Consumer redress mechanism in Muslim friendly hospitality services

Abstract

Muslim friendly hospitality services (MFHS) is one of the most lucrative and one of the fastest growing sectors in the global tourism industry. The popularity of the Muslim friendly hospitality services have spread across the globe, with Malaysia being a clear front runner. Malaysia has offered wide ranges of hospitality services to satisfy the specific needs of the Muslim consumers especially in travel agents and tour operators offering Muslim friendly services, restaurants providing halal food and beverages, Muslim friendly accommodations, Muslim friendly airlines and etc. In Muslim friendly hospitality services, the consumers must get the services which adhere to the value of Islam. Due to the unique needs of the consumers in hospitality services as well as unique faith-based needs of the consumers in Muslim friendly hospitality services, there are many consumer complaints related to this services as it is not easy to ensure proper provision all the time. Other than that, the ignorance and “too trusting” attitude of Muslim consumers in the services also contribute to the increase in the number of complaints. The complaints among others are fraud, misleading advertisement, low-quality and inefficient services, etc. by the services providers in hospitality services and Muslim friendly hospitality services. As a result, the consumers in the hospitality services as well as in the Muslim friendly hospitality services need to have adequate and efficient redress mechanisms to protect their rights. At the present time, there are existing redress mechanisms in Malaysia. However, based on the analysis made on the cases decided by the Tribunals, Ministry and Complaint Centres on the existing redress mechanisms, the result of the research shows that the mechanisms are still inadequate and inefficient in handling complaints and resolving consumers’ disputes. The semi-structured interview conducted in this research also proves that improvements should be made to enhance the efficiency and adequacy of the existing redress mechanisms in Malaysia. By the end of this research, the researcher outlines several consumer protections guidelines and proposes a structure of a special agency/unit/one-stop-service-centre to handle consumers’ complaints and resolve consumers’ disputes in hospitality services as well as Muslim friendly hospitality services. It really hopes that this research will provide a great contribution to all major stakeholders in hospitality services industry as well as in Muslim friendly hospitality services industry particularly policy makers, service providers/industrial players and consumers.