Conference

Halal Tourism in Turkey

As a world’s top 6th tourism destination, Turkey is also the leader of Muslim-friendly beach resorts in the world, with several successful examples of resorts catering exclusively to Muslims including; Şah Inn Paradise Hotel, Adenya Hotels, and Bera Hotels. Turkey hosted nearly 40 million foreign tourists in 2014 and more than 3.5 million of them were Muslim tourists. The country’s tourism industry has 1.1 million bed capacity with 4.248 tourism establishments including 684 five-star hotels, according to Association of Turkish Travel Agencies. This almost doubles Spain’s five-star hotel numbers that are 356 as placed in booking.com. Contrary to physical capacity championship in the tourism industry, the country ranks seventh in the State of the Global Islamic Economy 2015 Report’s Halal Travel Indicator. Ranking seventh indicates a gap and a market opportunity meaning Turkey needs to fulfil broader demand of Muslim tourists.

Bera Alanya Hotel, one of the leading Islamic hotels in Turkey, learned to accommodate the Muslim customer from their own customer experiences.

Positioning itself as a family hotel, Bera Hotel accommodates different segments of Muslim families, ranging from guests that are minimally modest (respecting general Muslim modest attire but not wearing hijab) to others that fully wear the hijab. Caprice Thermal Hotel, which serves as both a beach resort and a thermal hotel in Didim, Muğla, Turkey, started to serve a new pool service called Thalasso Pool. Bera Alanya Hotel  As a special facility for Muslim families, Thalasso pools as they built inside the hotel, with separate pools for men and women, As a result of this new service, Bera Alanya succeeded in securing tourists in the 2016 season.

Turkey has 4.248 tourism accommodation facilities in total (including hotels, holiday villages, motels, thermals etc) and only 200 of them call themselves “Islamic Hotels”, “Alternative Hotels”, “Halal Hotels”, “Non-Alcohol Hotels” or “Family Friendly Hotels”.

Hotels services:

·         Restaurants for families only

·         Non-alcohol facility

·         Non disco and bar facility

·         Halal certified kitchen

·         Halal Food

·         Qibla direction in the room away from the toilet

·         Quran and prayer rug in the room

·         Masjid in the hotel

·         Loud music noise isolation for masjids

·         Mosque or masjid near the hotel

·         Halal food facility near the hotel

·         No adult channels in the room

·         Modestly dressed workers

·         Famous religious singers

In the international cooperation related with Islamic Tourism, Turkey and Indonesia have cooperation in the sharia textiles sector. Turkey also works with United Arab Emirates in the halal food sector in accordance with the standards of Organization of Islamic Cooperation.