Page 628 - MARSIUM'21 COMP OF PAPER

FYP PROPOSAL
AHIBS UTM SKUDAI

TOURIST VISITING INTENTION THROUGH FACEBOOK

NUR NABILAH IZZAH BINTI MD EHARAY, ASSOC. PROF. DR NOOR HAZARINA HASHIM

Azman Hashim International Business School, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru

Abstract
New media is an interactive form of communication nowadays that are different from the old media such as newspaper, television and radio.
New media is any media delivered digitally such as websites, blogs, email, social media networks and virtual or augmented reality. It has
been one of recent marketing strategies for businesses. In tourism industry, social media marketing is a must for the organization to attract
visitors using high quality and engaging contents. Facebook is one of the popular social media was put focus on by majority of tourism
campaign or organization. The aim of this study is to examine the effectiveness of social media activities to influence consumer’s intention
towards the tourism campaign on Facebook. This study is conducted through descriptive survey by distributing questionnaire to Facebook
travel interest users to examine the user interaction with the Facebook page activity and how it affects the perception of the brand and
influence visitors’ intention towards the product or service.

Keywords: New media, social media marketing, tourism, Facebook

■ 1.0 INTRODUCTION
Tourism has been an important role in contributing to a country’s economy since the early days. Malaysia is one of the ASEAN countries
that are known for its unique diversity of cultures, festivals, traditions and customs which creates the desires for tourist to choose Malaysia
as one of their destination selections.

The statistic of Malaysia shares of economic sectors in the gross domestic product (GDP) from 2009 to 2019 by O’Neill (2021), illustrates
the percentage of services contributed about 54.17 percent in 2019 meanwhile the share of industry contributed around 37.42 percent and
agriculture in Malaysia's gross domestic product was around 7.28 percent. This statistic convinced that the contribution of service sector is
a big influence to Malaysia’s economy as well. Tourism and related travel is considered as one of the service sectors by Ministry of
International Trade and Industry Malaysia (MITI). It is one of the most dynamic economic service that contributes 5.9 percent to Malaysia’s
GDP (Hirschmann,2021), employment and creating foreign exchange. In a study by Azer, Hamzah, Aishah & Abdullah (2016), they found
that manufacturing and service sectors shows significant relationship to Malaysia’s real GDP per capita. The data and the results prove that
how tourism is an important part of a Malaysia’s growth.

67.5 percent visitors visit Malaysia for holiday purposes in 2019 (Hirschmann, 2021) and due to pandemic, this sector has been affected
badly both to the economy and to the labors. In a study by (Mohd Noor et al., n.d.) shown five tourism industry sectors that stimulates
development and increasing income per capita and local communities’ living standards in Malaysia which are health tourism, sustainable
tourism, cultural tourism, eco-tourism and Islamic tourism. Malaysia's government recently introduced a ten-year strategy to help the
country's tourism industry revive. One of the primary initiatives for recovery mentioned in the National Tourism Policy 2020-2030 is to
promote and enhance sustainable tourism. Among the travel experiences to promote are ecotourism, adventure, and sports tourism, including
island and coastal tourism (Hirschmann, 2021).

As mentioned earlier, Malaysia is one of the ASEAN countries filled with diversity of nature life and tropical beauty. One of Malaysia’s
major attractions is ecotourism (Clean Malaysia, 2015). Ecotourism promotes social, environmental and economic sustainability in a
responsible way which improves local people’s well-being as well as preserving the environment (Bricker, 2013). Tourists able to experience
nature and biodiversity of the region. Hence, generates socio-economic benefits for the communities (Focus Malaysia, 2021). Mohd Noor et
al. (n.d.) study shown result of the benefits of sustainable tourism to the locals which preserve the ecology and provide more jobs that leads
to reducing the amount of poverty. Agrotourism or agritourism is a type of activity or tourist interest on visiting working farm or agricultural
business operations for the farm experience, education or enjoyment (Karthik & Gajanand, 2019). During the early years of introducing
agritourism in Malaysia, usual activities conducted for local tourists are introducing plants and animals provide for teambuilding and
recreational events. However, more tourism activities have been developed due to the help of governments sectors such as farm stay, pick
you own, farm animals, fishing and homestay. Even though agritourism is not contributing much to the overall tourism sector in Malaysia,
homestay has been a successful program which increases the local communities’ income (Mazlan & Juraimi, 2014).

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