Halal culinary and tourism marketing strategies on government websites: A preliminary analysis
Introduction
Food is considered to be one of the significant aspects that influence visitors' satisfaction with a destination, as it allows for a more fulfilling sensory experience by utilizing all of a tourist's senses (Hall, 2003). Expenditure on food is a major item in the tourist budget accounting for one-third of tourism expenditures and a primary source of earning tourism revenue (Meler & Cerovic, 2003). Local cuisines provide tourists with genuine cultural experiences of the host destination and serve as a core manifestation of its intangible heritage (Okumus, Okumus, & McKercher, 2007), thus providing marketable images of the destination (Henderson, 2009; Quan & Wang, 2004). Historically, services and facilities frequented by Muslim tourists are different from those of conventional tourists with the availability of Halal cuisine being the most pertinent and sought-after choice for them (Dinar standard, 2012). This has led to an increased interest in Halal tourism, an emerging trend in the tourism and hospitality domain, which primarily focuses on the development and provision of different tourism products and services to fulfill the distinctive requirements of Muslim tourists in conformance with their religious teachings (Battour & Ismail, 2016; El-Gohary, 2016).
The global Muslim population is overall large and growing. It was estimated to be 1.8 billion in 2015, making up approximately 24.1% of the world's population, a proportion that is projected to increase to 31.1% with 3 billion inhabitants in the year 2060 (Pew Research Center, 2017). The Muslim travel market is emerging as the fastest growing segment in the global travel industry and generates impressive statistics. In the year 2015, international Muslim travelers were estimated to be 117 million, a figure that is projected to ascend to 168 million by the year 2020, with tourism receipts in excess of USD 200 billion (Global Muslim Travel Index, 2016). To put this into perspective, in the year 2013, the largest source destinations for outbound tourism in the world, i.e., China and the USA, generated tourism receipts of USD 131.3 million and USD 121.3 million, respectively, while the revenues spawned by Muslim travelers amounted to USD 140 million alone, representing 11.6% of global market share (Mayock, 2015). The Muslim travel market is relatively young, and it is becoming increasingly affluent (Reuters & Standard, 2013). The commercial aspects of the Muslim travel market, coupled with Muslim tourists' adherence to the complete code of conduct levied by their religion, demand appreciation of the distinctive characteristics and preferences of Muslim tourists by tourism bureaus and destination marketing organizations (Henderson, 2010).
Overall, there is notably limited research on Muslim tourism (Kim, Im, & King, 2015). The existing research on Muslim tourists is predominantly atheoretical and descriptive in nature (Oktadiana, Pierce & Chon, 2016), articulating the knowledge related to Islamic perspectives on tourism (El-Gohary, 2016) and deliberating the features of Muslim tourist behavior that comply with the Islamic teachings (Ryan, 2016). There is a lacuna of research on strategizing the underlying marketing frameworks for Halal culinary and tourism promotion. Therefore, the current research aims to analyze the marketing strategies related to Halal culinary demands in particular and other Halal tourism and hospitality aspects in general, as described by the four popular non-Muslim Asian destinations for Muslim tourists, i.e., China, Japan, South Korea, and Thailand, on their official tourism bureaus websites by applying content analysis method of investigation determined by Neumann (2003) and Finn, Elliot-White, and Walton (2000). One of the largest source regions of inbound tourism to these countries is South East Asia, which is home to a Muslim population of approximately 240 million, including Muslim majority countries such as Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia and other countries that have sizable Muslim contingencies such as Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines (Yusof, 2015).
The limited research on Halal tourism is largely confined to the development of Halal tourism in the Muslim majority countries, e.g., Malaysia (Henderson, 2016a; Zailani, Omar, & Kopong, 2011), Indonesia (Mohsin, Ramli, & Alkhulayfi, 2016) Turkey (Duman, 2012) Iran and Saudi Arabia (Zamani-Farahani & Henderson, 2010). The research in non-Muslim destinations is still in the preliminary phase. Moreover, we chose government-backed tourism bureau websites, as they are the most extensively used mediums to search for tourist-related information (Beldona & Cai, 2006; Heung, 2003). The content of the government-sponsored tourism websites is most likely to be consulted by the potential tourists to seek out relevant information regarding the destination of interest and activities, facilities and services provided (Boyne & Hall, 2004). A destination's tourism bureau website is the starting point of information dissemination. Such sites are designed to direct online visitors' attention to tourist attractions and value-added resources, such as restaurants and hotels (Beldona & Cai, 2006). Therefore, the manner in which information regarding Halal cuisine and related Halal services is presented and promoted on such sites can prove to be pivotal in addressing the concerns of Muslim tourists before choosing a destination of their interest.
The rest of this paper is organized in the following manner. First, the literature review section entails the relevant scholarship on food tourism, Halal tourism and culinary marketing strategies. Next, the methodology section introduces the overall state of culinary and Halal tourism in the destinations of interest in this study, i.e., China, Japan, South Korea, and Thailand, and the content analysis portion conceptualizes the evaluation framework of Halal culinary and tourism marketing strategies. The findings section appraises the use of different marketing strategies by the tourism bureau websites to promote Halal cuisines and additional Halal facilities to attract Muslim tourists. The findings are supported by representative texts, graphics, and images from the concerned websites. This is followed by a discussion of the results with implications for destination marketers, policymakers, and scholars. Lastly, the study's limitations are stated with potential directions for future researchers.
Section snippets
Food tourism
Local cuisines are regarded as an important source for creating competitive differentiation for a destination, as they provide a necessary cultural expression when other aspects of a destination are essentially generic in nature such as climate, buildings and shopping malls (Hjalanger & Richards, 2002; du Rand & Heath, 2006). Studies on food tourism marketing predominantly focus on the destination's food image as a unique culinary asset and a building block in the promotion of tourism of those
Context of the study
Mainland China, Japan, Thailand, and South Korea were selected and compared in this study as these destinations share several features, the most important of which is that they continue to experience increased inbound arrivals from the South East Asian Muslim majority countries (United Nations World Tourism Organization, 2017). China is among the leading travel destinations for inbound Muslim tourists globally (Salam Standard, 2016). In 2015, China attracted approximately 1.98 million tourists
Findings
This section reports the findings of the study, summarized in Table 2, along with a brief account of the 8 factors that inform the theoretical background of this research.
Discussion and conclusion
In the non-Muslim countries, some adjustments in tourism offerings should be integrated with promotional efforts to address the distinctive requirements of Muslims regarding food, daily prayers and travel preferences in general. It was found that the emerging Halal trend was integrated in the destination marketing and was given due consideration by the tourism bureaus of Thailand, Japan and Korea. These three tourism bureau websites published specially designed restaurant guidebooks for Muslim
Limitations and future research
The research findings furnished by this study are qualified by certain limitations in the research design. First, the current study predominantly relies on qualitative methods to appraise the evaluation framework of Halal culinary and tourism marketing strategies. Future studies could analyze the marketing capacity of the tourism websites and extend, confirm and/or modify the findings of this study by employing other methods such as focus groups, tourist surveys, interviews and Delphi
Acknowledgement
This research is funded by National Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (grant number 71750110538) and China Post Doctoral Science Association Foundation (grant number 181077) issued to the corresponding author of this manuscript.
Salman Yousaf is a post-doctoral research fellow at School of Management, Fudan University, Shanghai. He received his PhD degree in Marketing from Dongbei University of Finance and Economics, Dalian, China and has been serving as an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, Pakistan. His research focuses on the co-subjectivity of the Marketing discipline, particularly the application of social concepts in the nation branding and destination marketing domain, and
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Salman Yousaf is a post-doctoral research fellow at School of Management, Fudan University, Shanghai. He received his PhD degree in Marketing from Dongbei University of Finance and Economics, Dalian, China and has been serving as an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, Pakistan. His research focuses on the co-subjectivity of the Marketing discipline, particularly the application of social concepts in the nation branding and destination marketing domain, and the contemporariness of religious beliefs and their practicability and relevance in the development of theoretical models of marketing and ethnic tourism. His research work has appeared in leading international journals.
Xiucheng Fan is a professor and the director of The Center for Service Marketing and Management at School of Management, Fudan University, China. His research interests include service marketing, relationship marketing, and brand management. His work has appeared in Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Service Research, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Service Management, Journal of Consumer Marketing, etc.