Dubai, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore top shopping cities on Muslim Travel Shopping Index 2015

Muslim travellers spent $62 billion globally on shopping and dining in 2014, says a new Muslim Travel Shopping Index released today by MasterCard and CrescentRating.

Expenditure on shopping was $36 billion while dining expenditure amounted to $26 billion.

Dubai, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore top the list of 40 global cities, which is dominated by 14 cities from the Asia Pacific.

Other than Singapore, non-Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) cities London and Paris are also strong Muslim shopping destinations. 

The 40 cities were scored against a set of metrics which included suitability as a shopping destination, Muslim-friendly services and facilities and ease of travel. Each criterion was then weighted to make up the overall index score. 

The Muslim Travel Shopping Index follows MasterCard and CrescentRating's Global Muslim Travel Index (GMTI) released in March this year. 

The GMTI 2015 showed that in 2014, the Muslim travel segment was worth $145 billion with 108 million Muslim travellers representing 10 percent of the entire travel economy.

This is forecasted to grow to 150 million visitors by 2020 and 11 percent of the market segment with a market value projected to grow to $200 billion.

The report can be downloaded from the MTSI page here.