Thailand Muslim App Launched

Thailand TAT Muslim Application

Tourism Authority of Thailand or TAT has launched a Muslim Application for iOS and Android recently.

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

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 to help quickly locate specific places and estimate the time it will take to get there from a users’ current location. 

The Thai Muslim App was developed with the support of the Halal Science Centre of Chulalongkorn University, the Foundation of the Islamic Centre of Thailand, Halal Standards Institute of Thailand and the Tourism Council of Thailand.

Mrs Juthaporn Rerngronasa, Acting Governor, TAT, said, “We are especially happy to launch this App in the holy month of Ramadan. 

We hope it will be useful 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. 

Tourism Thailand Muslim Application
The TAT Muslim Application which was recently launched
Thailand has great potential to serve this market. Today, we are seeing a whole new generation of young Thai-Muslims emerging nationwide, and it is very important for them to seek promising opportunities in the tourism sector.

She noted that Thailand is already the top destination for Middle East travellers in Asia. 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". 

We are already seeing many of our shopping complexes providing facilities for Muslim prayers. Halal food is also 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

Malaysia Asia

Blogging since 2007, but writing online since 1997. I belong to the 1st generation of worldwide bloggers, which is of course old-school. Since 2008, I created Malaysia Asia and this travel, flood, gadget and lifestyle blog has won numerous physical awards from tourism boards around Malaysia. (Not those online awards). After 12 years of blogging, I have semi-retired and now blog about things I like, do product reviews and enjoy life. My work has been featured in Lonely Planet, CNN Travel, Yahoo Travel, Wall Street Journal, and many other international publications. Find out more about me and thank you.

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