Hearing-impaired specialized career education: does it benefit the hospitality industry?/ Norhayati Mohd Yusof...[et al.]

For many years, disabled graduates particularly with impaired hearing have been accepted as key equity group on the basis that their overall participation levels are limited to specialised education to equip them for certain type of employment. This scenario is also occurring in Malaysia with a number of tertiary institutions offering specialised career education including the hospitality program. The numbers of these graduates are increasing, but there are still a large number of them who are excluded from employment. What may cause for such situation is yet to be investigated. Therefore, this paper attempts to review the development of special education in Malaysia, the employability of disabled persons at global scenario, and highlighting the issues of hearing impairment graduates and their employability in Malaysia hence subsequently proposed for further investigation

External operating environment and resiliency of foreign ethnic restaurant / Mohd Noor Azmin Akbarruddini...[et al.]

The presence of foreign ethnic restaurants has become a norm in this country. The establishment of such restaurant has been increasing steadily especially in the recent decades. This phenomenon is certainly could be attributed to some elements that motivate foreigners to open their businesses in this country. This study aims to uncover the underlying reasons for the foreigners to open their restaurants and how the external operating environment affect their restaurant businesses’ resiliency. Furthermore, there has been a lack of study looking into external operating environment and resiliency of a business. Therefore, this warrant an investigation on the issue at hand

Perceived Destination Competitiveness of Langkawi Island, Malaysia

AbstractRepeat visitors and holidays at a destination and are a stable market for a destination. For a destination to be the competitiveness of the tourism destination is compatible shows, attract visitors, increase tourism spending and provide them with a memorable experience satisfaction. However, despite the rapid development in this industry, the Perceived destination competitiveness, tourist satisfaction, tourism images and travel revisit intentions of tourists to Langkawi have yet to be discovered for future strategic development of Langkawi. To bridge the gap, this opportunity based study investigates the relationship between perceived destination competitiveness tourist satisfaction, and travel revisits intention and its relationships are hypothesised to be mediated by the threefold tourist images that are operationalised by tourist satisfaction, commitment and loyalty. This study develops these ideas by generating responses to build an assessment of the relative importance and show the tourist revisit intentions to Langkawi

Perceived destination competitiveness of Langkawi Island: an evaluation / Zaliha Zainuddin, Salleh Mohd Radzi and Mohd Salehuddin Mohd Zahari.

Destination competitiveness has become a critical issue and creates increasingly challenging in tourism market. A successful tourism destination should embrace an integrated approach towards the many components of the tourism system and competitive advantage of a destination is closely relates to the quality of the products offered, which means the tourist satisfaction that experienced at the destination. This research note discussed the tourism destination competitiveness and highlight Langkawi Island as one of competitive tourism destination in Malaysia. These early finding indicated that the Key Success Factors and Perceived Destination Competitiveness are significant with experience investigate the travel revisit intentions to this destination

Adaptive reuse of historical buildings and local residents’ actual visitation / Adlin Baizura Ariffin…[et al.]

Heritage tourism is one of the fastest growing components of tourism due to its ability to attract millions of international tourists and contribute billions of dollars to the host country. There are numbers of studies looking at the heritage tourism, mainly focusing on motivation, visitation behaviour, perceptions, appreciation, awareness and sustainability based on the public and architectural perspective. However, there is still lack of study looking at the influence of adaptive reuse of historical buildings toward the local resident’s actual visitation. Thus, to understand the phenomenon and filling the study gaps, this research note reviews the literatures, uplifting the issues in the proposed study contextual setting and developing the framework

An investigative study into the Hazard Analysis Of Critical Control Point (HACCP) implementation in Small and Medium-Sized Food Manufacturing Enterprises (SMEs) / Muhammad Izzat Zulkifly...[et al.]

This study investigates the Malaysian food SMEs’ main motive in implementing the system. It also assesses the effectiveness of the system’s implementation in the SMEs through the managements’ and employees’ commitment and the benefits of the system to the companies’ productivity. Sample populations were selected among the food SMEs that had implemented HACCP in the Klang Valley area. The face-to-face interview approach among the representative managers provided truly significant and in-depth information and it was found that the ‘customer requirement’ was the major motive of food SMEs in implementing HACCP, outnumbering the other motives identified. The managements’ and employees’ commitment after HACCP implementation were fairly satisfactory and HACCP offered numerous benefits for the companies’ productivity despite a few obstacles encountered during the implementation. Employees claimed that they were satisfied with the management’s commitment and were committed to their jobs after HACCP took place in their organization. Productivity experienced considerable improvement from HACCP implementation and the overall findings clearly indicate that HACCP is a good food safety system, and it is worthwhile for the other food SMEs toinvest in its implementatio

Influence of Acculturation on Foodways among Ethnic Groups and Common Acceptable Food

AbstractAcculturation through education, social interaction and media remarkably catalyze the sharing of various ethnic foods through it preparation and consumption or foodways. The acceptance of it by each ethnic group will lead into the common acceptable food in a country. This study reports the comparative analysis on the extent to which acculturation through education; social interaction and media influence the foodways between three Malaysian major ethnic groups (Malay, Chinese and Indian). Result revealed that education, social interaction through event, media as part of acculturation attributes not only provides the understanding of food cultures, familiarize with the ingredients and recipes, the serving and eating of other ethnics’ food but influence the foodways or the preparation and consumption of each other ethnic food. In addition, adaptation on each other ethnic food through foodways (preparation and consumption) creates a strong belief on the formation of common acceptable food

Empowerment of the line managers in HR activities: HRM issue in Malaysia

Within the general human resource management (HRM literature, the central role of line managers in implementing HRM, is widely acknowledged. The responsibility for effectively managing human resources (HR) does not rest with those in the HR department, but, all managers (including line managers) are responsible for leading people. Indeed, line managers have an unquestioned crucial role in implementing HRM, because they are responsible for executing HR practices However, there are various reasons,constraints, reactions, and problems have been identified to effective line involvement in HR activities. It reviews and discusses the impact of such empowerment practice to the HR managers as well as to the line managers. Since Malaysia emphasis on the value of its human capital, an examination of empowerment of the line issue in Malaysia is undertaken. Specifically, this paper attempts to highlight the needs to study empowerment of line managers in human resources in Malaysia

Hospitality industry careers: Analysis on students interest based on different location of upbringing and secondary school background / Mohd Salehuddin Mohd Zahari, Fadzillah Mohd Shariff and Tuan Ahmad Tuan Ismail

This study investigated the relationships between the geographical location of upbringing, type of secondary schools attended and attitudes and motivation of Malaysian hospitality students towards a hospitality career. A sample of students (year1, 2 and 3) of Diploma Culinary Arts, Hotel Management and Food Service Management from Faculty of Hotel and Tourism Management, MARA University of Technology, Malaysia (Shah Alam, Dungun and Penang campuses) were used in this study. A total 469 usable questionnaires were collected comprises of 173 of year -one, 161 by year- two and 135 of year three. Despite no sustained impact on the perceptions or expectations of hospitality students through the program, there are some distinct differences at the start of their tertiary program between students from different types of secondary schooling and areas of upbringing. Students from rural areas identify themselves of having unclear idea and less knowledgeable about the program and industry at the time of making their career choice as compared to those from towns and cities. Similarly, students from normal secondary school backgrounds also classify themselves as less informed, having more unrealistic perceptions and views about the industry than those from vocational schools. It is recommended that career guidance and orientation should be made more effective, especially for the normal secondary schools to ensure students are informed realistically and sufficiently about careers and working conditions in the hospitality industry. Developing more realistic and lower expectations about working in the industry will allow young people to choose to study in a hospitality program based on a considered career decision rather than by a chance matching of personal needs with what the industry has to offer. In addition, there is a need to educate parents, as well as young people, in the rural areas about these career options and vocational education should be more highly promoted to the rural youth

The influence of Baba Nyonya acculturation on the Malacca food identity / Aisyah Tumin…[et al.]

Migration has been part of the process that shapes the constituent of a particular nation or place. The movement of different people from various ethnicities and cultural background into a place has enabled the process of acculturation to occur. Such process would open up the opportunity for each ethnic toadapt or adopt certain trait of culture from other ethnic and thus producing a cultural mixture that is unique. Within the scope of this study, the acculturation of Baba Nyonya from the mixture of Malay and Chinese food culture and tradition is argued has helped to shape the Malacca food identity. However, the extent to which the phenomenon is occurring is not known, as there is no particular study has been looking into this subject. Thus, this study is designed to examine the process of Baba Nyonya food acculturation and their influence on the Malacca state food identity formation