From hunting to adventure with nature: Analysing the representation of natural tourism attractions in Malaysia (Dari memburu ke kembara alam: Analisis representasi tarikan pelancongan berasaskan alam semula jadi di Malaysia)

• Main Author: Abdul Razak, Norhanim
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Penerbit UMT 2018
• Subjects: GV Recreation Leisure
• Online Access: http://repo.uum.edu.my/27776/1/JBSD%206%201%202018%2015%2028.pdf; http://repo.uum.edu.my/27776/; http://jbsd.umt.edu.my/wp-content/uploads/sites/53/2018/03/content-JBSD-V6N1.pdf
• Institution: Universiti Utara Malaysia

Although nature-based tourism is frequently presented as a sustainable form of tourism, there are claims that many destination marketers have often exploited this type of tourism in order to attract tourists and make profits. Despite the fact that many past works have investigated aspects related to nature especially ecotourism, very few studies explored on how natural resources have been marketed by the tourism promotional organisations. Owing to this reason, this paper analyses how nature-based attractions have been incorporated and presented to visitors in the promotional brochures using content analysis method. The content analysis of the brochures published from 1962 to 2016 found that natural resources have been incorporated extensively. Three categories of nature-based attractions represented widely in tourism brochures are national parks, islands and beaches, and mountains and hills. On the other hand, big game hunting was only marketed to tourists in the brochures published in the 1960s and 1970s, while types of natural resources promoted to tourists have expanded considerably from 1990s to 2016. Overall, findings of this paper shed light into the understanding on how natural attractions have been represented to tourists for 54 years. It is revealed that with the rising environmental awareness, the Malaysian tourism authorities have modified the way they presented nature-based attractions to some extent, from the image of exploiting natural resources for tourism purposes to environmental care and ethical travel in relatively recent promotional brochures. Yet, a few aspects and activities which contradict to the tourism sustainable practices are still traceable. This paper concludes that natural resources are among the primary attractions for the country’s tourism until today and these attributes have been utilised significantly in tourism promotional materials to attract tourists.