past decade [1]
The results of the composite reliability calculation revealed that all values were greater than the cutoff of 0.70 suggested by Hair et al [40]
Our assessment of AVE values revealed that all values were greater than Hair et al.’s [40] recommend threshold of 0.50
Summary
Global tourism growth has proven the large-scale development of its exclusive services and products to cover a wide range of global markets during the past decade [1]. Islamic teachings instruct consuming only halal meals, which include a wide range of foods and beverages (i.e., fruits, vegetables, seafood, grains, beans, etc.) or meats/poultry strictly slaughtered according to Islamic principles [1,2]. These practices strongly explain the important interests and needs of Muslim markets globally, which are required to be considered by tourism destination developers and policy makers. Since Muslim travelers’ decisions and behaviors are based on these principles (Sharia principles) [3], providing tourism environments by minimizing the Muslim unfriendly aspects of any tourism product is fundamental to boost their favorable experiences in any destination [2,5]
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