Running head: PROPOSAL (Impact of Tourism to the Growth of Taiping City)

Proposal: Impact of Tourism to the Growth of Taiping City

Md Rifat Hassan
PROPOSAL 2

Impact of Tourism to the Growth of Taiping City

Abstract

The aim of this study is to holistically understand the impact of tourism to the growth of Taiping

city. Adapting the concept of sustainable tourism is a new phenomenon in Malaysia. Case

example is Taiping which is one of the heritage towns in Malaysia. Taiping is rich in historical

buildings and sites which acts as the tourist attraction sites. The proclamation of Taiping as a

heritage town is not fully supported, particularly from the private heritage building owners. The

success of tourism has been conventionally measured by tourist arrivals and revenues, but today

this is not enough to maintain competitiveness. The current challenges of tourism development in

developing countries are the tug-of-war between tourism development plans for economic

purposes and sustainable tourism plans. In most of the cases there are reciprocal relationships

between “tourism development” and “sustainability”. The context is significantly different from

country to country when the analysis is focused on the impact of tourism. The economic goal of

the country, private partnership, and local community involvement together with customer’s

expectations make tourism a complicated area for sustainable practices. This paper elucidates the

impact of tourism to the growth of Taiping in a sustainable manner complying with the National

Sustainable Tourism Policy of Malaysia.

Chapter 1: Introduction

Background

The growth in the industry especially the heritage industry in the country has contributed

to sustainable activities in the country. The tourism industry has been growing with no

boundaries since the 1960s and in Malaysia, it has been growing significantly since the

government begun to be actively involved to expand the tourism industry in 1972 (Wells, 1982).

A total of 26.8 million tourists visited Malaysia in the year 2016 compared to 25.7 million in the

year 2015 showing that the industry is recovering from the slowdown in 2015 due to the

economic condition worldwide, introduction of GST, and the unstable political situation

(Suganya, 2015). This deduces that there is a 4.0% increase in tourists‟ arrivals in 2016

compared to 2015 (Tourism Malaysia, 2017).

Problem statement

This paper aims at studying the impact of tourism to the growth of Taiping city. Taiping

city was ranked as the third most sustainable city in the world in 2019 and the only Malaysian

city to appear in the top 100 sustainable tourism destinations in the world (Loh, 2019). The

tourism industry has been growing rapidly in Malaysia since the 1960s, due to the government’s

effort to expand the industry in the country (Aziz et al., 2019).

Research questions

1. What are the impacts of tourism to the growth of Taiping city including;

 Environmental impact

 Economic impact

 Social and Cultural impact

Objectives

This research will aim at achieving the following objectives;

 To determine the extent of tourism in the Taiping city

 To determine heritage tourism in the city and its contribution to the growth of

Taiping city

Research gap

The policy question often raised is: can tourism be economically viable for private companies

and local communities, while also being sensitive to environmental, cultural and social needs?

The short answer is “yes” (Edgell, Allen, Smith and Swanson, 2008). Mowforth and Munt

(2003), Van Egmond (2007) refer to a highly polarized and simplified debate, equating to

“tourists = mass tourism= bad” and “travelers = appropriate travelling = good”. Misconceptions

are misleading the world’s largest industry in terms of sustainable development and management

of tourist destinations. The power of tourism is a very large research area and the legitimate

utilization of “doing tourism” has a power to change, rejuvenate or literally to define the world’s

sociocultural and economic system. Sustainable tourism is an interesting topic of discussion and

it is crucial to assess where the discussion of sustainable tourism has arrived at. Most of the

studies illustrate the

host-guest encounters or an index model, simplifying the sustainable development practices,

limiting themselves to give non-practicing measures a wide publicity with existing scenario of

environmental issues. But relating tourism to holistic sustainable practices is rarely seen and

there is an extreme research gap in the practice of sustainability in tourism and its allied sector.

Managing tourism to the heterogeneous tourists is extremely complex and practicing sustainable
PROPOSAL 5

tourism is further a complex process. The problem here is that the sustainable tourism products

can be successfully sold to tourists who are not specifically seeking it. Thus, sustainable

development is not to be used in the tourist destination but it is a process that should be used on

the “tourism system” as a whole.

Scope of the study

This study will touch on various parts. The introduction section shall introduce the

research problem in the background section. The research questions, objectives and research gap

shall also be covered in the introduction section. The literature review shall involve various

themes related to the objective under study. The literature review will also contain a theoretical

framework where various theories explaining the concept of tourism shall be explored. The

conceptual framework will demonstrate how tourism has impacted on the growth of the city

including environmental, social and cultural and economic. The methodology section shall cover

the design that the research will use. The analysis section will explain how data and results will

be analyzed. The last section will be the conclusion where a summary of the research will be

provided.

Significance of the study

Conducting this study is important in understanding factors that contributed to the

sustainable growth of Taiping city. Through this study, it will be possible to know whether the

techniques to promote tourism that was applied in Taiping can also be applied to other cities.

Most cities across the world are developing strategies to become sustainable cities so that they

can address various challenges. Through this study, it would also be possible to understand

whether such cities can emulate the Malaysian tourism industry.

Chapter 2: Literature Review

The Socio-Cultural Impacts on the Resident Community

We can say that tourism is an economic activity that generates trade and business, and is

considered one of the most productive sectors of the globaleconomy5. The economic impacts of

tourism are the most visible and quantifiable, while socio-cultural and environmental impacts are

much more difficult to quantify. Tourism is also a phenomenon of approximation. Since tourism

is a phenomenon of both approaching and distancing people, we must consider socio-cultural

impacts that "take more time to appear and, as qualitative changes, may be subtle and difficult to

measure”. Nowadays, tourism researches focused on cities, for they are major cultural tourism

destinations. We witness a displacement of visitors who tend to focus on the urban centers,

especially in their historic neighborhoods. However, there are still very few studies on socio-

cultural impacts in cities in developed countries, even if we take in account the "tourism phobia

“phenomena that has surged in many cities of Europe, which are in this moment trying to

minimize these impacts. Most of the studies on guest perception on tourism development have

been done in small, rural or even resort communities. When we talk about more developed

countries and cities, the impacts might not be the same because there is a different interaction

with residents. Airbnb and other short-term rental platforms allow tourists to live like (and with)

residents. They cross in the stairs at home and on the streets, take coffee in the same places, shop

at the same stores or supermarkets. The local community is a fundamental element of tourism,

since without their support it is difficult for the industry to be sustainable Besides that, the
PROPOSAL 7

receiving community influences the process of development within the tourist destination. Thus,

industry success, although it depends on the attractions and the services, is also dependent on

resident’s hospitality. There is, therefore, an intense interaction between tourists and the host

community and resident’s perceptions of socio-cultural impacts are affected. We questioned if an

increase in tourism would improve or deteriorate their quality of life. There are many factors that

can determine whether the impact is positive or negative, such as strength and coherence of the

local culture, tourist type, degree of economic and social development of the population vis-à-vis

tourists, and measures taken by the public sector in this area.

Economic Impacts of Tourism

Tourism has direct, indirect and induced impacts on local economies, these can often be

largely divergent between countries, based on the structure of the sector but most importantly on

how well linked tourism activities are with the local economy. Greater linkages generally

translate into higher levels of local economic activity (and growth), which tend to occur when

tourism enterprises source their goods and services (including labour) locally whilst low levels of

economic linkages occur where tourism enterprises are dependent on imports (including staff) to

supply their demands. The overall impacts of the sector are the sum of the direct, indirect and

induced effects (WTTC, 2012a):

 Direct Impacts: Represents the GDP generated by activities that directly deal with

tourism such as hotels, travel agents, airlines and tour operators as well as restaurants and

other activities that cater to tourists.

 Indirect Impacts, impacts which accrue due to the activities undertaken by the sector, and

are a function of three different factors:

1. Capital Investment in tourism: Includes capital investment within all sectors

that are directly involved in the tourism industry as well as spending by

enterprises in other sectors on tourism assets such as transport or accommodation.

2. Government Spending for Tourism: Government spending to support the

tourism sector, which can include both national and local spending. Activities

include tourism promotion, visitor services, administration etc.

3. Supply Chain Effects: These represent the purchase of domestic goods and

services, as inputs to the production of their final outputs, by enterprises within

the tourism sector.

 Induced Impacts: Represents the wider contribution of tourism through the expenditures

of those who are directly or indirectly employed by the tourism sector.

Environmental impact

In additional to tourism’s impact on national and local economies, the sector’s impacts also have

an environmental aspect that must be taken into account. The UNEP4 highlights three main

impact areas of tourism on the environment i.e. the depletion of natural resources, pollution and

tourism’s physical impacts.

Depletion of Natural Resources: Where tourism increases pressure on natural resources where

they may already be scarce, manifested through the use of water and the use of local resources.

Water Resources: Overuse of water by tourism enterprises i.e. for tourist use, swimming pools,

garden maintenance etc. In dry regions, the use of water is particularly concerning especially as

tourists tend to consume twice as much water on holiday as they do at home whilst the quantity
PROPOSAL 9

of water used for a golf course in a year is equivalent to its use by 60,000 rural villagers (UNEP,

2014). In some popular South Asian resort areas, potable water is diverted away from local

villages and supplied to nearby hotels, leaving villagers only a few hours per day to use water

(UNEP, 2011). Tourism water use typically accounts for 5% of total national water use.

Local Resources: Pressure on resources such as energy, food and raw materials can be increased

due to tourism. Increased use can affect their impact on local populations, especially in peak

seasons when demand for resources is higher. Tourism can also negatively affect of biodiversity.

Pollution: Tourism can contribute to pollution in the same way as many other economic sectors

i.e. through air pollution, solid waste and wastewater.

Air & Noise Pollution: Increases in tourist numbers (and subsequent demand in tourism travel

demand) means that the sector is becoming an increasingly important source of emissions.

Chapter 3: Research Methodologies

Research design

This research will be qualitative in nature conducted by reviewing and drawing

conclusions from the literature. The research will also use content analysis to determine relevant

theories explaining the role of tourism in the development of the city. The findings from this

research will be crucial in setting the background on how other cities can emulate Taiping to

promote sustainability. Predominantly, case study is a qualitative research to examine the roles of

cultural space in two historic towns, Malaysia. Based on the past literature studies, case study

method exemplified a process to gather a sampling by the mixture of data collection methods in a

period of times. A case study is essentials to investigate the actual life of the contextual

supported by many verification resources from documentation, direct observations, interviews

and site survey to examine the phenomenon experiences. The research outlines constructed by

literature reviews, site survey, site observation, questionnaire survey and ultimately the

comparison analyses of two case studies. The research initial from literature reviews to verify the

research variable (parameter) and needed secondary data. The literature resources embraced of

the journals, conference paper, books, local district municipal report, local action plan, maps,

brochure, website and old photographs taken from the museum. The gist of secondary data was

examined through the descriptive content analyses of the site historical background, research

problem, research methods and integrated the grounded theories of cultural space in this research

review process. Malaysian government’s initiatives to accelerate heritage tourism development

in the country have earned positive reviews. Taiping is one of the sites that is in the tourism

development list. Taiping is located in the north of Perak and was one of the very first cities in

Malaysia. Currently, it is the second largest city after Ipoh, which is the capital city of the State

of Perak. It is one of the heritage towns in the country, rich in historical buildings (Isa et al.,).

The history of Taiping dated back to the 1840s, where it was a small mining town and became

the capital of Perak during that era (Taiping Municipal Council, 2018). The name “Taiping”

originates from Chinese word which means “Everlasting Peace” and is one of the oldest towns in

Malaysia and the second largest town in Perak. It was also the State of Perak from 1875-1937

(Federal Department of Town and Country Planning, 2005). Malaysia is price effective. In

developing countries, the middle-class people’s ambition is to have a foreign trip as tourists, and

Malaysia offers the best value of money for the middle-class tourists. Subsequently, the site

inventory and site observation conducted to collect primary data. The field study and assessment

are to substantiate the site issues, site physical characteristics (space setting,
PROPOSAL 11

townscape, visual and accessibility linkages, buildings and historical structure) and sociocultural

activities. All the cultural phenomenon and social experiences are records through taking

photograph. The survey technique by using photograph is based on human behavior and how

people utilized the urban spaces (e.g.: sidewalk, plazas and park). Consequently, the identified

observation data would be documented in the mapping and table format. Further, when two or

more sources are compared and contrasted, then cross-case qualitative analyses are justified.

Content analysis technique is one of the various qualitative techniques that can be used to

analyses literatures. Main theories that regularly used within the sustainable tourism literatures,

which are; stakeholder theory, social exchange theory, network theory, game theory, strategic

management theory and power-relation theory have been reviewed by employing this technique.

This process involved simultaneous coding of raw data and the construction of categories that

capture relevant characteristics of the document’s contents. The crucial step in conducting

content analysis for this research was to develop a list of factors influencing community support

towards sustaining heritage building in Taiping.

Data collection

Online.
PROPOSAL 12

Chapter 4: Data analysis

The initial investigation shows that the community strongly believe that the tourism

business can create many positive outcomes. Apart from that, the community also agrees that the

non-economic benefits such as cultural sustainability and environmental sustainability are driven

by the emergence of tourism in their village. The results also clearly show that the community is

very much open to outsider and encourage any tourism development efforts in their area.

Tourism is perceived as a strong tool to connect them to the outside world. Existence of tourism

in their area not only enabled governmental, non-governmental and inter-ethnic affiliations, but

also direct international exposure to the community. Thus, the government should not merely

consult the community to fulfil procedures, on a token basis. They should respect the

community’s ideas and give them. The support of the local community, specifically the private

heritage building owners in Taiping is very crucial to ensure the buildings are sustained,

preserved and conserved. Based on the SET theory, people will only involve and support the

‘heritage building preservation project’ when they perceived that the project is beneficial to them

especially in term of economic benefits such as providing employment opportunities, business

for local people, improvement in the conditions of roads and other public facilities, incentive for

the preservation of heritage building, increase in revenue from visitors for local authorities and

cultural exchanges between visitors and local community. As a result, where the local

community benefits from tourism, there is likelihood that they will support the sustainable

heritage tourism development project in Taiping. Therefore, the perceived benefits are an

effective predictor of the support for sustainable tourism development by the local community. A

study on the effectiveness of the current community engagement

strategy in Taiping can be delivered by considering the perceived benefit factor to be one of the

supports influencing factors that should be measured and improved by the local authority. Past

studies revealed that if the local community perceive that community-based tourism would make

them incur more costs than the expected benefits, they are likely to oppose tourism development.

The perceived costs of sustainable tourism consist both social costs and cultural costs. There are

several factors that might make the heritage building owners in Taiping dissatisfied to the

‘heritage building preservation program’ some of the factor are such as: personal economic

growth disruption and deterioration of quality of life; overused of recreational resources;

community being overcrowded and deterioration of quality environment. This leads to increase

in the prices of goods and services; cultural costs – for example; conflicts between visitors and

residents, and environmental costs – increase in environmental pollution respectively. In the case

of Taiping, the issues of the implementation of guidelines that prevented the building owners

from adding value to their properties and other issues such as maintenance costs, safety and

soundness of the old buildings and business competitiveness to the surrounding new economic

growth areas are also the costs that cause the heritage building owners to against the sustainable

tourism project. tourism project. It is described as the degree of a local community involvement

in deliberating or sharing issues within the community. Past studies have assessed the

contribution of the local community from tourism development with emphasis on the extent to

which local community are participated or involved in tourism. Community involvement plays a

significant role in the sustainability of tourism because community involvement can promote the

value of a community by improving the positive impacts of tourism and reducing the negative

impacts.
PROPOSAL 14

Chapter 5: Conclusion

This study is addressing the crucial issue of sustainability and how sustainable tourism

can help to achieve sustainable cities. The proposed methodology is crucial in achieving the set

objectives. The study will also take a shorter time since it will only utilize secondary data hence

low cost. The concerned authorities should, therefore, approve and support this study. This paper

concludes that the ability to engage and get support from the local communities, particularly

from the private owners of heritage buildings are very important for Taiping to uphold the legacy

of sustainable heritage tourism by 2020 as outlined in the 'RKK Taiping Heritage Area' and also

for the future. The finding of this study is very useful to provide a starting point for formulating a

comprehensive framework and guideline of community engagement for enhancing local

community supports towards conserving and preserving heritage buildings in Taiping which

promote tourism.
PROPOSAL 15

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