Muslim Travel Warehouse adds halal friendly familiarisation tours to Yunnan and Beijing

Muslim Travel Warehouse now has halal-friendly holiday packages to China for travel agents. The company connects suppliers of tour packages and activities with travel agents from around the world. Muslim Travel Warehouse also works with suppliers to help them adapt their products for Muslim tourists.

The current packages are for Yunnan and Beijing. Yunnan province is known for being home to a third of China’s ethnic minorities. The global travel aggregator recommends:

• The Yunnan Ethnic Cultural Village for the architecture, art, food, customs and clothing, 
• The old towns of Guan-Du and Dali, including the Erhai Lake cruise 
• Bai ethnic tea and performances
• Jade Dragon Snow Mountain National Park
• The Stone Forest, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Mosque visits are included in the Yunnan tour, including HuiDongYuan Mosque, YongNing Mosque and Lijiang Old-town Mosque. 

For Beijing, the Islamic history of China is recognised with the visit of the oldest Mosque in the city, the Niujie Mosque, built in 996. 

Halal food is provided throughout all tours with a range of cuisines and at multiple accomodations.

Interested?

Travel agents can register at the Muslim Travel Warehouse

CrescentRating launches travel aggregator for Muslim travel

CrescentRating has launched Muslim Travel Warehouse – a global B2B platform and travel aggregator offering Muslim-friendly tour packages.

In addition to search and booking capabilities on an extensive portfolio of packages, Muslim Travel Warehouse offers travel agents around the world a way to provide Muslim travellers with custom itineraries. All products available on the platform will be rated by CrescentRating's independent rating standard based on how well they cater to Muslim travellers.

The new platform will initially offer tour packages to 15 destinations, with more packages and destinations being added over the next 12 months. Muslim Travel Warehouse plans to work with destination management companies, tourism boards and ground operators from around the world to expand its portfolio.

Muslim Travel Warehouse will also provide a wide range of support services for its partners including a live travel trade helpdesk via the live chat service, detailed halal tourism information including fact sheets and digital brochures. For more information on Muslim Travel Warehouse please visit its website at:

"At CrescentRating we have been passionately exploring all opportunities not just to grow this segment, but incorporate all available technologies while doing so. It was a year or so ago when we realised that there was really a gap in the market for a global B2B platform for tour packages customised for the Muslim travel market. The enquiries we were getting through both our existing platforms CrescentRating and HalalTrip, encouraged us to start looking for a solution. That journey has now led us to launch the Muslim Travel Warehouse," explained Fazal Bahardeen, CEO, CrescentRating on the Muslim Travel Warehouse blog in late April.

"According to the latest figures we released in the MasterCard-CrescentRating Global Muslim Travel Index (GMTI) 2015, the halal tourism sector was worth US$145 billion in 2014. This figure is predicted to grow to US$200 billion by 2020. Given that family travel contributes 52% of the entire total of the halal tourism sector, providing travel agencies with a full portfolio of Muslim friendly tour packages, excursions and activities will definitely help accelerate the growth of this sector."

BGC promoting murabaha mechanism with Dubai Multi Commodity Centre

BGC Partners, a global brokerage company servicing the wholesale financial and real estate markets, has partnered with the Dubai Multi Commodity Centre (DMCC) to promote a shari'ah-compliant commodity murabaha mechanism. 

The March agreement is the first between DMCC and an interdealer broker to jointly market commodity murabaha on the DMCC Tradeflow Platform. The partnership offers the trading community a faster, more efficient method of trading this niche financial product, and promotes Dubai as the global centre of Islamic finance at the same time. 
  
Said Charlie Sleightholme, Head of Commodity Murabaha Business at BGC in Dubai: "While trading of this product has been in existence for some time, our joint offering brings a modernisation to the process, offering speed, convenience and innovation to the execution of this popular product."

"We are thrilled to offer an exciting, world class mechanism for the trading of commodity murabaha which we believe will garner significant interest from the trading community both domestically and internationally," commented Paul Boots, Director, Tradeflow at DMCC. 

"With BGC's premier global reputation, its relationships with top-tier institutions across the world and its leading electronic trading capabilities, we believe that commodity murabaha customers will see significant benefits in terms of efficiency and transparency. This, in turn, will continue to promote and assert Dubai's reputation as a preeminent global capital of Islamic finance."

Established in 2002 by Royal Decree, the DMCC is a strategic government initiative of the Government of Dubai designed to enhance trade flows through the UAE by providing infrastructure and an optimal environment allowing clients to fully benefit from both a regulated framework and convenient location. 

The DMCC has helped to bridge the gap in the region between the commodity industry and trade finance by providing a mechanism for the issue of electronic warehouse receipts on behalf of the owners of stored commodities since 2004. In 2012, the DMCC Tradeflow platform unified these services, providing members with a holistic approach to the process of certifying commodities for the purposes of trade finance, as well as for the trade of locally stored commodities between Islamic banking institutions and their counterparties through the commodity murabaha mechanism.

*Murabaha is not an interest-bearing loan, which is considered riba (or excess) and forbidden under shari'ah (Islamic religious law), and is rather an acceptable form of credit sale. Murabaha is an Islamic financing structure in which an intermediary buys an asset with free and clear title to it. The intermediary and prospective buyer then agree upon a sale price (including an agreed-upon profit for the intermediary) that can be made through a series of installments, or as a lump sum payment. 

Similar in structure to a rent-to-own arrangement, the intermediary retains ownership of the property until the loan is paid in full. It is important to note that to prevent riba, the intermediary cannot be compensated in addition to the agreed-upon terms of the contract. For this reason, if the buyer is late on their payments, the intermediary cannot charge any late penalties.