Halal Tourism Is Not Islamizing Tourist Destinations, but It Can Strengthen the National Tourism Industry

JAKARTADAILY.ID – Halal Tourism is a tourism concept that provides additional services provided to increase tourist satisfaction in obtaining, consuming, or using halal products, both in the form of goods and services while traveling.

"This means that the halal aspect is not related to Islamizing tourist destinations, but from the service, side based on the availability of halal products," said Head of the Ministry of Religion's halal product Assurance Agency (BPJPH) Muhammad Aqil Irham in a MarkPlus discussion last week.

That way, he continued, Muslim tourists have the convenience of getting services related to food, drinks, or other necessities that are guaranteed to be halal.

Aqil emphasized that Halal Tourism can only be realized when the halal product Guarantee is implemented. This is because the availability of halal-certified products is only realized by the implementation of halal standards through a halal certification mechanism for products in the form of goods and services.

"For example, there are halal tourist destinations in Lombok, there are hotels with halal-certified restaurants, the cuisine there which is also a tourist attraction is also halal, and so on. All of them form a Halal Tourism ecosystem," added Aqil Irham.

Aqil said, DinarStandard data in the 2020/2021 Global Islamic Economy report published through the Salaam Gateway in November 2020, noted that in 2019, as many as 200.3 million trips were made by global Muslim tourists, with an expenditure of 194 billion US dollars.

“This means that world Muslim tourists are a big market potential. Moreover, the number continues to increase so that the potential value of spending also increases," he explained.

Halal Tourism opportunities have now also received special attention from a number of countries that are not members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC); for example Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea.

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This is because the Halal Tourism sector can certainly encourage the tourism industry to boost economic growth. They continue to make various efforts to improve the quality of Halal Tourism services.

"We as the country with the largest Muslim population in the world certainly have big capital to be at the forefront of Halal Tourism. Therefore, the acceleration program for halal certification that we are running with a target of 10 million halal certified products is very relevant in our efforts to strengthen our Halal Tourism," he said.

With the implementation of this mandatory halal certification, halal certification should be able to increase the growth of halal products which has implications for improving the performance of national economic sectors, including Halal Tourism.

"Therefore, one of the main keys in encouraging the growth of national halal products is to accelerate halal certification," he said.

Aqil Irham also said it was necessary to strengthen the national halal ecosystem which was carried out in a synergistic and collaborative manner by involving all relevant halal product Guarantee stakeholders.