JOURNAL 4

RURAL TOURISM DESTINATION COMPETITIVENESS: A STUDY ON ANNAH RAIS LONGHOUSE HOMESTAY, SARAWAK

Chee-Hua, Chin, May-Chiun, Lo, Peter Songan, Vikneswaran Nair

(2014)

The development of sustainable rural tourism resources is important to ensure the competitiveness of rural destinations thus, this study aims to find the impact of environmental constructs and its contributions to the development of destination competitiveness. Below is the proposed framework from the journal :

This study highlights the importance of environmental constructs, namely, cultural heritage attractions and natural resources are significantly contributing to the development of key competitiveness for a rural tourism destination from a communities’s perspective. Hence, this study provides a better understanding of communities’ perceptions of the development of tourism destination competitiveness. In the future, researchers who are interested in this field can further test the relationships among these constructs.

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Items and Variables Review

Measurement items and variable that can be found in the framework are: 

INDEPENDENT VARIABLES

1. Environment Education 

- Increase knowledge and understanding of environmental issues. 
- Create Awareness and skill development for environmental conservation. 
- Achieve sustainable development of tourism destinations. 

2. Environmental Conservation 

- Managing the resources of the environments such as air, water, soil, mineral resources, and living species.

- Approach to environmental protection.

- Promote environmental conservation or ecological sustainability. 

- Success and failure depend on resident attitudes. 

3. Cultural Heritage Attractions 

- The complex of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual, and emotional features that characterize a society or social group. 

- Heritage represents the memory or identity of a place. 

- Not limited to material manifestations, but it also encompasses living expression and the traditions that countless groups and communities worldwide.

- Play a pivotal role in tourism destination and as prominent resources in any of the society especially for the rural communities. 

4. Tourism Infrastructure 

- The physical element that is created or made to cater to visitors.

- It provides the basic framework for the effective functioning of development systems such as urban areas, industry, and tourism. 

- Soft infrastructure (such as business development, training) and hard infrastructure (such as transportation facilities, information facilities, an access method for tourists). 

- Comprised of all types of transportation infrastructure, tourism amenities, and as well as facilitating resources which helps in enhancing the competitiveness of a tourism destination. 

5. Natural Resources 

- Something that is found in nature and can be used by people which includes water, plants, forest, animals, soil, and stone. 

- Major resources such as flora and fauna are one of the attractors in luring tourists’ attention to visit a tourism destination. 

DEPENDENT VARIABLE 

- Destination ability to attract visitors for either visit or revisit or best known as maintaining its market position and improving over time.

- Both comparative advantage (natural and artificial resources) and competitive advantage (tourism infrastructure) are used to explain the overall competitiveness model.

- To gain competitiveness sustainable practices and applications of the right destination marketing efforts need to be the focus.

- Destination competitiveness can be achieved when the particular tourism destination fulfills certain criteria such as visitors' numbers and financial returns are increasing growth in the economic prosperity of the residents in a tourism destination and the core resources and attractors are strengthened over time.

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Theory Review

- According to Chee-Hua Chin et al (2014), well-strategized rural tourism will benefit tourism stakeholders such as local communities and industry players in terms of welfare and also tourists for a good experience with natural and cultural resources. 

- According to Egbali, Nosrat, & Alipour (2011) Rural tourism has attracted increased attention from governments, non-governmental organization (NGO), and industry players because its plays a significant role in leading economic activity and help in an increase in communities’ income (as cited in Chee-Hua Chin et al, 2014). 

Homestay in Sarawak