Core Dimensions of Islamic Hotel Service: Towards their promotion in the Global Marketplace

This study works to identify the core dimensions of the so-called ‘Islamic Hotel’. The main purpose is to provide some insights on how the resulting dimensions could be utilised as a competitive advantage to promote Islamic Hotels in the global market rather than to confine them merely to the Muslim segment. This study involving 782 tourists and employed both in-depth interviews and questionnaire surveys as the methods for data collection. The results of the Exploratory Factor Analysis showed that there are seven dimensions of Islamic Hotels, labelled as Aurat, Halal Food, Mahram, Ibadah, Islamic Entertainment and Decoration, Islamic Management and finally Islamic Events. The discussion on the implications of this study indicates that Islamic hotels have huge potential to be successfully promoted as a form of theme hotel in the global tourism and hospitality market

The relationships between corporate meeting planner's personality traits and their choices of meeting places

This study is to determine the influence of personality on the novelty preference for corporate meeting destination choice. The Big-Five model of personality which consists of five traits namely openness, conscientiousness, extraversion,agreeableness, and neuroticism was employed to operationalise the personality construct. A total of 75 corporate meeting planners drawn from public listed service organisations were involved. The main method of data collection was questionnaire survey and multiple regression analysis was employed as the main statistical analysis. The results revealed that only openness (positively) and agreeableness (negatively) contributed significantly to the prediction of novelty preference for corporate meeting destination choice. This study, which also seeks to determine the relationships between some demographical variables and novelty preference, found that demographical information is not a good predictor of meeting destination choice. The main implication of this study is pertaining to the segmentation and targeting of the corporate meeting market. This study also helps in bridging the gap between tourism marketing and organisational research

Airline Service Failure: Determinants of Passengers\u27 Intention to Fly Again and Likelihood to Recommend

This study aimed to investigate the impacts of causal attributions (controllability, stability, and locus of control) and failure severity on the behavioral intention of passengers in the context of airline service failure. This study also extended the causal attribution theory by incorporating failure severity as another explanatory variable. Furthermore, all the above direct relationships were also expected to be mediated by brand attitude. Essentially, this study attempted to address the issue of the desire of passengers to fly again with the affected airlines and the extent to which they will recommend it to others. This study employed purposive sampling and a questionnaire survey that involved 518 respondents as the main data collection method. All hypotheses were tested using Smart-PLS. The findings revealed that only controllability and failure severity exhibited direct impacts on behavioral intention, whereas stability and locus of control indirectly affected behavioral intention through the mediator of brand attitude. The findings also indicated that brand attitude was a full mediator in the relationships between stability and behavioral intention, as well as between locus of control and behavioral intention

The Relationships between Corporate Meeting Planner’s Personality Traits and Their Choices of Meeting Places

This study is to determine the influence of personality on the novelty preference for corporate meeting destination choice. The Big-Five model of personality which consists of five traits namely openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism was employed to operationalise the personality construct. A total of 75 corporate meeting planners drawn from public listed service organisations were involved. The main method of data collection was questionnaire survey and multiple regression analysis was employed as the main statistical analysis. The results revealed that only openness (positively) and agreeableness (negatively) contributed significantly to the prediction of novelty preference for corporate meeting destination choice. This study, which also seeks to determine the relationships between some demographical variables and novelty preference, found that demographical information is not a good predictor of meeting destination choice. The main implication of this study is pertaining to the segmentation and targeting of the corporate meeting market. This study also helps in bridging the gap between tourism marketing and organisational research.

Marketing Malaysia to the Middle East Tourists: towards a preferred inter-regional destinations

This paper attempts to demonstrate the importance of the Middle East market to the Malaysian tourism industry, to discuss their travel profiles and behavior, and finally to suggest strategies to better position Malaysia as the most preferred inter-regional destination among the Arab tourists. It is estimated that there will be a total of 35 million outbound tourist arrivals from the Middle East in 2020. The Arab tourists tend to stay longer, spend more and are unfazed by the high tropical temperatures. The Middle East region is also a very viable market for tourism as it is home to a growing young population with a high per capita income, particularly the Saudi Arabia and UAE. This paper also discusses the pattern of outbound tourism from the region as well as the marketing efforts undertaken by the Malaysian tourism players to attract the Middle East travelers. Malaysia promotional efforts so far very much concentrated for tourism products and services within the Klang Valley area and tourism players in other parts of the country are still far from the so called “Arab Tourist’s Friendly”. It is suggested that Malaysia should focus more of their marketing efforts to well capture the Saudi Arabia and UAE outbound travel, to develop distinctive youth-oriented tourism products, to increase air links between major tourist cities in Malaysia and the Middle East, to start fully utilize the internet media for promotion and distribution, and to encourage the Arabs to purchase timeshare vacation homes in Malaysia

Exploring consumers attitude towards web advertising and its influence on web ad usage in Malaysia

The digital age has already made significant changes to each of the elements of the promotion mix. Companies increasingly see the Internet as an important medium through which advertising messages can be directed towards consumers. In the 21st century, consumers have more control over advertising exposure with web advertising because they can select how much commercial content they wish to view. However, very little is known of consumer beliefs about Web advertising, attitudes toward Web advertising or Web advertising associated with consumer behaviour in Malaysia. By adopting and applying Korgaonkar, Silverbatt and O’Leary’s measurements, this paper explores Web users’ beliefs, attitudes and use of Web advertising. The descriptive statistics, cross tabulation, factor analysis results as well as regression analysis and its implications on the findings are discusse

CORPORATE MEETING DESTINATION CHOICE: THE INFLUENCE OF CONSUMPTION VALUES IN THE MALAYSIAN PERSPECTIVE

This study attempted to determine the influence of consumption value on the novelty preference for corporate meeting destination choice. The theory of consumption value as proposed by Sheth et al. (1991) was employed as the internal motivating drive to explain the choice between conventional and novel meeting destinations. The consumption value theory by Sheth et al. (1991) was the best typology to be employed in this study because of its multidimensional properties composed of both objective value (functional) and perceptual values (epistemic, emotional, social and conditional) attributes. A total of 75 corporate meeting planners drawn from public listed services organizations were involved. The main method of data collection was questionnaire survey and multiple regression analysis was employed as the main statistical technique. The results revealed that functional value exerted a negative effect on novelty preference while epistemic value was positively related to novelty preference for corporate meetings

A preliminary study on customer expectations of hotel hospitality: Influences of personal and hotel factors

This study attempts to explain the influence of personal and hotel factors on the expectation level of hotel hospitality as well as to propose a scale to measure commercial hospitality for hotel services. A total of 101 local and international hotel guests were involved in the study. The results revealed that the expectations of hotel hospitality are influenced by personal factors such as gender, purpose of stay, nationality, and private domain of hospitality. The hotel's star rating is the only hotel factor that might have strong association with hotel hospitality

Do travel images affect international students’ on-site academic value? New evidence from the Malaysia’s ‘higher edutourism’ destination

While previous studies have merely focused on travel destination image (TDI) with respect to influencing international students’ decision-making for academic destinations (i.e. the pre-experience stage), research on TDI relating to students’ on-site educational experiences and future behavioural intentions remain scant. This study introduces the ‘higher edutourism’ concept as a key enabler from the higher education market in attracting international students for the tourism industry. This study attempts to extend the TDI paradigm by empirically examining cognitive, affective and conative TDIs from a multidimensional perspective and its effects on overall perceived value, while also testing the indirect effects of TDIs. A total of 515 questionnaires were analysed using structural equation modelling. The results confirmed that cognitive TDI would positively impact affective TDI, perceived value and subsequently, conative TDI. Theoretical and practical implications for policymakers, higher education administrators and tourism marketers are also discussed