Analyzing the Perspective of Halal Tourism Development: City Branding in Jakarta

Abstract

—Indonesia as the world's largest Muslim country has enormous opportunities in developing halal tourism. Jakarta as the capital which is the gateway for foreign tourists can easily introduce halal tourism as part of a tour. However OIC (Organization Islamic Cooperation) data shows that Indonesia is in second place for halal tourism, while Malaysia is in first place. This research aims to analyze the perspective of halal tourism development in Jakarta by using city branding theory proposed by Kavaratzis. The variables incorporated in this research were Landscape strategy, City’s behavior, Organizational structure and Infrastructure. Jakarta as one of the cities prepared and developed by Indonesia Government as halal tourism destination in Indonesia cannot attract more Muslim tourists. By August 2018, most foreign visitors that came to Jakarta were tourists from non-Muslim countries. It means, Jakarta needs a new city branding strategy in order to be successful in developing halal tourism and also attracts more Muslim tourists both local and international. This research employed multiple regression. A total of 155 respondents were collected using purposive and non-probability sampling. Based on the result of the adjusted R square, 58.3 percent of city branding development of halal tourism can be explained by all the independent variables, whereas the remaining 41.7 percent were influenced by other variables that were not included in this research. Furthermore, city’s behavior, organizational structure and infrastructure have significant effects towards the city branding development of halal tourism in Jakarta.