Strategies For Modernising Malaysian E-Tourism: Mohd Farid Huzaimi P61172

Mohd Farid huzaimi P61172
STRATEGIES FOR MODERNISING MALAYSIAN E-TOURISM

Tourism represents an increasingly important sector of the economy. The tourism industry has experienced rapid growth and has been identified as a key driver of growth in the services sector. The industry continues to be a key foreign exchange earner, contributing to gross domestic product growth, investment and employment as well as strengthening the services account of the balance of payments. The expansion of the industry will also have an effect on the growth of other related service industries, particularly food and beverages, accommodation, transport, entertainment, shopping and other small and medium-sized industries. In addition, tourism also plays a crucial role in helping low-income groups improve their livelihood through involvement in tourism-related activities, such as rural homestay program, eco-tourism and agro-tourism tour guide activities as well as handicraft industries. As the market for tourism relies on information, information and communication technology (ICT) can contribute immensely to the tourism business. ICT, especially the Internet, have substantially changed the playing field for tourism stakeholders, providing new challenges and opportunities in promoting and selling their products and services. The Internet has also dramatically changed the way in which consumers plan and buy their holidays. Using ICT to exchange information about products and services enables all actors involved in tourism to be aware of services offered. This paper deals with development of e-tourism in Malaysia and United Kingdom. Also, the paper examines problems for the application of electronic commerce in the tourism industry in Malaysia and solutions related to e-tourism and suggest recommendations for successful ecommerce strategies in tourism to be applied by the industry and the government in Malaysia.
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1.0
INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, most people who plan a trip or a day-out will first initiate a search through the internet. More and more people realize the advantages of the new technologies for planning leisure activities as an increasing number of companies and institutions offer tourist information which is easily accessible through web services. However, travelers usually have an inadequate knowledge of the city to visit and they are unacquainted of the local artistic, social or entertainment places. A user may find a large amount of information about the city, but he may invest a long time selecting the activities he prefers and organizing them to profitably spend a day out. E-Tourism is a web application that generates suggestions about personalized tourist tours. It is a tourist recommendation and planning application to assist users on the organization of a leisure and tourist agenda. First, the system offers the user a list of the city places that are likely of interest to the user. This list takes into account the user demographic classification, the user likes in former trips and the preferences for the current visit. Second, a planning module schedules the list of recommended places according to their chronological characteristics as well as the user boundaries; that is the planning system determines how and when to perform the recommended activities. This is a very relevant feature that most recommender systems are short of as it allows the user to have the list of recommended activities organized as an agenda, i.e. to have a totally executable plan (Laura Sebastian, 2008)1.
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E-tourism is the innovative concept of the tourism development. It has different terms in the literature which refers to the application of ICT tools supporting tourism business activities such as e-tourism, eTourism, Online Tourism, Tourism eBusiness or tourism eCommerce (Reino, 2006)2. E-tourism is the digitization of procedures in the travel and tourism industry, including both tactical and strategic use of ICT applications (Buhalis, 2003) .3 According to
Laura Sebastian, I. G. (2008). e-tourism: a tourist recommendation and planning application. IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence , 89. 2 Reino, S. (2006). Developing a framework or the assessment of eTourism capability. Retrieved March 12, 2012, from etourism Development web site: http://www.qmuc.ac.uk/aetc 3 Buhalis, D. (2003). Information Technology for StrategicTourism Management. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.
Binaya Paudel (Paudel & Hossain, 2006)4 e-tourism is a single bundle of three distinctive disciplines. It comprises business, information technology/system and tourism functions. The development of these three sectors is prerequisites for the e-tourism development. Thus, all of these elements must be integrated to initiate e-tourism system as shown in figure 2.2 below.
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IT / IS Business
Management Marketing Finance Finance Information systems Information Communications Technology Telecommunications
E-Tourism
Tourism
Transport Travel Hospitality Leisure Heritage
Figure 2.2 E-Tourism Concept and E-Tourism Domains
Globally, e-tourism has been initiated by United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). UNCTAD is mainly concentrating on development of e-tourism marketing (Nation, 2004)5. UNCTAD has made supporting strategy for e-tourism development for selected countries to be benefited and also describes the supporting area for e-tourism development. As mentioned in the report product improvement, product promotion, human resource development, information technology development, study opportunity and funding
Paudel B., & Hossain, M. A. (2006). E-tourism Investment Decision Making Support System. School of Informatics , 1-3. 5 United Nation (2004). UNCTADS E-Tourism Initiative. Sao Paolo: United Nations Conference on Trade and Development .
opportunity are the sectors that UNCTAD has ready for supporting. UNCTAD has initiated to improve the market place in e-tourism by developing the information handling systems. Malaysia's tourism website has been described as a model of e-tourism by a UNCTAD on 2007. This is a very good recognition from the worldwide regarding e-tourism.
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Thus, e-tourism should be maintained and enhanced in Malaysia to be one of the important medium to attract people to come to Malaysia since Malaysia is a beautiful country to be visited. Furthermore, e-tourism will help the tourists outside and inside Malaysia to plan their tour or vacation which can contribute to the development of tourism in Malaysia.
2.0
DEFINITION OF E-TOURISM The World Tourism Organization defines tourism as The activities of a person traveling
to a place outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business or other purposes (Andersen and Henriksen, 2006)6. E-Tourism could also be defined, as the use of new information communication technologies to provide on line access to holistic cultural resources and experiences and associated souvenir products or cultural artifacts. ETourism reflects the digitalization of all processes and value chains in the tourism, travel, hospitality and catering industries. At the tactical level, it includes E-commerce and applies IT for maximizing the efficiency and effectiveness of the tourism organization. At the strategic level, E-Tourism revolutionizes all business processes, the entire value chain as well as the strategic relationships of tourism organizations with all their stakeholders.
Similar to many other services, E-Tourism products are almost exclusively dependent upon audio visual presentation and descriptions, that is, they cannot be physically displayed or inspected at the point of sales. This is, in itself, a challenge for the tourism industry at the origin of the customer where information about the tourist destination has to be presented in an attractive and convincing manner. Traditionally, the tourist industry has used advertisements and brochures with intriguing photos of hotels, local attractions, nature and culture to sell its products. In the era of the Internet an alternative channel for advertising is introduced. Due to the development of convenient means of
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Andersen, K. (2006). Impact of E-tourism in Bhutan, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Informatics
transportation and the decrease in prices of airfare, it has become more common that traveling goes beyond regional destinations.
3.0
HISTORY OF E-TOURISM
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E-tourism is a system which has been introduced in Malaysia more than 10 years ago (Malaysia, 2011)7 but people still unaware about its existence because people in Malaysia or even foreigners rely more on travel agencies as compared to this system. There are no parties who enlighten the e-tourism concept in Malaysia. E-tourism has been developed by Creative Advances Technology Sdn Bhd (CAT), a company, which was established aiming to actively participate and contribute to the development of Information Communications and Technology industry (Bhd, 1999)8. The company has developed few portals regarding tourism in Malaysia such as tourism Johor, portal for Istana Budaya, Tourism Negeri Sembilan, Malaysian Handicraft and the most successful e-tourism in Malaysia known as Virtual Malaysia (VM) and Standard Online Tourism Architecture (SOTA). Apart from that, few websites have been created such as Mytour, Matta and Bumitra. However, e-tourism in Malaysia still can be considered as infancy area although it has been existed in Malaysia for more than 10 years. (TheStar, 2007)9 As compared to other countries, e-tourism system in United Kingdom has successfully developed in that region. E-tourism has drawn upon published sources and commissioned comparative reviews to compare progress on e-tourism initiatives in comparable competitor countries. Scotland and Wales each have their own tourism e-business projects. The Scottish Tourist Board launched its Ossian project in 1997. This project was re-branded visitscotland.com in 2000 and a public-private partnership (PPP) with SchlumbergerSema was launched in May 2002. A new product database structure was designed and populated in 1998, and is now being maintained by the Area Tourist Boards. The development of visitscotland.com was undertaken in-house and the investment since 1997 has been estimated at 5m-6m. E-commerce (in the form of accommodation transactions) was launched in 2000. Some elements of the original
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Ministry of Tourism Malaysia (2011). About VirtualMalaysia.com. Retrieved March 12, 2012, from Islamic Tourism Centre: http://www.itc.gov.my/news/view.cfm?id=2704A813-188B-76AA-00B8AB869A782B8A 8 CAT Sdn Bhd. (1999). CAT Info. Retrieved March 11, 2012, from http://www.cat.com.my/index.cfm?descid=1 9 TheStar. (2007, March 15). Malaysias website a model of e-tourism. Retrieved March 14, 2012, from TheStar online: http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/3/15/nation/17145093&sec=nation
development program remain to be completed, and up to 11 million of further investment is planned under the new PPP. The Wales Tourist Board initiated its project in 2001 and has taken a different route, inviting tenders in response to a very detailed specification. The contract for system supply was awarded to World.Net, which offers fully web-enabled software for use both by destination organizations and by tourism businesses across various sectors. This solution is now under construction.
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In Germany, Belgium, France and Spain, the picture is more fragmented, with the main focus of activity at the regional/provincial and local level, as in England. Many different systems have been implemented at these levels in each country with a lack of consistency and interoperability. In all cases, except Belgium, there have been national initiatives to achieve a greater degree of co-ordination and establish certain basic standards. The situation in England is perhaps most analogous to that in Germany and France, where different destination systems have been developed across the country. Action has been taken jointly by the German regional tourism organizations to achieve a consistent approach, but with limited success to date. France appears to have made more progress through the Tourinfrance project, which has focused upon developing interoperability standards to link regional DMS services within a national framework. Implementation of this is, however, still at an early stage. It seems clear from these examples that a key issue for the success of a national solution in England will be the ability to achieve interoperability between existing regional and local destination systems. (Council, 2002)10
4.0
SYSTEM OF E-TOURISM
Wales, Scotland and England have their own systems to attract people to come to their countries by using e-tourism system and it can be seen as a successful tool to be used in those countries. As for example, Scotland has used PPP system whereby to co-operate between private and government to develop their own online system in tourism industry and it can be shown that the system is a successful tool to attract tourists to visit the country. Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) represent a wide variety of project financing and delivery approaches which offer the potential to expedite project delivery, operations, and maintenance in a more cost-effective
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English Tourism Council (2002) E-tourism In England. Tourism Technology, 1-44.
manner, enabling transportation agencies to effectively do more with less. The common element of a PPP is that the public sector sponsor of infrastructure projects engages the private sector to a greater degree in the performance of certain functions previously handled by the public sector. This can range from contracted maintenance services to full financing, development, operations, and preservation (Team, 2007)11. Public-private partnerships are defined by the US DOT as A public-private partnership is a contractual agreement formed between public and private sector partners, which allow more private sector participation than is traditional. The agreements usually involve a government agency contracting with a private company to renovate, construct, operate, maintain, and/or manage a facility or system. While the public sector usually retains ownership in the facility or system, the private party will be given additional decision rights in determining how the project or task will be completed.12 This definition emphasizes that with a PPP the public and private sectors share responsibility for the delivery of the project and/or its services. By expanding the private sector role, the public sector is better able to avail itself of the technological, managerial, and financial resources to leverage scarce public funds and expedite the delivery of a project and/or services in a more cost effective manner and with reduced risk to the public agency sponsor. As noted above, the public sector bore most project delivery, financial, and operational risks. By sharing responsibility and resources for the delivery of a PPP project, both public and private sectors share in the potential risks and rewards from the delivery of the facility or service relative to what they retain responsibility for.13
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In England, the system is more complicated but it has big positive effect to its own tourism industry. The concept of interoperability has been used in its e-tourism application. Interoperability is a property of a product or system, whose interfaces are completely understood, to work with other products or systems, present or future, without any restricted access or implementation. The IEEE Glossary defines interoperability as the ability of two or more
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Team, A.C. (2007). Case Studies of Transportation Public-Private PArtnerships. Virginia: US Department of Transportation. 12 U.S. Department of Transportation (2004). Report to Congress on Public-Private Partnerships, Retrieved March 16, 2012, from http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/reports/pppdec2004/index.htm. 13 National Council for Public-Private Partnerships (2000). Public Private Partnerships Defined. Retrieved March 16, 2012, from http://www.ncppp.org/howpart/index.shtml#define
systems or components to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged.14 While James A. O'Brien and George M. Marakas define interoperability as Being able to accomplish end-user applications using different types of computer systems, operating systems, and application software, interconnected by different types of local and wide area networks. (O'Brien & Marakas, 2005)15 Thus, in England, it merges systems between regional/provincial and local level.
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In Malaysia, there is no specific e-tourism system has been launched. It is merely based on ICT system to promote the country virtually. Therefore, Tourism Malaysia (TM) tied up with Yahoo and MSN as platforms to enhance the Malaysia Truly Asia brand visibility globally by showcasing Malaysias unique tourist destinations on both websites. Through the online advertising campaign, Tourism Malaysia aims to engage potential travelers to see Malaysia as a value-for-money destination, and lead them to Tourism Malaysias official website so that they can sign up for packages to visit Malaysia (Lai & Yap, 2004).16 This is the only way that Malaysia has done to promote Malaysian tourism industry via ICT. Thus, there are lots of weaknesses that can be seen as why the e-tourism in Malaysia is not popular among the tourists.
5.0
FLAWS OF MALAYSIAN E-TOURISM
E-tourism application is something new in Malaysia. It is still in the developing process. What has been developed now is not the best application for e-tourism in Malaysia because Malaysia is still left behind as compared to other countries in Asia due to firstly, the technological catch-up strategies within the context of their national technological innovation systems; and, secondly, the strategic resources that have been utilized in the course of their technological upgrading.17 Thus, there are many defects and challenges to solve in the electronic distribution of tourism products which will be analyzed below:
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Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. (1990) IEEE Standard Computer Dictionary: A Compilation of IEEE Standard Computer Glossaries. New York. 15 James O'Brien, George Marakas (2005). Introduction to Information Systems, New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin. 16 Johan, M. (2009, May 11). The merits of e-tourism. The Star Online. Retrieved March 8, 2012, from http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/3/15/nation/17145093&sec=nation 17 Lai, M.C., & Yap, S. F.(2004). Technology Development in Malaysia and the Newly Industrializing Economics: A Comparative Analysis. Asia-Pacific Development Journal, 53-80
5.1
LIMITED CHOICES OF PACKAGES ONLINE
One of the major factors is limited choices of packages online. Choice of packages is very important in e-tourism system since the tourists usually will search the most expandable packages to them. Thus, information about places in Malaysia together with packages is needed to help the tourists to plan their vacation or tour. However, situation in Malaysia today is most of the system will focus on the famous and big areas rather than small and medium-sized tourism places. The system lacks of definite data base on the number of cooperatives involved in the field of tourism, inability to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the ones which are present. For example, the tourists especially foreigners will search and visit places in Malaysia which are common and known to the world such as Langkawi Island, Tioman Islands, A Famosa, Taman Negara or even Kuala Lumpur. All of these places are known to the public to be the interesting part to be visited. Furthermore, there are lots of websites or portal which have described about these places. Supposedly, e-tourism application in Malaysia must have variety of places including small and medium sized enterprise like Kuala Gandah Elephent Orphanage Sanctuary in Lanchang, Pusat Penerangan Dan Santuari Penyu, Cherating and Berkelah Falls in Maran. Actually, by including small and medium sized enterprise together with big and famous places in Malayia, it will help tourists to know everything about Malaysia.
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5.2
FRAGMENTED INFORMATION
Apart from that, it is difficult to find sites with consolidated inbound packages. Most of the web applications have fragmented information which gives difficulties to the tourists to decide and plan their vacation. Fragmented information means that the information about Malaysian directory is not within one system. It has been fragmented into lots of websites. This situation will give problem to the tourists especially foreigners to find the suitable places to go since they cannot find the exact place to go. That is why they just go to the famous area because that places are easily to be found on websites. For example, most of the information about Malaysia can be identified through websites but not all of the information can give specific
features of those particular areas, packages offered to the visitors or contact numbers of person in charge at those areas. Thus, the information is limited and it only gives general idea. Another point is that tourists are facing which is the load of relevant or irrelevant information and resources to study before or during their travel and this can lead to a difficulty in decisionmaking process to the tourists (Khorasani & Meybodi, 2010)18. 5.3 LACK OF INTEGRATION
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In term of e-tourism usage, lack of integration can be a factor to the weakness of that system. Many organizations in general, irrespective of size, have not been able to realize the full potential of the values brought about by e-tourism. The organizations fail to use this as a medium to attract the tourists. They usually focus more on their own traditional way like promoting the packages offered by them through advertisement, banners and agencies. Although some of the organizations have utilized the e-tourism system but the information in certain websites is not up to date. Thus, the tourists will only rely on the information that they have obtained in the internet although the information is not exist anymore. This will decrease the interest of the tourists.
5.4
ENTERPRISE ATTITUDE
In a developing country like Malaysia, enterprise attitude has been identified as a major encumbrance to e-tourism involvement. There is lack of e-business awareness and skill among Malaysian tourism businesses. It has been found that Malaysian companies tends to be followers rather than pioneers in e-tourism investment because many of them fear failure to invest in such an unknown space (Salwani, Marthandan, Norzaidi, & Chong, 2009)
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. Furthermore, inability
to strategically link the cooperative sector with the tourism sector in those countries in which tourism is in a boom. For example, in Malaysia, tourism has emerged as a big force. But, the cooperative sector has yet to come up strongly in this field (Verma, 2009)20.
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Ehsan Safar Khorasani & Seyed Mohsen Naghibizadeh Meybodi(2010). A Framework to improve e-toruism experience by using intelligent portal. IEEE International Conference in Information Technology, 1226 19 Mohd Intan Salwani, et al. (2009). E-commerce usage and business performance in the Malaysian tourism sector: empirical analysis. Emerald, 166-185. 20 Verma, S.K. (2009). Cooperatives and Tourism: An Asian Perspective. Retrieved March 16, 2012, from www.ica.coop/tica/cartagenaverma.pdf
5.5
BIG DEMAND FROM THE GOVERNMENT AND STATE AGENCIES
Side from that, big demand from the government and state agencies also contributes to the flaw of e-tourism application. The government is unable to have a consolidated view of the online travel industry. They failed to maximize the internet channel to communicate and failed to observe timely information update from the website. Unlike England, they have their own etourism department in its own English Tourism council21 to manage and administer all matters regarding tourism online. This board is very active to modernize English tourism through ebusiness. Another approach taken by the Philippines is that, they consolidate the information in one single website. And that website has been promoted through television and newspaper so that people there are aware about the subsistence of website (Nuque, 2001)22.
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5.6
NO SPECIFIC SYSTEM
The application of e-tourism in Malaysia is merely based on web application and the information about tourism in Malaysia is fragmented. These situations shows that Malaysia lacks of system to run e-tourism application as compared to United Kingdom whereby some parts in United Kingdom applied Public-Private Partnership (PPP) to develop their own e-tourism application and certain parts of United Kingdom used interoperability application by merging information between local and province areas. The internet is already the primary source of tourist destination information for travelers. Digital business is changed from the recommended usual business using the internet and e-commerce. The challenge to develop dynamic package for online commerce is to find solution to cope and integrate the non standard way of defining etourism products and services. There are no standard or common criteria to express transportation vehicles, leisure activities and weather conditions when planning for a vacation package (Siricharoen, 2007)23. Thus, when there is no specific system, it gives difficulties to people, government, organizations, or even tourists to obtain information about Malaysia.
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English Tourism Council (2002) E-tourism In England. Tourism Technology, 1-44. Nuque E. M. (2001). Is E-Comerce a viable alternative to the traditional travel infrastructure? Symposium on Tourism Services (pp.1-22). Geneva: World Trade Organization 23 Siricharoen, Waralak V.(2007). E-commerce Adaptation Using Ontologies for E-tourism. IEEE Information and Technology, 1274.
5.7
COST OF SYSTEM MAINTENANCE
Tourism industry is one of the very much important sectors to Malaysia as it will generate the income for the country. Apart from that, Malaysia is an emerging Asian economy aspiring to move towards a technology-driven and high-tech production-based pattern of development and thus replicate the experience of the newly industrializing economies (NIEs) of Asia24. In fact, Malaysia has been categorized in the group of countries that have the potential to create new technologies on their own (Mani, 2000)25. The development of the information technology systems used in tourism industry is strongly influenced by the fact that major stakeholders in this industry are small or medium sized enterprises26. In fact, most of the Malaysian tourism companies are SMEs, which cannot afford the cost of adapting their data models to new standards. In addition, study by Manly et. al.s (2005) stated that key obstacles to innovation of this system included the high costs of developing innovations and insufficient time27. It has been supported by OFarrell and Miller (2002) found that although SMEs could see the benefit of a new technology, price which was driven by the competitive tendering process, was the main concern.28Thus, it is an impediment for the industry to be well-developed. 6.0 STRATEGIES
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Over the past fifteen years, there has been a considerable investment in systems to collect, monitor and manage data at local, regional and national level. In determining the most appropriate strategy for e-tourism in Malaysia it is important to recognize that this does not start from nothing - the key requirement would therefore appear to be the creation of a framework that
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Lai, M.C., & Yap, S. F.(2004). Technology Development in Malaysia and the Newly Industrializing Economics: A Comparative Analysis. Asia-Pacific Development Journal, 53-80 25 Mani Sunil, (2000). Policy Instruments for Stimulating R&D in the Enterprise Sector: The Contrasting Experience of Two MNC Dominated Economies from Southeast Asia. Maastricht: United Nations University, Institute for New Technologies. 26 Henriksson R. (2005) Semantic Web and E-Tourism. IEEE Information an Technology. 3-17. 27 Manley, K., Allan, D., Blayse, A., Coillet, M., Hardie, M., Hough, R., MacKenzie-Smith, S., May-Taylor, W., McFallan, S., Miller, M., Swainston, M. and Taylor, G. (2005), BRITE Innovation Survey, CRC for Construction Innovation, Brisbane. 28 OFarrell, M. andMiller, C.J.M. (2002), The barriers to new technology diffusion in the construction industry of South Wales, in Miller, C.J.M., Packham, G.A. and Thomas, B. (Eds), Current Issues in Small Construction Enterprise Development,Welsh Enterprise InstituteMonograph No. 4, University of Glamorgan Business School, Pontypridd, pp. 123-37.
can build upon what has gone before. This strategy addresses the issue of how best to deliver an integrated or joined-up structure that will enable consumers and tourism providers to benefit at local, regional and national levels. A key strategic objective is therefore to enable comprehensive searching, planning, reservations, bookings and payments for tourism products to take place via the Internet and other communications channels such as tourists information centres (TICs), call centres, mobile devices and interactive TV services. The core of any such structure will be some form of destination management system (DMS) a combination of data management software, search engine, booking and transactions facilities, all operating within a viable business model. These are among the recommended suggestions and strategies to modernize Malaysian tourism industry through e-tourism:
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6.1
ESTABLISH SPECIFIC BODY GOVERNING E-TOURISM
Nowadays, tourism industry in Malaysia has been monitored by Malaysian Tourism Board known as The Tourist Malaysia Tourism Promotion Board. Historically, it is known as The Tourist Development Corporation of Malaysia (TDC) which was established on 10 August 1972 as an agency under the former Ministry of Trade and Industry by an Act of Parliament. With the inception of the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Tourism on 20 May 1987, TDC was moved to this new ministry; and became the Malaysia Tourism Promotion Board (MTPB) through the Malaysia Tourism Promotion Board Act 1992. Popularly known as Tourism Malaysia, its full focus is on promoting Malaysia domestically and internationally29. However, etourism is not being monitored by the Board. Up till now, there is no progress about e-tourism done by the Board. However, the Board has used its own website as a mechanism to attract the tourists from other countries. The website is one of the websites and portals in Malaysia which offer limited packages to the tourists. It is suggested that Malaysia has its own specific board or council which focus on the system of e-tourism in Malaysia or there should be one department in Malaysian Tourism Board to focus on this system. This is because as mentioned before-tourism consists three elements namely information technology, tourism industry and business. These three elements need a specific body to run the whole system. In England, English Tourism
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Tourism Malaysia (2008) Our Mission Statement. Retrieved March 18, 2012 from http://corporate.tourism.gov.my/aboutus.asp
Council is the specific body to monitor tourism industry in England but they have focused more in information technology and tourism since it fits well with wider Government objectives of access, adoption of information and communication technologies and support for small business. This attitude should be followed by Malaysia.
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6.2
DEVELOP A COMPLETE INTEGRATED NATIONAL SYSTEM
As mentioned in previous chapter, Malaysia has no specific system to run the e-tourism application. There are merely websites and portals which show the packages available in Malaysia. It is suggested that Malaysia should built-up its own system so that lots of packages can be offered since it has its own system to control the information. As discussed earlier, Scotland has its own system whereby they combine between public sector and private sector only for tourism purposes. In England, they have system known as interoperability system. All of these systems are actually controlling all information in those countries so that they can provide accurate information to the tourists especially outside United Kingdom. Comparing to Malaysia, this is the loophole in Malaysian tourism industry. Since Malaysia is new in e-tourism system, so it is not too late for Malaysia to built up its own integrated national system to attract tourists to visit that country.
6.3
TECHNICAL EXPERTISE IN E-COMMERCE AND TOURISM
Since e-tourism system consists of three important elements namely tourism industry, information and communication technology and business, so, there should be expertise in those elements to control the system. Those expertises must promote activities that will fulfill the needs of the tourists and visitors30. It is very important to have the expertise especially expertise in ICT to avoid problems to be happened like hacking, viruses, complication in system and others. Those expertises must sit together to control each information related to Malaysian tourism industry. Apart from that, those expertises can monitor all information hit by the
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Ladeiras A., Mota A., Costa J. (2010) Strategic Tourism Planning in Practice: the case of the Open Academy of Tourism. Emerald, 357.
tourists. It is suggested that those expertises should be part of the Tourism Council to avoid fusion of power.
6.4
PROMOTION
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Promotion is a very good method to promote anything including tourism industry. Lots of promotions have been done including songs, videos and advertisements to attract tourists and visitors to visit Malaysia. However, nothing is done before this to promote e-tourism system to the people so that people especially tourists and visitors aware of its existing. Some tourists have used the portals and websites before visiting Malaysia but they faced difficulties to find inbound packages offered by the websites and portals. Thus, it is suggested that every promotions and advertisements for tourism and vacations in Malaysia, it should promote the e-tourism system as well so that people are aware where to refer when they plan to have vacation and tour. In Philippines, they promote their e-tourism system through every channel in television so that their residents can refer to the websites31. It will increase the percentage of people to use technology and internet as well. In Malaysia, 70% travelers use internet as their primary source of reference and RM455 Billion Online Travel booking in 200732. This shows that people actually really need a good system to plan their vacations. Based on this fact as well, people nowadays rely so much to the information in the internet. Thus, the promotion must be done to acknowledge them about e-tourism in Malaysia so that they can browse the correct websites and get the accurate information. 6.5 PROVIDE VARIETY PLACES OF VACATION/TOUR IN A SINGLE NETWORK
There are many media that people can use as the source to gain various information that they need. In public, there will be many types of media such as printed media which cover magazine, news paper and the rest. Television also becomes important media to spread different and daily information to public. With the presence of internet service, today there will be certain kind of shifting in life style that people have. People can see that most of the people prefer to
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Nuque E. M. (2001). Is E-Comerce a viable alternative to the traditional travel infrastructure? Symposium on Tourism Services (pp.1-22). Geneva: World Trade Organization 32 CAT Sdn Bhd. (1999). CAT Info. Retrieved March 11, 2012, from http://www.cat.com.my/index.cfm?descid=1
access internet as the main media for them to gain different kinds of information and news. As mentioned earlier, tourists face difficult to find the inbound packages offered by the websites and one of the factors contributed to the weaknesses of the e-tourism in Malaysia is fragmented information. If Malaysia has its own system to operate the tourism industry and there are expertises that control the information, thus indirectly the website can provide variety places of vacation in one single integrated network or websites. Moreover, people can access various type of information that they need in one single integrated system.
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6.6
BETTER USER INTERFACE WITH MINIMUM COSTS
The user interface in the industrial design field of humanmachine interaction is the space where interaction between humans and machines occurs. The goal of interaction between a human and a machine at the user interface is effective operation and control of the machine and feedback from the machine which aids the operator in making operational decisions. Examples of this broad concept of user interfaces include the interactive aspects of computer operating systems, hand tools, heavy machinery operator controls, and process controls. The design considerations applicable when creating user interfaces are related to or involve such disciplines as ergonomics and psychology. Good user interface design is important it will attract people to browse and search their information easily and with excitement. While there is no universal agreement on the definition of quality of web site design, in this study it refers to the effectiveness of three dimensions: system quality, information quality, and service quality of a travel web site design33. System quality has significant influence on travelers online purchase intention (Liu et al., 2000)34. The evaluation of system quality comes originally from measuring contributions of information systems to individuals and organizations. The evaluation of system quality comes originally from measuring contributions of information systems to individuals and organizations (DeLone and McLean, 1992). Currently, there is no convergent measurement of web site system quality in the tourism and hospitality literature. Jeong and Lambert (1999, 2001) first proposed six potential dimensions of web site quality, including information accuracy,
33
Wen I. (2009) Factors affecting the online travel buying decision: a review. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 752-765. 34 Liu, C., Arnett, K.P. and Litecky, C. (2000), Design quality of web sites for electronic commerce: Fortune 1000 webmasters evaluations, Electronic Markets, 120-9.
completeness, relevancy, clarity, ease of use, and navigation quality. Later, Law and Ngai (2005) proposed web site usability, which includes five dimensions: language, layout and graphics, information architecture, user interface and navigation, and general.
Aside to that, with current technology and expertise nowadays, the e-tourism system can be made easily without involving lots of costs. Furthermore, Malaysia's tourism website has been described as a model of e-tourism by a UNCTAD on 2007. This is a very good recognition from the worldwide regarding e-tourism towards Malaysia. Thus, Malaysia should enhance a system which has full information in a single website and provide with better user interface.
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6.7
ENFORCEMENT OF LAW
Up till now, there is no enforcement done by the Tourism Board to restrict or limit the application of e-tourism in Malaysia. Let say there is wrong information produce by the website and due to reliance done by the visitors, visitors suffer lost. If anything happen, no power can be executed by tourism board. The best way that can be done is to punish the offender under cyber law. It will involve public law under the power of police officer. So, it is suggested that there should be a piece of law to control and govern matters specifically involving tourism through ecommerce. By having this law, the tourism board can handle this matter since it is within their range to solve it.
7.0
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, there are many common factors that can be considered as the proper basis in investigating weaknesses e-tourism for a country in this case study. Through a study of the whole amount of these factors, lots of things should be considered to enhance the e-tourism system to the high standard. For example, the environmental barriers can be recognized as lack of government support, lack of packages, cohesive program regarding information technology and limitation in supporting rules and regulations.
While the technological barriers can be considered as, incompatibility of systems with users, the limited knowledge about ICT and lack of enough attention on developing electronic tools. Moreover, some of these factors can be related to management, staffs, tourism organizations, financial and cultural issues and social factors. The other factors are the emphasis on the role of human-management factors, underlying structures and required situation for conducting information technology in different sectors and industries such as tourism.
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It should be high lightened that there is an essential need for planning strategies in field of e-tourism, particularly in fields such as establish specific body governing e-tourism, develop a complete integrated national system, technical expertise in e-commerce and tourism, promotion, provide variety places of vacation/tour in a single network, better user interface with minimum costs and enforcement of law. Moreover, more e-services should be provided for tourists who want to travel to the attraction city on the websites while focusing on important factors like time and cost saving and obtaining feedback. Finally, Malaysia needs to develop the e-tourism infrastructures in order to keep up with the competitiveness in the future.
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Strategies For Modernising Malaysian E-Tourism: Mohd Farid Huzaimi P61172

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