Halal Tourism: The Practices of Halal Hotels in Alanya, Turkey

Özet

The numbers of Muslims travelling to Turkey is increasing day by day. Although Turkey is one of most visited halal tourism destinations in the world, papers related to halal hospitality practices in Turkey are scarce. Current study is a conceptual paper that aims to fill this gap through evaluating recent halal hospitality developments in Alanya, Turkey. In this paper, first the author distinguishes between Islamic tourism and halal tourism terms which emerge from the relationship between Islam and tourism and then evaluates recent halal hospitality developments in Alanya. It is stated that factors that motive individuals to travel may present clues to distinguish these terms. Showing parallelism with the increasing number of Muslim tourists in Turkey, the number of halal hotels in the destination has increased. Many conservative hotel companies recently have changed their concept to Islamic to respond halal tourism market. It is also stated many halal hotels operating in Alanya has no halal certification which is possibly result of lacking official unit to do.