(PDF) Islamic Attributes of Destination:

International Journal of Tourism Research, Int. J. Tourism Res. (2013) Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/jtr.1947 Islamic Attributes of Destination: Construct Development and Measurement Validation, and Their Impact on Tourist Satisfaction MOHAMED BATTOUR1*, MOUSTAFA BATTOR2 and MUHAMMAD AWAIS BHATTI3 1 Faculty of Commerce, Tanta University, Tanta, Egypt 2 Middlesex University, London, UK and Faculty of Commerce, Tanta University, Egypt 3 University Utara Malaysia, college of business, Sintok Kedah, Malaysia ABSTRACT The objectives of the paper are to ﬁrst develop a measurement scale for Islamic attributes of destination and then to investigate the inﬂuence of Islamic attributes on overall tourist satisfaction. This study followed the sequence of steps that should be performed in developing mea- sures of constructs. The measurement was tested and found to be both reliable and valid. The study found positive relationship between Islamic attributes of destination and overall tourist satisfaction. Important marketing implications are also presented. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Received 20 November 2011; Revised 04 February 2013; Accepted 09 February 2013 key words Islamic attributes; tourist satisfaction; destination marketing; construct development INTRODUCTION attributes represent the availability of Islamic norms and prac- tices, which are relevant to tourism at the destination. The tourism industry, just like any other industry, is always In recent years, there seems to have been a growing inter- on the lookout for ways to expand. One of these is to incor- est in new concepts, such as ‘Halal’ tourism’, ‘Halal hospital- porate new market segments. Examples of how this has been ity’, and ‘Halal friendly travel’. This study may contribute to achieved in the last decade include the incorporation of spe- efforts to further understand the real meaning of such terms. cial needs groups, such as elderly, disabled and gay tourists. Moreover, there is limited empirical research addressed to Another group that can be included in this category of IADs; only qualitative studies have been conducted in this ‘special needs’ tourists is the ‘religious tourist’ group research area (Battour et al., 2011). To ﬁll this gap, the ﬁrst (Weidenfeld, 2006). This is because some religions teach objective of the study is to develop a measuring scale for their followers codes of behaviour, which may encourage IADs. Furthermore, no empirical research has been done to or discourage them from being customers of the tourism in- test the relationship between IADs and tourist satisfaction. dustry. For example, some people, because of their religious To ﬁll this gap, the second objective is to investigate the im- beliefs, ﬁnd public alcohol consumption to be highly offen- pact of IADs on overall tourist satisfaction. sive. Therefore, tourism industry operators should be aware of this fact and know how to overcome it to attract this type of tourist. In other words, tourism industry operators need to LITERATURE REVIEW know the religious needs of tourists and also be able to cater to these needs to ensure the expansion of the industry. Religion and tourism Since the Muslim population constitutes an international The link between religion and consumer behaviour has been market of 1.82 billion possible customers (Muslim popula- recognized both theoretically and empirically. Previous stud- tion worldwide, 2009) and religion plays an important part ies have shown the impact of religion on behaviour and pur- in their decision-making process with regard to travel desti- chasing decisions (Hirschman, 1981; Delener, 1990; Weaver nations (Delener, 1990; Essoo and Dibb, 2004), it is impor- and Agle, 2002; Fam et al., 2004). A range of studies have tant to understand Islamic attributes of destination (IADs). investigated religion’s impact on tourist habits, attitudes, In addition, the absence of Islamic attributes at the people’s values and shopping behaviour. For example, Essoo destination may be a source of worry to these potential trav- and Dibb (2004) found that religion inﬂuences shopping be- ellers and to those with whom they interact (Syed, 2001). haviour among Hindus, Muslims and Catholics. Weidenfeld The availability of Islamic attributes is considered very and Ron (2008) found that religion also inﬂuences choice important when a Muslim decides to travel abroad (WTM, of destination, tourist product favourites, and the selection 2007). The Muslim tourist may not select a particular destination of religious opportunities and facilities offered. Meng et al. if these attributes are absent (Battour et al., 2011). Islamic (2008) found that tourists select destinations that they will best fulﬁl their internal desires or preferred destination attributes. *Correspondence to: Mohamed Battour, Faculty of Commerce, Tanta University, Said Street 31515, Tanta, Egypt. Although destination attributes have been addressed in E-mail:

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destination Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. M. Battour, M. Battor and M. A. Bhatti been adequately addressed in the context of Islam. When it comes to the relationship between tourism and Islam, the shortage of literature is more noticeable, especially regarding Islamic attributes and their impact on tourist needs (Battour et al., 2011). Research that explores the relationships be- tween religion, behaviour and tourist destination choice re- mains greatly limited (Din, 1989; Rinschede, 1992; Fleischer, 2000; Howe, 2001; Poria et al., 2003; Weidenfeld, 2006; Weidenfeld and Ron, 2008). Islam and destination attributes If the destination marketers understand and are aware of the preferred destination attributes of Muslim tourists, they may be able to launch successful marketing campaigns that are de- veloped on the basis of tourist motivation. Bogari et al. (2004) claim that destination attributes and issues related to Islamic culture have not been sufﬁciently explored by re- searchers. Chiang and Jogaratnam (2006) maintain that travel motivation studies frequently give more attention to the gen- eral population. Thus, instead of heterogeneous marketing by focusing on speciﬁc groups, researchers should now try and discover the desires of smaller, homogeneous ones. However, research into Muslim travel motivation has not received the same level of attention given to identifying secular travel mo- tives, even though the Muslim population has emerged as a global market in recent years. This may be demonstrated by empirical studies conducted in relation to the religious needs of Muslim tourists. Studies conducted in the area of Islamic attributes of des- tination include Battour et al. (2010) who discuss the devel- opment of Islamic-oriented tourism standards, such as alcohol- and gambling-free zones and the availability of Halal food. The study also recommends that future research is needed to explore religious attributes of destination, may satisfy Muslim tourists. Another qualitative study conducted by Battour et al. (2011) identiﬁes IADs that may attract Muslim tourists, such as the inclusion of ities, Halal food, Islamic entertainment, Islamic dress codes, general Islamic morality and the Islamic call to prayer. This study recommends that IAD measures should be developed for the purpose of empirical research. Destination attributes and tourist satisfaction Religion and religiosity are recognized factors inﬂuencing behaviour in various social settings (Battour et al., 2011). Therefore, there has been a recommendation to study the ef- fect of catering for the religious needs of tourists to gain a high level of satisfaction, which could in turn affect future behaviour: tourist product preferences and repeat visits (Fleischer, 2000; Weidenfeld and Ron, 2008). Tourist satis- faction is important to the success of market destinations (Yoon and Uysal, 2005; Devesa et al., 2010; Zabkar et al., 2010) because it is directly linked to destination choice, product/service consumption and repeat visits (Metin and Mike, 2000). Meng et al. (2008) report that measuring tourist satisfaction presents information related to how well a desti- nation matches the tourists’ needs, which may help destina- tion marketers to improve the quality of products and services that interest tourists. Correia et al. (2007) point out Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. overseas travel experience for various purposes. For the in- terviews, two researchers approached as many Muslim tour- ists as possible in Kuala Lumpur around the ‘Golden Triangle Area’ where many international chain hotels are located. The participants of FGD1 consisted of eight male sub- jects. The duration was one and a half hours. The participants of FGD 2 consisted of seven female subjects. The duration was one hour and 15 minutes. The duration of the interviews was between 35 and 45 minutes. The digital recordings of the FGDs and interviews were transcribed into text. The data were organized for easy categorization and systematic data analysis. This study aimed to discontinue conducting in- depth interviews when no additional information was pro- vided by the participants. Table 1 shows the interview guide- line questions designed according to the knowledge gained from the two FGDs. Stage 3 involved the reﬁning of the measures by a panel of experts using quantitative techniques. The proposed items were sent to six academics to validate the questionnaires, and then, a pre-test was carried out by giving the questionnaire to several respondents and ensuring that the questions were clear and understandable. To further improve the IAD mea- surement, a pilot test was conducted at Stage 3 by using 60 usable questionnaires with international students to calculate the coefﬁcient alpha for the proposed dimensions. Stage 4 included the continuous improvement cycle in the instrument development process suggested by Chen and Paulraj (2004). It covered the following: the reﬁning of the measure through exploratory factor analysis, the assessing of reliability with new data and the evaluating of the con- struct validity. By using 153 usable questionnaires collected from tourists, the EFA approach was applied ﬁrst to establish construct validity, and this was followed by the CFA ap- proach. Once the internal consistency and construct validity were found to be satisfactory, the measures were considered to be valid and reliable. In other words, the reliability and Table 1. Interview semi structured questions Interview guideline questions Islamic In your opinion, which Islamic attributes in the attributes destination do you need when you travel for tourism? If you are planning to visit country, which Islamic attributes or aspects of this country are important to you as a Muslim? (Probing; facilities, food, places of worship, environment, behaviour, entertainment, dress, etc.) Worship Can you tell me in detail what worship facilities in your travel are important to you? Hotels Can you tell me in detail what Islamic aspects of hotels in your travel are important to you? (Probing; food, prayer facilities, entertainment, etc.) Transportation What Islamic aspects of transportation to/in the destination are important to you? General What Islamic aspects of the general environment you visit a Muslim country are important to you? (Probing; alcohol, gambling, behaviour, dress code, prostitution, etc.) Religious What are the most likely Islamic attributes that motives inﬂuence your decision to choose the destinations you will visit? Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. M. Battour, M. Battor and M. A. Bhatti Literature Review Stage 1 Islam and tourism Religion and literature tourism 1. Religious facilities 2. Religious environment Stage 2 Two FGDs& 53 interviews IAD (23 items) Stage 3 Purifying the measures (60 Qs) IAD (18 items/6 dimensions) Reliability and validity Assessment Stage 4 (EFA/ 153 Qs) -----> (CFA, CR/153 Qs) IAD (18 items/4 dimensions) Stage 5 IAD -----> OTS Structure equations model (508 Qs) Figure 1. Islamic attributes of destination (IAD) construct development. alpha was calculated using 60 usable questionnaires at this stage. Table 2 shows the Cronbach’s alpha results for six pro- posed dimensions. The IAD is constructed with six compo- nents: worship facilities, Halal food, Islamic entertainment, alcohol- and gambling-free zones, Islamic dress code and Is- lamic morality. Worship facilities were measured with eight measurement items, Halal food with two items, Islamic en- tertainment with four items, alcohol- and gambling-free zones with three items, Islamic dress code with two items and Islamic morality with four items. As shown in Table 2, the initial Cronbach’s alpha coefﬁcients of four components – worship facilities (0.646), Islamic entertainments (0.664), alcohol- and gambling-free zones (0.527) and Islamic moral- ity (0.580) – are below the 0.70 threshold recommended by Nunnally and Bernstein (1994). The Cronbach’s alpha of Ha- lal food and Islamic dress codes exceeds 0.70. To gain the highest possible reliability coefﬁcient, the components were puriﬁed by dropping items with the lowest item-to-total correlation. For the worship facilities, two items (Wo3 and Wo5) were deleted due to a low item-total correla- tion. For Islamic entertainment, one item (Ie3) was dropped. For the alcohol- and gambling-free components, the second item (Al2) was dropped. For Islamic morality, the third item (Mor3) was dropped. After excluding unreliable items, the item-total correlations were greater than 0.50. The revised items demonstrated coefﬁcient alpha values of 0.868 (wor- ship facilities), 0.908 (Islamic entertainments), 0.895 (alcohol and gambling-free) and 0.808 (Islamic morality), all within an acceptable range. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Table 3. Varimax rotated factor loadings for IAD scale Islamic attributes of destination Items Availability of Mosque (Masjid) Availability of prayer facilities at tourism sites, Presence of loud public pronouncement of Azan to indicate prayer time. Placement of Qibla direction (Qibla stickers/direction Provision of a copy of the Holy Qur’an in each hotel room Availability of water supply in toilets at tourism Availability of Halal food at tourism sites, airport, Availability of segregated Halal kitchen in hotels and restaurants Availability of segregated areas for women at beaches Availability of hotels with segregated swimming pools Banning of sex channels on hotel entertainment system Banning of alcoholic drinks by the authority at public Banning of gambling activities by the authority at Observation of Islamic dress code by hotel and restaurant staff Prevalence of Islamic dress code (e.g. Hijab) at public places Banning by the authority of prostitution Banning by the authority of indecent displays of affection (such as kissing, etc.) Censorship by the authority of adult scenes in movies shown on TV Cronbach’s alpha coefﬁcients were greater than 0.5. These coefﬁcient alpha values are very high compared with common results in other tourism motiva- tion studies; this may be explained by the closeness of the re- spondents’ answers in the questionnaires. To sum up, the validity of the IAD measures was initially assessed by examining the reliability of the construct and conducting an exploratory factor analysis. Since reliability and construct validity are established by the EFA approach, validating IAD measures using the conﬁrmatory factor anal- ysis approach can be applied. Conﬁrmatory factor analysis (CFA) is used to validate the results of the EFA. This approach is commonly used in the continuous improvement cycles in measurement instrument development processes (Chen and Paulraj, 2004). By using 153 usable questionnaires, composite reliability (CR) was ﬁrst examined in CFA. The rule of thumb of CR is 0.70 or higher, indicating good reliability (Hair et al., 2010, p. 710). Table 4 shows that the composite reliability of all dimensions of Islamic attributes of destination was found to be higher than 0.70, indicating good reliability. Among the CFA results, all the regression weights (0.65–0.98; with their signiﬁcant t-values) are ≥0.5, the threshold recommended by Hair et al. (2010), indicating the presence of unidimensionality in the set of items used in IAD measures. To establish acceptable convergent validity, the AVE for each factor should account for 0.50 or more of the total variance, as recommended by Fornell and Larcker (1981, 1981). Table 4 shows that the AVE of the IAD measures exceeds the recommended level of 0.50, hence suggesting acceptable convergent validity. The discriminant validity was also examined using the procedure suggested by Fornell and Larcker (1981). They suggest that discriminant validity is established if the square root of the AVE for each construct is greater than the values for the correlations between the given construct and Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. M. Battour, M. Battor and M. A. Bhatti Table 5. Correlation between factors General Worship Islamic Alcoholic drinks facilities Halalness morality and gambling free Worship facilities 0.83 Halalness 0.45 0.80 General Islamic 0.43 0.33 0.84 morality Alcoholic drinks 0.42 0.36 0.30 0.88 and gambling free To evaluate how Islamic attributes of destination contrib- ute to overall tourist satisfaction, the path coefﬁcient (b) was used, and the variance of overall tourist satisfaction was ex- amined using an R2. The AMOS results reveal that IADs have a statistically signiﬁcant positive inﬂuence on overall tourist satisfaction (b = 0.89, t = 17.14, p < 0.000) and ac- count for a 67.7% variance in overall tourist satisfaction. Fur- thermore, by using standardized coefﬁcients, it was found that ‘Islamic morality’ contributed the most to overall tourist satisfaction (b = 0.898), followed by ’Halalness’ (b = 0.885), ‘worship facilities’ (b = 0.841) and ‘alcohol- and gambling- free zones’ (b = 0.703) (Figure 3). DISCUSSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS This study has developed instruments to gauge IADs as recommended by Battour et al. (2010) and Battour et al. (2011). The construct was developed by following the Figure Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Table 6. CFA ﬁt measures of the IAD scale Fit indices Estimates level Chi-square 288.592 Degree of freedom (d.f.) 129 P 0.000 >0.05 Normed chi-squared (CMIN/DF) 2.237 <3.00 Goodness-of-ﬁt index (GFI) 0.829 Adjusted goodness-of-ﬁt index (AGFI) 0.773 Tucker-Lewis index (TLI) 0.913 Comparative Fit index (CFI) 0.927 ≥0.90 Root mean square of error 0.09 ≤0.08 of estimation (RMSEA) attract Muslim tourists for the purpose of achieving greater tourist satisfaction. For example, ‘Islamic morality’ was found to be the most important Islamic attribute, indicating that travel agents could select hotels for Muslims, which are located far from red-light districts. Tourist guides should also avoid visiting these places on tour programmes. An additional implication related to ‘Halalness’, which was found to be the second most important Islamic attribute, could help destination marketers to satisfy Muslim tourists. By providing Halal ‘Islamic’ products/services, a speciﬁc destination may be able to differentiate itself from other des- tinations. For example, the availability of Halal food in hotels and restaurants could represent a high priority for Muslim tourists in destination selection. Therefore, when marketers promote a destination to Muslim tourists, promotional cam- paigns should focus more on the availability of Halal food. Furthermore, the availability of segregated entertainments, Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. M. Battour, M. Battor and M. A. Bhatti limitations that suggest further possibilities for empirical re- search. The ﬁrst limitation concerns the context of the study (Malaysia), which applies constraints on the generalizability of the results to other countries. Therefore, no claim can be made for the generalizability of the ﬁndings beyond these contexts. Further research is underway to extend the current work into a number of other countries. However, the use of a country other than Malaysia would increase our understanding of IADs in other contexts and help to demonstrate the universality and global importance of this concept. Since 67.7% of the variance in overall tourist satisfaction was explained by IADs, future research is needed in this area, focusing on adding other Islamic attributes. Moreover, Islamic attributes with pull motivations should be integrated (destination attributes) in future research, which will give this area more attention and increase our understanding. For example, the moderating role of IADs can be tested between pull motivation factors and overall tourist satisfaction. Future research that replicates this study in other contexts would be welcome and would further improve our understanding of the signiﬁ- cance of the impact that IADs have on overall tourist satisfac- tion. Moreover, future research might investigate distinctive Islamic attributes through comparing speciﬁc countries. This research could ascertain whether there are differences in the types of Islamic attributes that generate satisfaction. APPENDIX A DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS FOR STUDY ITEMS Items Mean score Standard deviation IAD1 3.8071 0.66927 IAD2 3.7795 0.67836 IAD3 3.7579 0.66945 IAD4 3.7087 0.71733 IAD5 3.7717 0.63356 IAD6 3.7697 0.66180 IAD7 3.8091 0.62568 IAD8 3.7776 0.63722 IAD9 3.7756 0.64728 IAD10 3.7933 0.66067 IAD11 3.6969 0.60783 IAD12 3.7874 0.65428 IAD13 3.7657 0.63296 IAD14 3.7933 0.67543 IAD15 3.7913 0.65855 IAD16 3.6791 0.71982 IAD17 3.8406 0.66778 IAD18 3.8228 0.65881 OTS1 3.7933 0.64862 OTS2 3.8189 0.65774 OTS3 3.8110 0.68494 OTS4 3.8799 0.63382 REFERENCES Al-Hamarneh A, Steiner C. 2004. Islamic tourism: rethinking the strategies of tourism development in the arab world after september 11,2001. Comparative studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24(1): 173–182. Battour MM, Ismail MN, Battor M. 2010. Toward a Halal Tourism Market. Tourism Analysis 15(4): 461–470. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Meng F, Tepanon Y, Uysal M. 2008. Measuring tourist satisfaction by attribute and motivation: The case of a nature-based resort. Journal of Vacation Marketing 14(1): 41–56. Metin K, Mike R. 2000. Tourist satisfaction with Mallorca, Spain, as an off-season holiday destination. Journal of Travel Research 38(3): 260. Mohsin A 2005. Tourist attitudes and destination marketing--the case of Australia’s Northern Territory and Malaysia. Tourism Management 26(5): 723–732. Mohsin A, Ryan C. 1997. Business Visitors to the Northern Terri- tory Expo. Tourism Recreation Research 22(2): 67–69. Muslim population worldwide. 2009. Retrieved 15 November, 2009, from http://www.islamicpopulation.com/ Nunnally JC, Bernstein IH. 1994. Psychometric Theory. McCraw- Hill: New York, NY. Poria Y, Butler, R, Airey D. 2003. The core of heritage tourism. An- nals of Tourism Research 30(1): 238–254. Qu H, Ping EWY. 1999. A service performance model of Hong Kong cruise travelers’ motivation factors and satisfaction. Tour- ism Management 20(2): 237–244. Rinschede, G (1992). Forms of religious tourism. Annals of Tourism Research, 19(1), 51–67. Saeed M, Ahmed ZU, Mukhtar SM. 2001. International marketing ethics from an Islamic perspective: a value-maximization approach. Journal of Business Ethics 32(2): 127–142. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. marketing literature, this area of tourism has not that perceptions are predicted by push and pull motivations. Qu and Ping (1999) also claim that the satisfaction level of tourists is signiﬁcantly connected to their travel needs. Thus, it is important to obtain a clear picture of motivation, which responds to different levels of satisfaction. Empirically, some studies have found relationships be- tween destination attributes and tourist satisfaction. For ex- ample, Devesa et al. (2010) conﬁrm that destination attributes inﬂuence the level of tourist satisfaction. Zabkar et al. (2010) have found that the pull factors of ‘destination attributes’ affect the perceived quality of tourist offerings, which are positively linked to satisfaction. Chi and Qu (2008) also agree that satisfaction with destination attributes has a positive impact on overall tourist satisfaction. More- over, Meng et al. (2008) report that the importance of attri- butes, performance and motivation are a function of measuring tourists’ overall satisfaction. Yoon and Uysal (2005), in their study, have explored theoretical and empiri- cal evidence in the causal relationships between push and pull motivation and satisfaction. The study found a signiﬁ- cant relationship between destination attributes and overall tourist satisfaction. To sum up, the tourism literature suggests that Islamic teachings inﬂuence Muslim tourist behaviour. However, re- search that addresses the relationship between Islamic attri- butes of destination and tourist destination choice is limited. Therefore, developing Islamic attributes of destina- tion measures was recommended. Moreover, the tourism lit- erature supports that destination attributes have a positive impact on overall tourist satisfaction, which is linked to des- tination choice. Thus, it was recommended to investigate the relationship between Islamic attributes of destination and overall tourist satisfaction. which RESEARCH METHODS prayer facil- This study follows the sequence of steps that should be ap- plied in developing measures of constructs, as suggested by Churchill (1979), Malhotra (2007, p. 274) and Chen and Paulraj (2004). Four stages are suggested for developing IAD measures. Stage 1 includes determining the domain by conducting a thorough review of the literature where the var- iable is used and should present a detailed statement of rea- sons and evidence (Din, 1989; Dugan, 1994; Mohsin and Ryan, 1997; Mansfeld et al., 2000; Saeed et al., 2001; Syed, 2001; Henderson, 2003, 2008; Al-Hamarneh and Steiner, 2004; Mohsin, 2005; Timothy and Iverson, 2006; Weidenfeld, 2006; Hashim et al., 2007; WTM, 2007; Weidenfeld and Ron, 2008). Stage 2 includes generating items that capture the domain as speciﬁed in Stage 1. The items were generated by conducting qualitative research (2 FGDs and 53 interviews) and reviewing the literature. The period of qualitative data collection dated from June to October 2009. The FGD and interview participants were selected following a convenience sampling approach. For the FGDs, this was carried out by contacting international PhD students from different univer- sities in Kuala Lumpur. All of them were Muslims with Int. J. Tourism Res. (2013) DOI: 10.1002/jtr Islamic Tourism validity of the IAD measurement scale were determined, and the IAD instruments could be used for further analysis. To measure overall tourist satisfaction, the instruments developed by Bigné et al. (2005); Chi and Qu (2008); Del Bosque and Martín (2008), and Yoon and Uysal (2005) were adopted. The ﬁve-point Likert scale was used to capture tour- ist satisfaction; this includes item statements relevant to each variable from 1 to 5. A ﬁve-point Likert scale was also used to measure IADs, 1 indicating ‘not at all important’ and 5 in- dicating ‘very important’. The questionnaire consists of three parts. Part 1 covers Islamic attributes of destination (IADs), which include 18 items. Part 2 covers overall tourist satisfac- tion (OTS), which includes four items. Part 3 includes eight general information questions, such as gender and income, and open-ended questions. A total of 1300 questionnaires were distributed (adminis- tered from February to May 2010) in international hotels and tourist sites in four Malaysian cities: Kuala Lumpur, Kula Terengganu, Penang and Johor Bahru. The questionnaires were handed out in these cities because of the availability of many hotels and tourist sites and because most of the tour- ists visiting Malaysia take tours of these cities. The selected hotels consisted of three-, four-, and ﬁve-star establishments. After obtaining permission from the hotel, the questionnaires were distributed to tourists, who were then instructed to leave the completed questionnaires at the hotel reception counter. The tourist spots were selected according to the famous sites of each city that the tourists normally visit, such as shopping malls, parks and resorts. The questionnaires were collected directly after the tourist had completed them at the tourist site. There was a scanning question on the cover page of the questionnaire to determine whether the tourist was Mus- lim. If the tourist was a Muslim, he/she was invited to pro- ceed to ﬁll out the questionnaire. Out of 1300 questionnaires, 551 were ﬁlled in and returned. This repre- sents an effective response rate of 42.3%. After data cleaning, the ﬁnal sample size was 508. FINDINGS Figure 1 summarizes the stages applied to developing the IAD construct and the sample size for each stage. The results a Muslim of applying these stages are as follows: In Stage 1, two general domains of the IAD were speci- ﬁed: the religious facilities and the religious environment. The religious facilities included worship facilities and Halal food. The religious environment included an alcohol- and gambling-free environment, control of sexual permissiveness and adherence to the Islamic dress code. In Stage 2, 23 items were generated from two FGDs and 53 interviews to capture the Islamic attributes of destination. These attributes covered worship facilities, Halal food, Islamic entertainments, environment if alcohol- and gambling-free zones, Islamic dress codes and Islamic morality. In Stage 3: purifying the measures by a panel of experts, no items were dropped, some words were changed and some modiﬁcations were also made by giving the questionnaire to certain respondents. For further puriﬁcation, Cronbach’s Int. J. Tourism Res. (2013) DOI: 10.1002/jtr Table 2. Reliability analysis for proposed dimensions Initial reliability Revised reliability Item total Cronbach Item total Cronbach Dimensions Items correlation alpha correlation alpha literature Worship Wo1 0.699 0.646 0.844 0.868 Facilities Wo2 0.444 0.584 Wo3 0.111 Dropped Wo4 0.442 0.539 Wo5 0.006 Dropped Wo6 0.541 0.636 Wo7 0.741 0.888 Wo8 0.556 0.569 Halal food Hal1 0.713 0.823 0.823 Hal2 0.713 Islamic Ie1 0.773 0.664 0.911 0.908 entertainment Ie2 0.696 0.825 Ie3 0.027 Dropped Ie4 0.582 0.718 Alcohol Al1 0.572 0.527 0.753 0.859 &gambling Al2 0.053 Dropped free Al3 0.524 0.753 Dress codes Idc1 0.766 0.866 0.866 Idc2 0.766 Morality Mor1 0.485 0.580 0.714 0.808 Mor2 0.633 0.557 Mor3 0.057 Dropped Mor4 0.476 0.728 In Stage 4, this study ﬁrst started to assess reliability and validity using the EFA approach to validating IAD measures, using 153 usable questionnaires and then the CFA approach. Exploratory factor analysis was used to test the construct va- lidity, and Cronbach’s alpha was applied to test internal con- sistency. Factor analysis was applied to conﬁrm whether the number of dimensions conceptualized could be veriﬁed em- pirically. Moreover, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) is of- ten considered to be more appropriate in the early stages of scale development (Churchill, 1979). The results of factor analysis show that the IAD items pro- vided four distinct principal components. The total percent- age of variance accounted for by these four factors was 76.218% (44.363%, 13.230%, 10.680% and 7.945% respec- tively). Table 3 shows the results of the Varimax method and Cronbach’s alpha coefﬁcients. Four factors were extracted. Some factors from Table 2 were integrated with other factors. For instance, ‘Islamic dress code’ and ‘Islamic morality’ were loaded as the same factor (Factor 2). Factor 2 consists of ﬁve items and was labelled ‘general Islamic morality’. Considering that Islamic dress code is a source of Islamic morality, this integration is logically accepted. Similarly, Factor 3 consists of ﬁve items and was loaded as two compo- nents –‘Halal food’ and ‘Islamic entertainment’. This inte- gration could also be explained by Halal issue integration, which is also understandable. Therefore, Factor 3 was la- belled ‘Halalness’. Factor 1 was loaded as six items reﬂecting a worship facilities scale. Factor 4 was loaded as two items and was labelled ‘alcohol- and gambling-free’. Table 3 shows that the coefﬁcient alpha values of 0.92 for worship facilities, 0.91 for general Islamic morality, 0.89 for Halalness and 0.87 for alcohol- and gambling-free, all fall within the acceptable range, and all item-to-total correlations Int. J. Tourism Res. (2013) DOI: 10.1002/jtr Islamic Tourism Rotated factor loading Factor 1Factor 2Factor 3Factor 4 0.919 airport, shopping malls, hotels, conference halls, parks, etc. 0.813 0.825 point towards Makkah city) in your hotel room 0.739 0.717 sites, airport, shopping mall, hotel, parks, etc. 0.760 shopping malls, hotels, parks, etc. 0.804 0.712 0.904 and gymnasium for men and women 0.787 0.782 places (such as tourism sites, hotels, parks, etc.) 0.879 public places (such as tourism sites, hotels, parks, etc.) 0.899 0.800 0.787 0.917 between sexes at public places 0.800 0.850 0.92 0.91 0.89 0.87 the other constructs. Table 5 shows that the bold number in the diagonal of the table, the square root of the AVE, is al- ways greater than the correlation values, indicating accept- able discriminant validity. The structure of the model of ﬁrst order IAD is presented in Figure 2, using AMOS 18. The overall ﬁt of the IAD model assessment is shown in Table 6. Although previous techniques indicate that the measurement scale developed for IADs achieves acceptable reliability and validity, some of the ﬁt measures for the CFA model do not meet an accept- able level. This could be explained as one of the factors (al- coholic- and gambling-free zones) has only two items, which need a sample size of at least 300, as recommended by Hair et al. (2010, p. 662). During the ﬁnal stage, to test the effect of IADs on overall tourist satisfaction as one of the study objectives, a structural model with a path from Islamic attributes of destination to overall tourist satisfaction was tested (Figure 2). By using 508 usable questionnaires, the overall ﬁt of the model was assessed, based on the EFA and CFA results from the previ- ous stage. The ﬁt statistics with chi-squared = 491.88 at p- value = 0.000, degree of freedom = 204, normed chi- squared (CMIN/DF) = 2.05, goodness-of-ﬁt index (GFI) = 0.931, adjusted goodness-of-ﬁt index (AGFI) = 0.915, Tucker-Lewis index (TLI) = 0.97, comparative ﬁt index (CFI) = 0.973 and root mean square of error of estimation (RMSEA) = 0.046 indicate an adequate level of ﬁt. Table 4. Composite reliability and AVE Dimensions Composite reliability AVE Worship facilities 0.92 0.69 Halalness 0.90 0.65 General Islamic morality 0.91 0.70 Alcoholic drinks and gambling free 0.88 0.79 each of Int. J. Tourism Res. (2013) DOI: 10.1002/jtr procedures recommended by Churchill (1979); Malhotra (2007, p. 274) and Chen and Paulraj (2004). The ﬁnal scale was deemed to be both reliable and valid. The measures devel- oped may help further research related to push and pull motiva- tion studies. Moreover, the process of developing such measures may be considered as a contribution to methodology, which may provide guidelines for its use in destination marketing and tourism management research. The identiﬁed IADs and their corresponding items can be used in advancing the study on IAD pertaining to Muslim countries similar to that of Malay- sia and enabling comparative studies in other countries. According to the second objective of the study, a positive relationship was found between IADs and overall tourist satisfaction. This indicates that the availability of these Islamic attributes, along with conventional destination attributes, could delight Muslim tourists when they spend a vacation at a particular destination. This result supports Battour et al.’s (2011) study result, which reveals that the availability of Islamic attributes of destination is a source of satisfaction for the Muslim tourist. This study also has important marketing implications. For example, it may help destination marketers to understand ‘Is- lamic tourism’ and so to develop marketing strategies to at- tract Muslim tourists and encourage repeat purchases. A destination can improve the chance of its selection by identi- fying and marketing its ability to meet Muslim tourist needs. Furthermore, this study could offer some useful and practical guidelines for tourist organizations and other types of busi- ness wishing to successfully satisfy Muslim customers. Des- tination marketers need to embrace the identiﬁed IADs to 2. First-order Islamic attributes of destination CFA. Int. J. Tourism Res. (2013) DOI: 10.1002/jtr Islamic Tourism such as segregated swimming pools and the banning of adult Acceptable channels in hotel entertainment, could delight Muslim tour- ists. Muslims tourists may not be happy if their children are exposed to such things. It is known that Muslim customers constitute a broad mar- ket, which has special requirements and culture and which cannot be ignored. In response to these, ‘worship facilities’, ≥0.90 represent important factors identiﬁed by the current study ≥0.90 and thus could be used by destination marketers as a tool to ≥0.90 satisfy Muslim tourist needs on their vacation. For example, the provision of maps indicating the locations of mosques/ prayer facilities could be made available in key areas, such as tourist information centres, airports, hotels and parks to please and satisfy Muslim tourists. Providing worship facili- ties for Muslim tourists may encourage them to travel to a speciﬁc destination. The last factor: ‘alcohol- and gambling-free zones’ identiﬁed by this study might represent a challenge to destination marketers in Muslim countries, which, at the same time, are also trying to satisfy the non-Muslim tourist’s needs. 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