Food and culture in tourism: Where does Penang Island stand? - Theory and Practice in Hospitality and Tourism Research - page 492

specifically, 'chances to attend cultural perform-
ances' variable contributes to the culture con-
struct's outstandingly low dependency level where
both recorded at 7.7 percent (cultural distinctive-
ness) and 2.1 percent (the Penang Island perceived
local culture image), respectively. The cultural
tourism of the Penang Island can be made well-
known by taking advantage over the information
and communication technology rapid develop-
ment and the individual high dependency level on
computers. One of the approaches undertaken to
relate the Penang Island to cultural tourism is by
designing a user-centered tourism website, as sug-
gested by Goh (2008). Apart from taking persona
attributes into consideration (see Goh, 2008), this
paper suggests uploading the cultural-related vid-
eos on social medium (for example, Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram, Youtube and Dailymotion).
More importantly, the uploaded videos are to be
combined with in-trend videos. This action serves
two purposes where first is to secure viewership
and second is to promote peer-to-peer sharing.
Additionally, this paper also proposes the tourism
players to employ the spam technique in distribut-
ing and spreading the cultural-related videos.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The authors would like to extend their apprecia-
tion to the following institutions that made this
study and paper possible.
• Penang Global Tourism for granting the research

grant called Penang International Travelers Sur-
vey 2012 (Grant No. U527); and

• Universiti Sains Malaysia for granting the

Research University Grant called Tourism
Capacity and Impact Studies (Grant No. 1001/
PTS/8660011).

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