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The influence of generic and specific features of destination
P. Mihanyar, S.A. Rahman & N. Aminudin
Faculty of Hotel and Tourism Management, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam, Malaysia
ABSTRACT: This article explores the relationship of generic and specific features of tourism destina-
tion with tourists' behavioral intentions by measuring the importance of generic and specific features of
tourism destination. Generic and specific features are conceptualized as attributes of destination attrac-
tiveness which are both important to tourists. This study refers to the fact that on the demand side those
tourists visiting national parks exert more demand on specific attributes rather than generic attributes,
therefore the results suggests that evaluation efforts should include assessment of both generic and spe-
cific attributes (demand and supply side) while marketing attractiveness of tourism destination.
Keywords
:
Destination attractiveness, pull factor, demands and supply, generic and specific attributes
1 INTRODUCTION
2 LITERATURE REVIEWS
Many tourists travelling to natural areas with the
desire to see, touch and in overall experience new
things and be inspired by nature. The key tour-
ist attractions in many tourist destinations are
natural areas, as it has been estimated that nature
tourism has risen approximately from 2 percent
in the late 1980s to approximately of 20 percent
today (Newsome & Moore, 2012). In the context
of current study, destination attractiveness refers
to the attributes of the host destination national
parks that attract or pull international tourists.
The attraction of a tourist destination extensively
depends on the climatic conditions and the natu-
ral resources of the geographical place in which
it is located (Amelung, Nicholls & Viner, 2007;
Gössling, Scott, Hall, Ceron & Dubois, 2012).
According to Nyberg (1995) the tourism system
which encompasses tourists, destination and link-
age among the two is dependent on destination
attractiveness. Destination attractiveness can be
viewed as generic and specific attributes. Accord-
ing to Dann (1977) specific attributes are those
that motivate a person to go for holiday to a spe-
cific destination (pull factor). However, generic
attributes are shopping, accommodation, food and
transportation (Klenosky, 2002; Pesonen, Komp-
pula, Kronenberg & Peters, 2011), but how generic
and specific features of national parks will influ-
ence tourists' behavioural intentions has not been
investigated.
Environmental management in hotel is typically
categorized into the following segments; energy
and water conservation as well as waste reduc-
tion and recycling management (Molina-Azorín,
Claver-Cortés, Pereira-Moliner & Tarí, 2009).
Meanwhile, the span of environmental manage-
ment is built around both front and back-of-house
operations, organizational system and culture as
well as external business relationship (Park, 2009).
Environmental efforts in hotels must be planned as
exercised with care; hence hoteliers need to strike a
balance between creating unobtrusive environmen-
tal strategies to all guests while keeping it visible
to satisfy environmentally-conscious clientele. For
such reason, understanding both guests' percep-
tion towards existing environmental practices as
well as its influence towards their future behavior
intention are considered to be among the indica-
tors to determine one's business success.
2.1
Pull factor
Destination attractiveness is a pull factor, whether
the attraction is to the country, a region or just a
single feature of the destination. It represents the
demand and supply side of tourism, where the
tourist creates demand and the destination ele-
ments are the supply (Formica, 2000; Prayag &
Ryan, 2011).
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