GUIDE FOR MUSLIMS: Screenshots of the app Thailand Muslim Friendly Destination.
A screenshot of the app.
By Anand Holla
To make travelling a breeze for the burgeoning Muslim visitors to their country, the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) has launched an app designed specifically for Muslim visitors, which provides easier access to “Muslim-friendly products, services and facilities all through Thailand.”
The name of the smartphone app is as direct and to-the-point as it can get – Thailand Muslim Friendly Destination, and it serves as both an online and offline guidebook that will assist Muslim visitors in finding mosques, halal restaurants and hotels, shopping centres with prayer rooms, and other facilities around the country. The app can easily navigate users to a selected location and it is rather user-friendly.
The recently launched app is part of TAT’s new strategy to position Thailand as a “Muslim-friendly destination”. While it is currently available in Thai and English, it will be expanded to include Arabic and Bahasa Indonesia later. In his statement on the launch, Chalermsak Suranant, Director, TAT Dubai and Middle East office, said, that with this initiative, he “strongly believes” that Thailand will be positioned as a leading “Muslim-friendly destination.”
“Muslim visitors are both a quality and quantity customer segment. Visitors from the Gulf countries have a high average length of stay and daily expenditure. In 2013, visitors from the UAE had an Average Length of Stay of 10.6 days, while Thailand’s overall average was 9.8 days. The average daily expenditure of UAE visitors was more than USD195, while the overall Thailand average was USD150,” the TAT says.
Last month, TAT acting governor Juthaporn Rerngronasa, had said, “A new borderless Asean will emerge from 2016 onwards, after which we project a huge increase in Muslim visitors from our Asean neighbours, specifically Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei to the south.”
According to the MasterCard-CrescentRating Global Muslim Travel Index 2015, which is regarded as a globally recognised rating standard for halal-friendly travel services, Thailand is ranked the second top non-Muslim destination for halal-friendly holidays this year, up from third the previous year. The first rank for non-Muslim countries this year is Singapore, and UK stands at third, followed by South Africa, France, Belgium, Hong Kong, the US, Spain, and Taiwan.
Recently, Kobkarn Wattanavrangkul, the Thailand Minister of Tourism and Sports, had said that the Middle East market has remained an important market for the country, with a 49.62 per cent increase in the total number of arrivals in January 2015. As per TAT data, visitors from the UAE, Qatar and Kuwait already comprise the highest spending category of visitors to Thailand.
Aided by a simple, clean design, the app also has a search and navigation feature to help quickly locate specific places and also estimate the time it will take to get there from a users’ current location. The app was developed with the support of the Halal Science Centre of Chulalongkorn University, the Foundation of the Islamic Centre of Thailand, the Halal Standards Institute of Thailand and the Tourism Council of Thailand. It is available for download on iTunes and Google Play.