Tourists perceived destination competitiveness: A case of Langkawi Island, Malaysia - Theory and Practice in Hospitality and Tourism Research - page 291

Development Authority (LADA) is local govern
agency were formed responsible for expanding and
supporting tourism development in Langkawi by
encouraging and carry out the economic restruc-
turing of lower-productivity to higher productivity
sectors. LADA is also responsible to create attrac-
tive opportunities for foreign investors using the
existing available tourism products and resources.
This government body is operated based on social,
economic and physical development of Langkawi
in line with the Malaysian government policies as
well as preserving the natural resources and estab-
lish conducive environment.
The above mentioned efforts are evidences when
Langkawi is experiencing significant changes on
the supply side of tourism, as well as in demand
trends or significantly turned this Island into a
popular destination and a shopping heaven for
local and foreign tourists. In early month of Janu-
ary 2014, the Prime Minister, Dato Seri Najib Tun
Abdul Razak has launched the Visit Malaysia Year
with the target of 28 million tourist arrivals and
Langkawi Island is one of the popular spots pro-
moted among the international tourists.
The rapid expansion of both international
and domestic tourism to Langkawi Island has
increased the need for a comprehensive view of the
social, economic, cultural, environmental prob-
lems and processes related to tourism development
and understand its dynamics and impacts. As
earlier mentioned, the competitive advantage of
a destination, closely relates to the quality of the
product offered, which means the quality of tourist
experience provided by the destination (Crouch &
Ritchie, 1999) (Chon & Mayer, 1995; d'Hauteserre,
2000; Faulkner, et al., 1999; Hassan, 2000). Dwyer
and Kim (2003) and Enright and Newton (2005) in

addition, argues that the principal factors contrib-
uting to competitiveness are varied amongst desti-
nations. They suggested that destination must take
a more tailored approach to enhancing and devel-
oping tourism competitiveness, rather than adopt-
ing a single, universal policy or strategy. In fact,
Meng (2006) noted in a highly competitive tourism
destination market, tourists' experiences and their
opinions and attitudes should be understood in
order to enhance the performance of destination
products and services and promote destination
development strategies.
In this sense, the relationship between Langkawi
Island tourism performance on the local economic
and socio-cultural impacts is rather vague. Further,
the international tourist perceived Langkawi Island
as a competitive tourism destination is hardly dis-
cussed or investigated.

4 EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION

With the preceding notion, the empirical inves-
tigation of the highlighted issue pertaining to
Langkawi Island particularly on its competitive-
ness from international tourist's perspective is still
under investigation. The study employs a quanti-
tative approach with structured questionnaires as
the research instrument. A descriptive research
design, correlation approach and a cross sectional
study is used where data gathered just once at the
same point of time for each participating indi-
vidual international tourist. The popular spots
among the international tourists like Kuah, Pantai
Cenang, Padang Matsirat and many others are the
data collection contextual setting.

5 CONCLUSION

It is expected that the insightful from this study
would help the local authority and agencies, par-
ticularly LADA, tour operators, travel agencies
the hotel operators and the federal government,
particularly the Ministry of Tourism in improv-
ing, continuously promoting and maintaining, the
competitiveness of Langkawi Island as a tourist
destination without degrading the environment,
economic and social aspects of it.

REFERENCES

Buhalis, D. (2000). Marketing the competitive destination
of the future. Tourism management, 21 (1), 97-116.
Chon, K.-S. & Mayer, K.J. (1995). Destination competi-
tiveness models in tourism and their application to
Las Vegas. Journal of Tourism Systems and Quality
Management, 1 (2), 227-246.

Figure 1. Map of Langkawi Island, Malaysia.