The Solo Muslim Female Traveler Experience in Non-OIC Destinations: Safety Perception, Agency, and Destination Design Implications-A Systematic Literature Review (2023–2026)

Abstract

Solo Muslim female travelers (SMFTs) represent one of the fastest-growing and most underresearched segments in global tourism. Despite the Mastercard-CrescentRating Global Muslim Travel Index (GMTI, 2025) identifying the modern female Muslim traveler as the segment most actively reshaping halal destination design expectations, peer-reviewed empirical scholarship on this population — particularly in non-OIC destination contexts — remains strikingly sparse. This systematic literature review (SLR) examines the scholarly literature from 2023 to 2026, applying PRISMA 2020 protocols to identify 33 peer-reviewed publications addressing solo female travel, Muslim women's tourism experiences, gendered Islamophobia, intersectional marginalization, travel constraints, safety perception, and agency in non-Muslim-majority destination contexts. Five thematic clusters are identified: (1) the SMFT as an emerging global segment — motivations, scale, and identity formation; (2) intersectional marginalization — how the compounded axes of gender, religious visibility (hijab), nationality, and class shape differential experience; (3) safety perception — the tripartite architecture of physical, psychosocial, and cybersecurity risks; (4) agency and negotiation strategies — how SMFTs navigate, resist, and transform structural constraints; and (5) destination design implications — the gap between current halal tourism infrastructure and the specific needs of solo Muslim female travelers. A critical synthesis reveals that SMFTs face what this review terms double jeopardy marginalization: the constraints of solo female travel generally (gender-based safety risks, infrastructural inaccessibility, social surveillance) are systematically amplified by Islamic religious identity in non-OIC contexts, producing compound experiences of exclusion that neither the solo female travel literature nor the halal tourism literature has adequately theorized or addressed. A Muslim Female Traveler-Inclusive Design (MFTID) Framework is proposed, offering five operational principles for non-OIC destination governance, hospitality design, and tourism policy.

Keywords: solo Muslim female travel; gendered Islamophobia; intersectionality; safety perception; agency; halal tourism; non-OIC destinations; destination design; hijab; travel constraints; tourist experience