Destination image of UNESCO World Heritage sites in Malaysia

• Main Authors: Salmiah, Abdul Hamid, Qistina Donna, Lee Abdullah, Teo, Miaw Lee
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: GV Recreation Leisure; HM Sociology
• Online Access: http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/19956/1/UNIMAS%20Silver%20Jubilee%20Conference%202017.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/19956/

People travel from one place to another for different purposes. Based on literatures, destination branding is found to be very significant to attract the tourists to places of interests. In Malaysia, there are variety of cities, beaches, rainforests, villages and mountains' sites to be visited. In addition, we should be proud that part of our cities and sites in Malaysia have been recognized 164 and listed by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as world heritage sites. One of the listed site, Georgetown, Penang was selected by Los Angeles Times as one of "16 must see destinations in 2016". This exploratory research looks into the tourists' expectation towards signages at the UNESCO World Heritage sites in Malaysia based on tourist expectation model. This research is intended to evaluate the reliability of signages in terms of the visual graphics and tourist experience expectation. This paper identifies currently used signages system within the specific locations in Malaysia in portraying the brand of UNESCO as part of branding strategies through photo-based visual analysis. The findings of this research show that there is inconsistent visual representation of signages found at the World Heritage Sites between Melaka, Georgetown and Kinabalu Park. This paper summarizes the element of visual identity found on the signages at the specific locations within the WH sites for this study. Overall, this article seeks to address the importance of tourist expectation when visiting the UNESCO World Heritage sites through preliminary investigations on the visual representations of the UNESCO destination image