On the afternoon of September 24, An Giang Tourism Association coordinated with Vietnam National Halal Company Limited to organize the Workshop "Halanl Standards - convert to Muslim-friendly Services". Representatives of the An Giang Department of Tourism, relevant functional sectors and more than 100 tourism business units attended the workshop.
Mr. Nguyen Vu Khac Huy, Permanent Vice President of An Giang Tourism Association, Chairman of Phu Quoc Tourism Association shared that the workshop aimed to pave the way to enter the billion-dollar Islamic tourism market, propagate and raise awareness of the potential and standards for serving Asian tourists, a promising Halal tourism market development strategy.
With 2.2 billion Muslims worldwide, accounting for 1/4 of the global population, the number of Muslims coming to Vietnam is still modest. Vietnam is placing great expectations on attracting a large number of Muslim tourists in the coming time, including Phu Quoc special area.
At the workshop, tourism businesses learned, exchanged, discussed Halal standards and grasped the culture of the people of Israel to organize the reception and service of tourists. In particular, Hoi giao have strict requirements for food services and other basic services such as preparing praying rooms - standards that some places in Southeast Asia are doing very well and Vietnam needs to learn from.
In addition, developing quality human resources, cultivating and training additional skills for tourism workers, ensuring understanding of the tourism industry of the majority of Hoi giao, from culture to communication and behavior. Standards Halal, growth in the number of Hoi giao visitors to Ngoc Phu Quoc Island, connecting direct flights. In particular, Phu Quoc in particular and Vietnam in general will welcome many Muslim tourists from countries such as India, Malaysia, etc.
Mr. Nguyen Trung Thanh, Deputy Director of the An Giang Department of Tourism, emphasized that this workshop aims to propagate and disseminate the National Standard TCVN 14230:2024 "Muslim-friendly tourism services - Requirements" to tourism service businesses in An Giang province, especially Phu Quoc Special Zone.
This is a preparation step to serve a variety of tourists, as well as political visitors who will attend the APEC 2027 event; a very favorable condition for attracting Hoi giao tourists to visit, relax, tourism combined with conferences... in Vietnam in general and An Giang province, Phu Quoc special zone in particular.
This will be a "push" for the province's tourism and travel businesses to create added value for their products and services through serving customers from the Middle East market and Muslim countries, said Mr. Nguyen Trung Thanh.
From this workshop, service providers in Phu Quoc, tourism businesses in An Giang province, especially the An Giang Tourism Association and the Provincial chefs Association, will promote and mobilize members and businesses to proactively and actively learn and approach regulations on Halal certification, how to approach the global Halal market... Thereby, thereby having careful, complete and meticulous preparation... to best serve the group of Hoi giao customers who are showing a very good growth trend in the coming time.
According to the An Giang Department of Tourism, in the first 9 months of 2025, the province welcomed over 19.9 million visitors, an increase of 18.7% over the same period, reaching 94.8% of the annual plan, of which international visitors were over 1.2 million, an increase of 63.4% over the same period, exceeding the annual plan by 1%; total revenue from tourism reached over VND51,000 billion.
Phu Quoc special zone alone welcomed 6.5 million visitors, 1.2 million international visitors, with total tourism revenue reaching about 31,000 billion VND.
