Development of Islamic Tourism in the Last Two Decades: A Systematic Review of Research

In recent years, the expansion of Islamic Tourism has raised the interest of scholars and practitioners in tourism sector. The interest to Islamic Tourism is not limited to Muslim countries but considerable attention has developed over the years in nonMuslim countries as well. Islamic Tourism is a branch of the tourism industry that carries out tourism within the rules set by the Islam religion. Halal tourism is a good example of Islamic Tourism that has developed considerably in this decade. The aim of this study is to express the interest in the subject by investigating the trends in Islamic Tourism. In this regard, the aim of this research is to evaluate the studies published in the international literature on Islamic Tourism between 2000 and 2021 in international academic databases in order to identify the trends in Islamic Tourism such as research methods employed, countries studied, topics investigated, type of journals that published Islamic Tourism research and so on and so forth. In this research systematic review method is employed to carry out the analysis. The articles identified using pre-determined key-words. Some of the articles removed from the list since they did not match with the criteria specified. Finally, a total of 222 articles were evaluated. The articles were gathered from the Web of Science and Scopus databases covering a period of two decades (2000-2021). This research basically intended to serve as a guide for academics working on Islamic Tourism, identifying the gaps in the literature as well as a source of further knowledge on the subject to the researchers and people alike.