Muslim-Friendly Hospitality: An Overview of the Emerging Hospitality Industry in Malaysia

Abstract

Malaysia has emerged towards Muslim-friendly hospitality services (MFHS) that sees the formation of two main industries, hospitality and tourism to move side-by-side hastily today. The positioning of Malaysia as the pioneer in promoting MFHS foresees to transform Malaysia into a high-income nation by 2020 to achieve the target to become the leading tourist destination. It also will heighten the target of 36 million tourist arrivals and RM168 billion in receipts to intensify the existing Islamic tourism sector for the desirable economic benefits. Muslim-friendly hospitality, however, is a holistic tourism services that adhere to the Islamic values but with more sufficient outlook. It is very important to outline the emerging MFHS industry in Malaysia to ensure that the new label of MFHS in Malaysia is emergent globally. This study overviewMFHSas the emerging hospitality industry inMalaysia and where the direction should be. Themethodology of this study is exploratory with the main data collected by using library research. The findings of the study found that the emerging hospitality industry in Malaysia is on the right track and should focus on the structure of the MFHS concept to maximise the economic benefits and to maintain the sustainability of the industry.