Tourists Perceptions of Kota Bharu Islamic City

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to determine tourists' pereptions on spiritual experience, brand image, cultural attributes and service quality they experienced in Kota Bharu, the capital and administration centre of Kelantan, Malaysia. Kota Bharu was declared an Islamic City in 2005. It has many mosques, various museums, unique architectural old building and palaces. As the number of tourist arrivals to Kelantan is encouraging and contributing to the state income, it is important too examine what these tourists perceive during their stays in Kota Bharu Islamic City. Variance Based Structural Equation Modelling technique of Partial Least Square (PLS) was employed. The findings show that all the variables are significantly influencing tourists' pereption except for service qualiity. In other words, tourists perception of Kota Bharu are positively related to spirituality, brand destination and cultural attributes. Tourists perceptions play a crucial role as this will affect the future tourists arrivals in the stte. Thus, the findings of the study will be useful in helping policy planners to ounderstand how tourists perceived Kota Bharu and design policies too increase tourism receipts and to perserve tourism attributes.