It is estimated that by 2020, the total number of Muslimtourist arrivals across the world is expected to reach 156 million per annum, afigure that has the potential to advance the tourism of a country.
According to the 2018 theMastercard-Crescent Global Muslim Travel Index (GMTI) report, the expenditureof global Muslim tourists is projected to reach 220 billion USD in 2020 and isexpected to grow by more than 80 billion USD to reach 300 billion USD by 2026.
As a predominantly Muslim country, with a population of 265million, Indonesia, therefore, is eager to attract Muslim tourists by creatinghalal tourism programmes.
Indonesian Minister of Tourism Arief Yahya said the country isdeveloping halal tourism destinations and has set a target to attract 5 millionforeign tourist arrivals of the halal tourism segment in 2019, or about 25percent of the foreign tourist arrival target set at 20 million in 2019.
For this, the Ministry of Tourism works withCrescentrating Mastercard to launch the IMTI programme to rank the mosttourist-friendly halal destinations in Indonesia, with the criteria specifiedas used by the Mastercard-Crescent Global Muslim Travel Index (GMTI) that usesthe ACES criteria (Access , Communications, Environment, and Services).
Mastercard Indonesia Director Tommy Singgih said thatIndonesia has consistently tried to improve its position at GMTI. In 2015, itwas ranked sixth in the world, in 2017, it rose to the third position, and in2018, it was ranked second along with the United Arab Emirates, Singgih said.
Indonesia is targeting tobecome the world’s best halal tourist destination 2019 and become the mostfriendly country to world Muslim tourists in the GMTI version. At the moment, Malaysiais ranked first.
Yahya explained that the high growth of Indonesian halaltourism is very necessary to convince business people of the halal tourismbusiness in the country, which has 3S of interest: the market size is wide, thesustainable growth is high, and the profit spread is large.
He added that the rise of Indonesia to the first rank wouldmake it easier for the country to seize the global halal tourism market, whichis projected to reach 220 billion USD by 2020.
There are 10 provinces of Indonesia included in the index(IMTI) this year, namely Aceh, Riau Islands, West Sumatra, Jakarta, West Java,Central Java, Yogyakarta, East Java, South Sulawesi, and Lombok (West NusaTenggara).-VNA