Religious and halal tourism organization peculiarities in muslim republics

Abstract

© 2019, Ecozone, OAIMDD. All rights reserved. The research relevance of certain types of tourism dedicated to organizational characteristics in the republics in which Islam is predominant is explained by the high rate of Muslim population growth throughout the world. It is important to understand both Muslim tourists’ requests and the factors determining local population attitude towards tourists visiting religious Islam sites. In this regard, the purpose of this article is to identify factors that have a positive and negative impact on tourism development, to determine the characteristics of halal tourism in the Muslim republics. Leading methods in the study of this issue were the bibliographic search method, theoretical and empirical method, i.e. consolidation method and generalizations of the research results, methods of expert assessment, complex issue analysis, the method of vector preferences. Also, a criterion method was used to study the religious phenomenon and the method of reconstructing the cultural and religious landscape in the Muslim republics. In the article, we explained the difference between religious tourism, pilgrimage, and halal tourism, factors that caused the rapid growth of halal tourism in the world. We present the results as religious and halal tourism organization features on the example of two countries - Republics of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, as well as one of the subjects in the Russian Federation - the Republic of Tatarstan. The authors provided positive examples of religious and halal tourism development in the Republic of Tatarstan in the Russian Federation, formation of tourist services and products aimed at the Muslims (Muslim-friendly travel), and also identified problems that prevent the Republic of Uzbekistan and the Republic of Tajikistan from tourist flow increase in the direction of religious tourism.