‘Halaal vacation homes’ take tourism sector by storm

A RENTAL company in Orlando, Florida, is offering “halaal vacation homes” with curtained pool decks, rooms with prayer mats and copies of the Qur’an.

The “halaal tourism” market was once seen as a niche revenue stream, limited to pilgrimages like the multi-billion-dollar-a-year revenue stream generated by Muslim travellers to Mecca.

But now there’s a movement in the tourism industry to widen the “halaal tourism” market to cater to Muslim travellers worldwide, particularly those from wealthy Gulf Arab states.

A British company’s apt lists gourmet restaurants serving halaal meat in London and Dubai, while a Boston-based developer’s apt offers travel guides for 90 cities with local prayer times and a compass pointing Muslims toward Mecca for daily prayers.

Travellers from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Oman will spend $64 billion (R848.52bn) travelling this year and are expected to spend $216bn by 2030, according to a 2014 study for the travel technology company, Amadeus.

The study found that, on average, a traveller from these countries spends about $9 900 per trip outside the Gulf. For Emiratis, the figure reaches $10 400.

Reem El Shafaki, a senior associate at the advisory firm Dinar Standard, said Ritz-Carlton hotels in Dallas and New York offer a good example of what hotels are doing to better serve Muslim guests.