Asean Journal on Hospitality and Tourism

Volume 6 , Number 2

 SHI Jianren

College of Tourism, Zhejiang Gongshang University, Hangzhou City, P. R China

 ZHAO Xiumin

College of Art Design, Zhejiang Gongshang University

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 visitors’ spatial distribution were observed. 13 pairs of sound and image scenarios were presented to 112 subjects at a tourism city, Hangzhou, China. The sounds and images used were of real settings in lakefront scenic areas. Affective response was measured in terms of pleasure. Through the evaluation on the influence of the interaction between visual and acoustic stimuli on perception of the environment, it is proved that there is a need to identify places where the conservation of the sound environment is essential, due to the drastic impact of the loss of sound quality or its salient informational content on human appreciation, especially in theme spaces, and folk-custom landscapes. Moreover, the coherence between sound and image influences human preferences, since coherent combinations are rated higher than the mean of the component stimuli. As a result, the spatial partition of soundscape is also necessary with the movement of the visual images. Finally, some design guidelines regarding soundscape are proposed with the illustrations of four typical lakefront spots.

Key words: lakefront; soundscape; sound-image coherence

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 A.H.Roslan

Faculty of Economics, Universiti Utara Malaysia

 Ahmad Edwin Mohamed

Faculty of Tourism and Hospitality Management, Universiti Utara Malaysia

 Mohd Saifoul Zamzuri Noor

Faculty of Economics, Universiti Utara Malaysia

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 down” effects rather than a deliberate and careful planning to improve the impact of tourism on them. There are now emerging literatures suggesting that there exist a huge potential for making tourism to be effectively work for the poor. Consequently, this raises the need to examine, among others, the participation of the poor in the tourism industry as well as its impact on poverty. In this paper, we explore this issue for the case of Langkawi Island, an island that has been proclaimed as one of the major tourist attractions to Malaysia.

Key words: Poverty, tourism, Langkawi Island, Malaysia

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 Kalsom Kayat

Faculty of Tourism and Hospitality Management, Universiti Utara Malaysia

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 is within their means and their boundaries of traditional customs. What needs to be improved on is their capability so that they are able to identify the expected quality of service of the visitors and so that they are able to fulfil this expected quality of service.

Key words: Rural tourism business, customer orientation, service quality

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 Jinyang Deng

Recreation, Parks, and Tourism Resources Program, West Virginia University, USA

 John Schelhas

Southern Research Station, USDA Forest Service, USA

 Yaoqi Zhang

School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences, Auburn University, USA

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, management and policies. Suggestions to resolve these paradoxes are also presented.

Key words: National Parks, paradise, paradox, policy, consumption

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 John Walsh

Shinawatra University, Bangkok, Thailand

 Pawana Tachavimol

Shinawatra University, Bangkok, Thailand

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 they received and the degree to which they were satisfied with them. It was found that most travellers, although they no longer are subject to ‘zero-dollar tourism,’ nevertheless face constant appeals to buy often unwanted products and must accept very low levels of service. Satisfaction levels are, consequently, varied.

Key words: Tourism, China, Thailand, customer satisfaction, zero-dollar

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 Bruce Prideaux

School of Business, James Cook University, Cairns, Queensland, Australia

 Hoda McClymont

Department of Marketing and Tourism, University of Southern Queensland, Australia

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 including information sources consulted and the activity clusters that they were most interested in participating in. A significant outcome of the research is an enhanced understanding of these characteristics which will enable rural communities to develop more effective promotional strategies in the drive tourism sector.

Key words: Drive tourism, information sources, activities, marketing, Australia

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