Faizel Patel, Radio Islam News, 2013-12-24

A new and the world’s first fully-featured travel booking website for Muslim travellers has been launched.

The new website, HalalTrip.com includes a global directory of halaal restaurants and dedicated city guides has been launched in a bid to capitalize on the growing number of Muslim tourists.

Specialist Singapore-based firm Crescentrating said HalalTrip.com, offers a wide range of features for tourists wishing to travel in accordance with the rules of Islam.

“It is the world’s first fully-featured travel booking website for Muslim travellers,” Crescentrating chief executive Fazal Bahardeen told AFP, adding that the industry had been lacking a dedicated travel booking site catering to the needs of Islamic tourists.

Spending by Muslim travellers is estimated to reach $200 billion by 2020, up from $126 billion in 2011, according to the company’s chief operating officer Dany Bolduc.

Crescentrating acquired HalalTrip.com from its Austrian owner in June and has re-launched it with new features including booking facilities for nearly 400,000 hotels, as well as airlines and tour packages. The site previously only allowed bookings for 1,000 hotels.

Tourists can now search flights and hotels on the English-language site as a result of partnerships with online reservation firm Booking.com, and travel search engine Wego.com. It also offers a global directory of halaal restaurants, masaajid and amenities useful to the Muslim tourist.

There are dedicated travel and city guides to places such as Istanbul, Beijing, and Kuala Lumpur, highlighting places of interest for the Islamic visitors. Other features will be added progressively, including Arabic and other language interfaces, the company said.

Crescentrating already runs a website which rates hotels, restaurants, airports and other establishments using such criteria as having halaal restaurants and Jamaat Khana’s (prayer rooms).

This year, it launched a service that allows Muslim travellers to determine their salaah (prayer) times and the direction to which they should pray even while they are in mid-flight and across different time zones. – Agencies

(Twitter: @Faizie143)