A shariah-compliant airport framework from the perspective of passengers at KL international airport

Abstract

Most studies pertaining to shariah-compliant fields have been carried out in the interest of Muslim needs, such as finance, insurance, food and beverages, hotel, hospitality, airlines, and hospital. With that, as the arena of tourism is closely related to air travels, efforts should be directed towards establishing a shariah-compliant airport so as to ensure that Muslim passengers are able to perform their religious obligations with ease without compromising the comfort of non-Muslims at the same time. Hence, this particular study proposes a framework for a shariah-compliant airport to cater to passengers of all faiths. For that purpose, a survey was conducted at the KL International Airport (KLIA) among several passengers so as to determine their perceptions and views of the possibility in introducing a shariah-compliant airport. As such, this research employed the face survey method. The results displayed that irrespective of religious beliefs, passengers voiced similar priorities in the light of numerous Islamic attributes. The results also showed that non-Muslim respondents were supportive of having a shariah-compliant airport, even though on the average, the Muslims were significantly more supportive of the proposed Islamic attributes. As a result, this research has proposed a total of twelve Islamic attributes that are required at an airport terminal to comply with shariah. A shariah-compliant airport framework was also developed in this study to gain enhanced comprehension as a guidance to easily determine the needs that should be catered to passengers at the airport by segregating the level of priority in accordance to both required and optional facilities and services.