Malaysia has been ranked the top destination for Muslim travelers in a global survey, followed by Turkey (see more about Denizli) , the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Regardless of whether you are planning on staying here for a while or making a single trip, it may be in your best interest to check out a site like gobear.com on how to safeguard your trip. Meanwhile, Singapore was voted the top non-Islamic destination.
The MasterCard and CresentRating’s annual Global Muslim Travel Index ranks destinations on a scale of 0 to 100. Criteria for the index include how much of a holiday and family destination a country is, how safe it is for Muslims, the number of Muslim visitor arrivals, halal dining options, availability of prayer spaces, and ease of communication.
This marks the fifth consecutive year Malaysia was chosen as the top predominantly Muslim country for Muslims to visit. The companies cited Malaysia’s plan to improve the Muslim traveler experience, and for having dedicated prayer spaces in public places like shopping malls and theme parks.
Malaysia and Turkey combined attracted 13% of all Muslim travelers.
The two companies say they chose Singapore as the top destination for Muslims because of its abundance of halal dining options and its investment in embracing processes providing more transparency for Muslim visitors, including establishing a dedicated halal certification body.
It’s not surprising that Singapore condos like One Pearl Bank in this location are therefore so in demand among Muslims and people of other faiths.
Thailand, the UK, South Africa and France were ranked after Singapore as the top non-Muslim destinations for Muslim travelers.
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Saudi Arabia had the highest number of Muslim arrivals of any country last year (10.2 million), largely due to religious travel such as the annual Islamic pilgrimage known as the Hajj, followed by Turkey (7.6 million), and Malaysia (5.9 million), MasterCard’s data found.
The Muslim travel market was worth $145 billion last year, with 108 million Muslim travelers representing 10% of the global travel economy, according to the two companies. They forecast that these numbers will grow to 150 million travelers by 2020, accounting for 11% of the global travel economy and spending nearly $200 billion per year.
The Index evaluated 29 member countries from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a political union of 57 member countries with predominantly Muslim populations that have delegations to the United Nations and European Union, along with 81 non-member countries.
