The Tourism Authority of Thailand, or TAT, has recently launched a Muslim Application for iOS and Android. This Muslim App is both an online and offline guidebook that will help Muslim visitors find mosques, halal restaurants and hotels, shopping centres with prayer rooms, and other facilities of cultural importance to Muslim travellers to Thailand.

Thailand Muslim App Launched

A critical component of the newly launched strategy to position it as a Muslim-friendly destination, the App is initially in English and Thai but will be expanded to include Arabic and Bahasa Indonesia later.It also has a very important search and navigation feature that helps users quickly locate specific places and estimate the time it will take to get there from their current location.

The Thai Muslim App was developed with the support of the Halal Science Centre of Chulalongkorn University, the Islamic Centre of Thailand Foundation, the Halal Standards Institute of Thailand and the Tourism Council of Thailand.Mrs Juthaporn Rerngronasa, Acting Governor, TAT, said, “We are delighted to launch this App in the holy month of Ramadan. We hope it will be helpful to the many Muslim visitors from Indonesia and Malaysia who may choose to visit Thailand during the upcoming Eid-ul-Fitr (Hari Raya) holidays at the end of the month.

The Muslim-friendly destination strategy is primarily aimed at the 240 million-strong Islamic populations of Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei, which are expected to grow strongly after the ASEAN integration process advances from 2016 onwards.

Mrs Juthaporn said, “The Muslim population worldwide is about 1.6 billion, representing 23 per cent of the total global population”, and still has plenty of room to grow.

Thailand has great potential to serve this market. Today, we are seeing a whole new generation of young Thai Muslims emerging nationwide, and they need to seek promising opportunities in the tourism sector.She noted that Thailand is already Asia’s top destination for Middle East travellers. Amongst the non-Muslim countries, Thailand is ranked second in the world by the Global Muslim Travel Index (GMTI) 2015.

Mrs Juthaporn said, “We believe this is because we have the required range of products and services for Muslim travellers”. Many of our shopping complexes already provide facilities for Muslim prayers, and halal food is becoming commonplace.

We are also seeing increasing investor interest in developing halal-tourism hotels. All this is good for us because it will create jobs for our emerging younger generation and promote national inclusiveness and integration.”

Conclusion

TAT has also produced a number of guidebooks and brochures to help Muslim visitors, such as “Halal Check-in Thailand (which contains a list of halal-certified restaurants) and Islamic Attractions in Southernmost Provinces (Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani). The TAT Muslim App can be downloaded here: http://www.tourismthailand.org/muslimfriendly.