Vol. 6 No. 2 (2007)

One of the main concerns in the development of the tourism industry in Malaysia is on the improvement and diversification of tourism "products" in attracting tourists to Malaysia. This is understandable since the tourism industry is expected to generate and maximise foreign exchange earnings, increase income and creating employment. The question of poverty and the needs to encourage the poor to participate in the tourism industry is generally neglected in the formulation of tourism policies and strategies. Thus, the impact of the tourism industry on the poor is left mainly to the "trickling…

Urban open spaces are important for improvement in urban living quality. Traditional research on open spaces mainly focuses on spatial forms and visual esthetics to analyze environmental quality, but lacks of adequate consideration regarding acoustic elements. In the field of the acoustic environment, people pay much attention to interior sound quality design and noise pollution. In order to provide a new viewpoint for urban design and to reinforce design methods, herein, the concept of soundscape was introduced. In this survey, the types and the features of lakefront soundscapes, as well as…

It is widely recognized that national parks are places set aside for the protection of the ecological integrity of the park environment itself, for scientific research and environmental education, and for tourism and recreational pursuits, among other things. However, national parks also face a myriad of vexing problems, including policy dilemma between use and protection, consumption inequity, etc. From a global perspective, with a strong focus on the United States and Canada, this paper discusses the paradoxical issues associated with national parks in their emerging, development,…

Based on earlier writings and research in the fields of total quality management, service quality and marketing which suggest understanding customer needs is a pre-requisite to satisfactory service delivery, a study was undertaken to understand and analyze customer orientation among the home stay operators in Malaysia. Data was collected from 142 respondents who operate home stay programs in 10 rural areas in Peninsular Malaysia using structured survey questionnaires. Findings from the study indicate that rural home stay operators place utmost importance on customer satisfaction as long as it…

Tourism research in Thailand is unbalanced, since it largely focuses on western travellers and pays very little attention to Asian tourists, especially mainland Chinese tourists, whose numbers and value are rising year-on-year. The connections between China and Thailand are many-stranded and more than a thousand years old. However, there is very little understanding of what kind of experience Chinese tourists would like to receive and whether they enjoy their visits. This paper reports on a quantitative survey of 250 Chinese tourists in Thailand which investigated the kinds of experience that…

The research reported upon in this paper was designed to increase understanding of the demographics, and trip behaviours (such as pre-trip planning, preferred attractions and activities characteristics) of drive tourists in rural areas in order to develop promotional strategies. A mail survey targeting 960 drive tourists travelling through Goondiwindi was carried out in 2003 returning 156 usable questionnaires. Findings of this research indicated that this despite the differences in demographics, similar behaviours were exhibited by this market for most but not all trip planning behaviours…