Barriers to digital marketing adoption at remote rural tourism destinations in Sarawak: an exploratory study

Abstract

Rural tourism has been shown to benefit local communities from the economic perspective. Digital marketing allows marketing information to be transmitted directly to potential visitors without the need for an intermediary, in a low-cost but effective way. Rural tourism destinations in Sarawak now have an opportunity to benefit from the Sarawak state government's initiative, the Digital Sarawak Centre of Excellence, in terms of digital content creation and website maintenance. However, the current level of adoption is zero to minimal in rural tourism destinations. This study examines the barriers towards digital marketing adoption from the perspective of rural tourism providers. Fieldwork was performed at two sites, Ba'kelalan and Long Lamai, in July 2016 and February 2017 respectively. In-depth interviews were conducted with a total of 19 respondents. The study revealed that tourism providers currently depended on word-ofmouth recommendations or direct contact for bookings, but were willing to adopt digital marketing with the assistance of knowledgeable parties. However, certain physical, logistical and social constraints may have a detrimental effect on the community's readiness level to entertain tourists on a larger scale and may further impede the overall progress of digital marketing adoption, at both the individual and destination levels.

Smarter Sustainable Tourism: Data-Driven Multi-Perspective Parameter Discovery for Autonomous Design and Operations

“…The Rural Tourism parameter is about tourism involving farms, rural areas, and agricultural activities bringing many benefits to the local communities. These benefits include economic growth of local communities [84] and sustainable development of rural areas [85]. Rural Tourism is often seen as a good option for rural development and poverty reduction [86], a major source for creating job opportunities in rural areas [87].…”

jtetTraining Urgency to Bridge the Digital Divide for Social Media Marketing Awareness and Adoption: Case of CBT Rural Homestay Operators Malaysia

“…Indeed, Malaysia faces some significant challenges, including a lack of market access, being overly dependent on third parties such as the government, industry, or NGO (Hamzah & Khalifah, 2009), and limited community participation (Kim et al, 2014;Kunjuraman & Hussin, 2017). Due to the existence of the digital divide, over-reliance on other parties, a lack of marketing expertise, and limited training, Malaysia has been shown to be less aware of the potential of digital marketing, particularly social media marketing, to promote the destination (Chin et al, 2020;Cheuk et al, 2017;Miraz et al, 2015;Osman & Zakaria, 2020;Yong & Hassan, 2019;Asan, 2003). Again, the urgency of community capacity building that focuses on training and digitization, primarily website improvement, in the tourism industry is mostly encouraged to support the industry players reach the international market and promote domestic tourism in 2020 (Khan & Hashim, 2020).…”

“…In Malaysia, only a few homestays utilise social media to advertise their locations. These efforts, however, are only partially successful because the website lacks fresh information and active interaction (Cheuk et al, 2017). While Hua et al (2017) discovered that social media marketing influences travel destination decisions in Penang, Malaysia, Miraz et al (2015) concluded that there is a substantial preference for offline platforms for promotion, booking, and payment methods for Malaysian homestay.…”

Digital Marketing as a Driver for Sustainable Tourism Development

“…With the spread of information technologies and changing customer needs, digital marketing has become apparent as one way to ensure sustainable tourism While tourism is an information-oriented business, digital marketing is one of the crucial communication tools that connect and allow marketing information to be transmitted directly to potential visitors without the need for an intermediary in a low-cost but effective way (Cheuk et al, 2018;Suyunchaliyeva et al, 2020). It is also one of the greatest promotional tools and helps tourism organizations to reshape brand competitiveness, enhance brand communication, and deepen product integration, as well as reach larger and new target audiences A tourist can be a thousand kilometers away from the destination.…”