Abstract—Over the past one decade, there has been an
increasing focus on Islamic products and services research such
as Halal food and Islamic banking. Halal revolution has created
increasing awareness among Muslim to consume Halal product
or Shariah-compliant services. In responding to this
development, hotels created innovative services for Muslim
guests called Shariah-compliant hotel (SCH). However, there is
lack of research on the characteristics, and implementation of
SCH has been carried out in the hotel industry. Therefore, the
purpose of this paper is to understand the practice of SCH in
Malaysia. Diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory is utilised to
investigate the issues of adoption and implementation of SCH.
The preliminary study uses in-depth, open-ended interviews
through purposive sampling. Interviews were recorded,
transcribed, and evaluated based on thematic analysis to
understand the practice. The study found three issues in
implementing SCH, such as the uncertainties of government
regulation, difficulties to meet Halal standard, and absence of
SCH standard. Along with this, two Malaysian Standards
(MS1900:2005 &MS1500:2004) have been identified and
strongly suggested to be used as a tool in the SCH practice.
Index Terms—Islamic hotel, hospitality, diffusion of
innovation.
The authors are with Business Management Department, Faculty of
Management, UniversitiTeknologi Malaysia, Skudai, 81310 Johor, Malaysia
(email: zafir@utm.my or nozafira@yahoo.com).
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Cite: Nor Zafir Md Salleh, Abu Bakar Abdul Hamid, Noor Hazarina Hashim, and Siti Zaleha Omain, "The Practice of Shariah-Compliant Hotel in Malaysia," International Journal of Trade, Economics and Finance vol.5, no.1, pp. 26-30, 2014.