Title: Relationship between nationality and tourists' behaviour: case of Middle East tourists in Malaysia from tour guides perspective

Authors: Banafsheh M. Farahani; Badaruddin Mohamed

Addresses: School of Housing, Building and Planning, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800 Penang, Malaysia ' School of Housing, Building and Planning, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800 Penang, Malaysia

Abstract: Increasing number of Middle Eastern tourist arrivals in Malaysia, makes studying their behaviour to be fundamental for sustainability of this valuable market segment. Concerning nationality as one of the influential factors in tourist behaviour, implies that Middle East cannot be concerned as one unit. Literature includes only Arabs as Middle Eastern and non-Arabs Middle Eastern were totally forgotten, and the result of tourists' behaviour from certain countries in Middle East was over generalised to all tourists. The overall purpose of this paper is to study Middle East tourists' behaviour according to their nationality from tour guides' perspective. The qualitative method was applied by semi-structure snowball interview with nine tour guides. The interview questions were around seven areas; interactions, activities, knowledge, expenditure, time arrangement, respectfulness and facilities preference. The result shows some significant differences although the similarities cannot be ignored. This study would help different marketing campaigns according to different behaviour.

Keywords: tourist behaviour; Middle East tourists; nationality; tour guides; Malaysia.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTA.2013.054409

International Journal of Tourism Anthropology, 2013 Vol.3 No.1, pp.43 - 57

Received: 24 Apr 2012
Accepted: 10 Dec 2012

Published online: 12 Jul 2014 *

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