Malaysian Tourism Research Articles

THE IMPACT OF INTERNATIONAL TOURIST ARRIVALS ON ECONOMIC GROWTH UNDER DENGUE FEVER RISK IN MALAYSIA

Dengue fever has long been a community health problem in tropical countries. Dengue virus is a crucial cause of disease in international tourists, with a rising number of them returning from dengue‐endemic countries infected with dengue fever. This study analyses the impact of international tourist arrivals on economic growth moderated by dengue fever cases in Malaysia from 2014 until 2020. This study was carried out using secondary monthly data for dengue fever cases, gross domestic product (GDP), and international tourist arrivals. A correlation test was used to analyse the correlation between the independent, dependent and moderating variables. Granger causality test was employed to determine the causality between the selected three variables, dengue fever cases, international tourist arrivals, and economic growth. The results reveal a significant correlation between dengue fever cases, tourist arrivals, and economic growth. Between 2017 and 2018, higher international tourist arrivals led to lower economic growth under dengue disease hazards in Malaysia. Furthermore, dengue fever risk is found to have a positive relationship with international tourist arrivals and vice versa. The findings show a causality effect between the selected variables. The selected three indicators drive each other in the period study. In line with the government’s strategy to promote the Malaysian tourism industry, prevention and recovery policies should be planned considering the number of dengue cases and economic factors.

Defining and Exploring the Dimensionality of ‘Halal-Hotel’ Concept

Islamic tourism highlights the growing importance of what for many may be an untapped and unknown market. With one billion followers across 57 countries, Islam’s role in tourism is important to tourism and hospitality managers in both Muslim and non-Muslim countries. Consequently, government policies, strategies and programs have laid undue emphasis on the growth of ‘Halal-Hotel’; a total Islamic accommodation standard that prescribes by Islamic rules. Halal is fast gaining worldwide recognition and this is not merely because the Muslim Ummah is growing in number, but more significantly, because halal is being recognized as a new benchmark for safety and quality assurance. Unfortunately, there are ambiguities pertaining the criteria for ‘halal hotel’ in the hotel sector because the lack of consensus among stakeholders within the Muslim-friendly tourism and hospitality (MFT) sector in Malaysia. Furthermore, The translation of Arabic-Islamic terminology into Malay language may offer its advantages as well as challenges to all relevant tourism stakeholders within the Muslim-friendly tourism and hospitality (MFT) sector in Malaysia. In terminology translation, equivalents in the target language are usually preferred to be as concise as possible and able to maintain existing morphological and semantic relationship between the translated terms and other morphologically and semantically related source language terms. Moreover, researchers and hotel operators have struggled to arrive to an agreement as to what is the most appropriate term or concept that could best and comprehensively describe a hotel that operates according to the Islamic rules and regulations. Therefore, this research aims to identify the dimensionality of ‘halal hotel’ concepts and to explore the suitability of adopting the ‘halal hotel’ as the term to be use among the Muslim-friendly tourism and hospitality (MFT) sector in Malaysia. A qualitative research method is chosen to conduct this research, and the samples are from the stakeholders which consist of Islamic scholars, hotel operator and the hotel’s guest.

The Quality of Tour Guides on Tourists’ Satisfaction in Malaysia Tourism Industry

Tour guides are one of the key players in the tourism industry as intermediaries between travel agents and tourists. They have a responsibility to explain the culture and all information involving the destination. This research aims to study the service quality of tour guides on tourist satisfaction. Empirical data were gathered from a large-scale online survey with 58 national and international tourists from Malaysia and Indonesia. The result shows that tour guides’ service quality has a positive relationship with tourist satisfaction

Effects of Multiple Financial News Shocks on Tourism Demand Volatility Modelling and Forecasting

Even though both symmetric and asymmetric conceptions of news impacts are well-established in the disciplines of economics and financial markets, the effects of combining multiple news shocks on the volatility of tourism demand have not yet been delved into or gauged in any tourist destination. This work hypothesises and verifies that the news impact curve (NIC), conditional heteroscedastic volatility models, and multiple news shocks are suitable for forecasting the volatility of the Malaysian tourist industry. Among them, three primarily volatility models (GARCH, EGARCH, and GJRGARCH) are used in conjunction with five financial news shocks (FFNSs), namely the Kuala Lumpur Composite Index (KLCI), the United States Dollar Index (DXY), the stock performance of 500 large companies listed on stock exchanges (S&P500), Crude Oil (CO), and Gold Price (GP). Among the most significant findings of this study are the demonstration of monthly seasonality using conditional mean equations, asymmetry effects in EGARCH-FFNSs, and GJRGARCH-FFNSs models in conditional variance equations and 50 NICs, and the GARCH-FFNSs model’s evaluation of the persistence influence of news shocks on monthly visitor arrivals in Malaysia. The GJRGARCH-FFNSs model is the best model for Malaysian tourism demand volatility forecasting accuracy. Furthermore, KLCI and Gold Price have the most substantial impact on the number of tourists to Malaysia. In addition, it should be emphasised that the methodological framework utilised in this study can be a useful tool for creating and forecasting the performance of symmetry and asymmetry impacts on tourism demand volatility.

Design and Development of Travel Assist, An App to Support Smart Tourism

Tourism is the third largest contributor to Malaysia’s GDP, worth MYR 86.1 billion in 2019. It is expected that the number of tourists to Malaysia will reach 30 billion in 2020, translated to MYR 100 billion receipts. The Malaysian Smart Tourism 4.0 Initiative strives to unlock the full potential of the tourism industry through enabling technologies of IR 4.0. This work reports the results of an innovation project to support smart tourism in Malaysia. It entails the design and development of Travel Assist, a mobile App for visitors to Malaysia. Travel Assistintegrates three common web services: Google Translate, Google Maps, and XE Converter, into one App. It was developed using MIT App Inventor and Adobe Dreamweaver, and suitable for iOS and Android 7.0 (Nougat) devices and above. The App was tested by a group of users to confirm its functionality and feasibility, and the validation results are encouraging. The underlying technology is robust enough to support future innovation ideas and services under the IR 4.0 umbrella.

THE ROLES OF TECHNOLOGY ACCEPTANCE, USER CREDIBILITY AND COVID-19 PERCEIVED HEALTH RISK IN TOURIST’S SOCIAL MEDIA USER-GENERATED-CONTENT USAGE INTENTION

This study examines the direct effects of technology acceptance (perceived usefulness and ease of use), trustworthiness, expertise, and the moderating effect of COVID-19 perceived health risk on tourists’ social media User-Generated-Content (UGC) usage intention. The study respondent was 233 Malaysian tourists who travelled domestically for leisure during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study hypotheses were examined using multiple regression analysis. The hypotheses testing indicates that perceived usefulness, ease of use, trustworthiness, and expertise significantly affect future usage of social media UGC. In addition, the findings confirm that perceived health risk does not affect the user trustworthiness and future usage of social media UGC. The findings assist tourism stakeholders in understanding tourist behaviour towards social media UGC, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. The tourism business and policymakers should continuously improve and monitor their UGC platform, especially since UGC was deemed one of the vital information dissemination channels during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on Islamic tourism in Malaysia

Malaysia possesses all the characteristics that make it an ideal Islamic tourism destination and adequately cater to the demands of Muslim tourists with an abundance of halal cuisine, prayer facilities, and Islamic attractions from places to festivals. With advantages including an extensive and well-developed halal network, good infrastructure, consistent economic growth rate, government-backed business incentives as well as political and economic stability, Malaysia is an ideal Muslim-friendly destination that also appeals to non-Muslims. Unfortunately, an epidemic outbreak emerged in December 2019 from Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China, which sparked the COVID-19 virus to significantly impact the world including Malaysia and paralyzed the tourism sector. Thus, this study aims to analyse the impacts of the pandemic on Islamic tourism in Malaysia and refine Malaysia's recovery plan towards this outbreak. This study is qualitative research by using documents analysis to achieve the objectives. The finding indicates the impact of COVID-19 can be monitored from two factors, first is based on statistical numbers of tourists entering Malaysia from arrival and expenditure before and after Malaysia closed the border, and second, the declining number of growth projections from the tourism sector that was affected from this pandemic. Hence, a recovery plan under the Ministry of Tourism and Culture (MOTAC) and Standard Operational Procedures from Malaysia National Security Council (MKN), has been established to overcome the impacts and fresh start for Islamic Tourism in Malaysia.

Forming A Destination Image from Travel Writers’ Perspective

This study was an attempt to analyze destination image through the writings of travel writers who have undergone Familiarization or FAM programs organized by Tourism Malaysia. The idea behind the FAM program is for the writers to experience first-hand specific destinations in Malaysia and express their experiences through article writings. The most important tool that the writers need is an endorsed information. Valid information would be a source to write interesting articles. The data in the form of the travel articles (FAM articles) were collected with the assistance of Tourism Malaysia based on the suggested criteria The articles that we used in this research was back in 2010. Since then, there is little research being done using this type of articles. This study aims to determine what are the focus of attraction at the destinations described by FAM writers. It also aims to interpret and assign conceptualization image as per their descriptions thereof. The study uses qualitative methods of content analysis and adapts the coding procedures of open, axial and selective codding from the grounded theory approach. This study analyses and interprets selected travel articles written by FAM writers. FAM articles were collected for analysis. This study addresses the gaps between destination image theories and the depiction of such destination image by travel writers. It is postulated that writers envisage the perception of the destination and therefore enhance the understanding of destination image through their writings. Although the present depiction of destination image is very much relevant within most tourism contexts, what is perhaps not considered precisely is whether such interpretation still holds when the image is derived merely from textual data as they are interpreted by FAM writers. These writers provide the linkage between the destinations and the potential tourists. How they write, what they write, and their expressions of the destinations will influence potential tourists to visit.

Forecasting the demand for medical tourism in different cities of Malaysia

Tourism, combined with the articulation medical, is apparently one more sort of tourism which has acquired massive acclaim in continuous numerous years. In any case, different compositions open with regards to the tourism business and the earnestness of the destinationbe that as it may, the significant viewpoints which determine the fulfillment of medical travelers are not really centered explicitly around Malaysia. There is an absence of exact proof in this space of study which should be connected. Consequently, this study pointed toward investigating the different elements assisting in the development of medical tourism in Malaysia Because the purpose of the study was to find several elements that contribute to the improvement of medical tourism in Malaysia, the data was examined using Structural Equation demonstrating (SEM). Medical travellers who came to Malaysia with the primary intention of looking for medical frameworks other than touring were the authentic people for this study. During the months of December 2012 and February 2013, a total of 266 models were constructed using non-probability judgement inspection. The findings show that destination reality and organisation quality have a significant role in the medical traveler's decision to visit Malaysia for medical tourism.

Online Information Search Behaviour During Pandemic Covid – 19 among Young Travellers in Malaysia

During the Coronavirus illness (COVID-19) epidemic, young generations became accustomed to searching for travel and tourism information on the internet. As a result of the pandemic's limits on movement, Internet usage has risen dramatically. The developments in online information search related to travel and tourism must be investigated in order to aid the tourist industry's sustainability. During the Movement Control Order (MCO) period, this study looked at how young Malaysians searched for travel and tourism-related information online. The descriptive study was used to evaluate four variables: prior travel experience, online information participation, content, and travelling needs. An online poll was used to gather information from Malaysians across the country's 14 states. The replies of 348 people were analysed to see how the younger generation in Malaysia uses the internet to find information. According to the findings, nearly 90% of those surveyed have travelled at least once. Trivago.com is the most popular travel site, and Facebook is the most popular social networking platform, according to the statistics. In terms of content, the majority of searches are for travel destinations, although the majority of travellers' needs are for domestic travel. The findings of this research can be used to design marketing tactics for tourism products as well as recovery measures for the travel and tourism industry. This research can also add to our understanding of Malaysia's information search systems. This will assist Malaysia's tourism industry in making more informed decisions.

Service-driven Advocacy: From Tourists’ Felicity to Preeminent Destination Loyalty

Innovative endeavours targeting the tourism industry has prevailed as crucial attempts in cultivating tourist satisfaction and restoring destination image, while overcoming severe backlash of the Covid-19 pandemic in recent years through reconstructing destination loyalty. Founded above the established groundwork of Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) Theory, this study aims to examine the influence of service innovation on destination loyalty in the Malaysian tourism industry. A self-administered survey was conducted among 400 international tourists who visited Malaysia. Usable data was collected from 322 international tourists and analysed using the structural equation modelling technique. Obtained findings indicate the significance of interrelationships between service innovation, tourist satisfaction, destination image, and destination loyalty, with destination image being a mediating factor on tourist satisfaction and destination loyalty. Given intense competition of the tourism industry within the Asia Pacific region, current results are useful for tourism practitioners to formulate and implement effective and innovative marketing strategies towards sustainable competitive advantage. Generated knowledge enables tourism practitioners to benchmark service innovation practices in creating positive destination image, tourist satisfaction and destination loyalty.

Rethinking Talent Management Strategies in Malaysia’s Tourism Sector Post COVID-19

COVID-19 triggered the downfall of global economies and heavily impacted the Malaysian tourism sector as the country’s borders were closed since March 2020. The decrease in number of tourists’ arrival into the nation caused huge losses for the tourism sector and unemployment rates have surged with more than 800,000 employees being out of employment and about 30 percent were for the hospitality and tourism sector. Although the government has provided numerous incentives and assistance to employers and employees from all sectors of the economy, the progress is rather slow, and it may take time to recover fully. One of the main challenges is the misfit of the employees who were retrenched as different knowledge, skills and abilities requirements are sought. Given this background, the paper provides avenues to rethink tourism talent management strategies post COVID-19 for the relevant stakeholders since the tourism sector is still seeing a surge in unemployment rates. This paper provides an up-to-date viewpoint in relation to COVID-19 and its spill over onto the Malaysian tourism sector while addressing the shift from ‘Person-Job-Fit’ towards a new norm ‘Talent-Job-Fit’ in managing tourism talent in order to create sustainable talent management within the sector.

ISSUES AND CHALLENGES OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON TOURISM AND HOSPITALITY EDUCATION IN MALAYSIA: A PRELIMINARY STUDY OF THE EVENT

The COVID-19 pandemic has immobilized almost the entire world today. In fact, the COVID-19 pandemic has also incapacitated all aspects of world life including education, community, employment and many more. Tourism and hospitality is one of the industries which seriously affected amid COVID-19 pandemic. It is undeniable that education is highly impacted within the industry amid COVID-19 and affects the future graduates’ employability. This study investigates issues and challenges of Malaysian tourism and hospitality education amid COVID-19 pandemic. A semi-structured interview was conducted through telephone involving 11 tourism and hospitality educators to identify issues and challenges faced within the academic institutions amid COVID-19 pandemic. The number of respondents is considered appropriate for a preliminary study to understand the event before proceeding with further study. The respondents were asked three major questions; (i) issues faced amid COVID-19 pandemic, (ii) challenges and (iii) recommendations for further action in dealing with the issues and challenges. The findings revealed that the critical issues faced within tourism and hospitality education during the pandemic are impacts toward internships and delivery of teaching and learning. The COVID-19 pandemic also brings about challenges in terms of unemployment and requirement of new skills for graduates’ employability. Further, three skills are needed by the tourism and hospitality graduates amid COVID-19 namely technology skills, soft skills and entrepreneurial skills. In conclusion, the findings suggest the need to reform Malaysia tourism and hospitality education as digital education. This study is considered as a preliminary study involving only few educators to identify issues and challenges of tourism and hospitality education amid COVID-19 pandemic, hence the findings cannot be generalized to the whole academic institutions offering the courses. Future study is recommended to be undertaken using more number of respondents representing the academic institutions in Malaysia.

On Destination Logo: A Design Review of Visit Malaysia Year’s Logo (1990 -2020)

Similar to companies and organizations across the globe, countries as well engage in branding strategies to establish a brand identity and to be positioned as major tourist destinations. Thereupon, the destination logo as one of the most significant elements of a country’s branding has become an important subject for brand design and communication research. In this paper, to respond to the research scholarly interest in communication design, the researcher has made an attempt to provide a design review of Malaysia’s destination logo from 1990 to 2020. Based on destination logos employed by Malaysia Tourism Promotion Board, the researcher examined how different logos have been designed to represent Malaysia as an outstanding tourism destination along with the development of the “Visit Malaysia Year” (VMY) tourism campaigns. As aforementioned, this paper will provide insights into an understanding of the design and development of destination logos in Malaysia.

A Framework of Factors Influencing Performance of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMES) in Tourism Industry During Covid19 Pandemic ERA

The Movement Control Order (MCO) and travel restrictions enforced to combat the COVID-19 epidemic which have harmed Malaysia's tourist and hospitality industry. Since its emergence in Wuhan, China, it has grown into one of the world's most serious problems. For instance, consider the performance of SMEs in the tourist industry, which has seen a dramatic decline in sales, putting the Visit Malaysia 2020 (VM2020) campaign at danger. Furthermore, cash flow issues, shutdown of operations, layoffs, retrenchment, and weakened businesses' potential for future development were identified as major barriers for SMEs in the tourist industry during this epidemic. Therefore, the goal of this research is to better understand the relationship between stakeholders, CSR, and the performance of small and medium-sized businesses in the tourist industry during the novel COVID-19. This is significant since SMEs account for the majority of existing and new entrants into the tourist sector. To accomplish so, this article used Freeman's stakeholder orientation theory, which includes market orientation (consumer and competitor), employee orientation, and supplier orientation, all of which are influenced by pandemics. We will undertake focused research to investigate how corporate social responsibility (CSR) by Caroll (1991) mediates interactions between stakeholders and SMEs. According to the framework, this analysis could help to boost SMEs tourism in Malaysia during the pandemic and assist managers/owners of SMEs tourism in solving their problems during and after the pandemic. Furthermore, this report emphasised the detrimental influence on Malaysia's tourist and hospitality industries as a result of a catastrophic pandemic disease spreading throughout the world. Despite this, the tourism industry is regarded as the world's fastest-growing economy. Finally, this conceptual analysis will assist the authority in taking further safeguards and determining the appropriate policy to apply in the future. Hence, this framework will contribute valuable evidence for business enterprises in the tourism sector.

Empirical research on the competitiveness of rural tourism destinations: a practical plan for rural tourism industry post-COVID-19

PurposeFollowing COVID-19, the emphasis on tourism development has shifted to rural tourism and eco-destinations for preventive practice of the three Cs – confined spaces, close contact and crowded spaces. Given the potential growth of rural tourism destinations, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is conceivably the first to provide empirical evidence for rural tourism development post-COVID-19, and this study aims to examine the relationship between the potential development of rural tourism destination competitiveness alongside the inherited, created and supporting resources as perceived by domestic tourists.Design/methodology/approachThis study sampled 172 respondents who were all domestic tourists in Malaysia. A partial least square (PLS)-structural equation modeling approach was used to evaluate the developed model, with PLS estimation and hypothesis testing performed using WarpPLS software.FindingsInterestingly, the findings indicate that rural tourism destinations in Sarawak derive competitive advantage from factors that are closely associated with urban destinations (i.e. created and supporting resources), whereas rural-related factors (i.e. inherited resources) are not perceived as a contributor to their competitive advantage.Practical implicationsThe findings will assist tourism planners in constructing a deployable rural tourism destination competency index to develop policies and programmes that address specific tourism or rural development objectives in Malaysia and beyond.Originality/valueThe value of present study lies in its examination of the tourists’ perspectives on the factors that provides addition to rural competitive advantage, with an emphasis on a relatively new and contentious post-COVID-19 topic, namely, rural tourism destinations.

Green purchasing behaviour of international tourists in Malaysia using green marketing tools: theory of planned behaviour perspective

PurposeThis study aims to examine the effects of green marketing tools on tourists’ behavioural intention to buy green products by measuring individuals’ subjective norms, attitudes and perceived behavioural control.Design/methodology/approachA total of 421 international tourists from several tourist attractions in Malaysia, selected through convenience sampling, participated in a survey.FindingsThe analysis results using partial least squares structural equation modelling suggest that behavioural intention of international tourists is firmly influenced by attitude, perceived behavioural control, subjective norms and green marketing tools. However, the subjective norm does not work as a mediator.Practical implicationsThe relationships established in this study provide insight into hoteliers’ knowledge for further implementation of green marketing strategies (eco-label, eco-brand, environmental advertising), which can enhance green attitudes and behavioural intention of purchasing green products in the hospitality industry.Originality/valueThis study expands the theory of planned behaviour by including green marketing tools to measure international tourists’ green buying tendency in Malaysia.

Comparing the Concept of Halal Tourism in Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia

This study aimed to illustrate the development and thoughts of halal tourism in several Southeast Asian countries. The study was conducted using library research to examine previous references, such as books, media journals, and websites. Results show that the globalization of the tourism industry has developed due to the rising demand from Muslim tourists which led to the birth of halal tourism. This condition is most prominent in the countries with large Muslim population. However, tourism is much in demand and practised in both Muslim majority and Muslim minority countries. Halal tourism trends provide many benefits for economic growth through consumers who are mostly Muslim. In Indonesia, Ulama Council as a supporter of halal tourism has no formal legality or legal certainty, unlike JAKIM in Malaysia. Nevertheless, the concept of halal tourism itself is still different in each country. In conclusion, the concept of halal tourism do not merely emphasise religious values, but also on the economic sector.

Assessing the Impact of Corporate Fraud on Firm Performance in Malaysian Tourism Sector: Pre- and During Covid-19 Pandemic

It is vital to examine the performance of listed companies, especially the tourism sector that was believed to be highly impacted during the Covid-19 pandemic. What more if the companies are suspected of corporate fraud. Hence, the purpose of this study is to determine the impact of fraudulent activities on the performance of Malaysian listed tourism companies from 2017 to 2020 based on the sample of 81 firm-year observations. The study period was partitioned to 2017 until 2019 and during in 2020. Beneish model was chosen to represent corporate fraud activity. Based on the pool effect model using STATA Software, regression analysis documents a significant positive impact of corporate fraud on the tourism sector in Malaysia for accounting and market measures. The current findings could be considered as indicators to reduce corporate fraud in improving company performance by management and stakeholders, particularly during the pandemic.

Why Not Travel to Malaysia? Perspectives of Future Senior Tourists toward Senior-Friendly Destination Attributes

ABSTRACT The push-pull motivation theory was applied to examine the role of travel motivation in the relationship between senior-friendly destination attributes and future seniors’ travel intention to a senior-friendly destination. A quantitative cross-sectional study was conducted on a sample of 209 future senior tourists in Malaysia. Hierarchical multiple regression and factor analysis results revealed four important attribute dimensions of a senior-friendly destination from the perspective of future senior tourists, i.e., ‘senior-friendly facilities and accessibility,’ ‘tourism resources and attractions,’ ‘complementary services,’ and ‘safety and security services.’ ‘Tourism resources and attractions’ was found to be the only destination attribute that significantly predicts future seniors’ travel intention. Travel motivation was tested to determine its effect on travel intention, however the findings indicated that future senior tourists’ travel motivation has no moderating role in the relationship between senior-friendly destination attributes and travel intention. Implications and suggestions are provided for tourism researchers, destination managers, and travel service providers.