Siti Zaleha Omain

The Practice of Shariah-Compliant Hotel in Malaysia

Abstract — Over the past one decade, there has been an increasing focus on Islamic products and services research such as Halal food and Islamic banking. Halal revolution has created increasing awareness among Muslim to consume Halal product or Shariah-compliant services. In responding to this development, hotels created innovative services for Muslim guests called Shariah-compliant hotel (SCH). However, there is lack of research on the characteristics, and implementation of SCH has been carried out in the hotel industry. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to understand the practice of SCH in Malaysia. Diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory is utilised to investigate the issues of adoption and implementation of SCH. The preliminary study uses in-depth, open-ended interviews through purposive sampling. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and evaluated based on thematic analysis to understand the practice. The study found three issues in implementing SCH, such as the uncertainties of government regulation, difficulties to meet Halal standard, and absence of SCH standard. Along with this, two Malaysian Standards (MS1900:2005 &MS1500:2004) have been identified and strongly suggested to be used as a tool in the SCH practice.

Heritage Tourism at the Historical Town of Malacca: Examining Opportunities, Evaluating Challenges

Heritage tourism is one of the growing tourism products in Malaysia. Good marketing will increase the demand on heritage tourism and gives benefits to Malaysia tourism industry. This study seeks to explore the marketing strategies used by museums to market their product and examine the challenges faced in promoting and marketing the heritage tourism product. Data was collected using semi-structured interview method. Respondents consist of four museums including curators and operation assistant. Because of the respondent was selected at the location this study employs typical sampling. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis of Braun and Clark. Findings show that market segmentation, promotion and products/services were the marketing strategy employed by museums in this study. These museums faced several internal issues such as issues on employee and high operational cost as well as the external challenges includes changing environment. It is recommended that future research should be conducted at other state in Malaysia or other types of museum such as private museums so that knowledge on heritage tourism could be enriched.