Dark tourism: tour operator perceived importance and action behavior / Sharifah Nur Safeera S.Mahbob

Dark tourism is starting to receive significant attention and creating demand among countries and international tourists that can support the existence of conventional products such as gastronomic tourism, culture based tourism, wild life tourism, green tourism and just to name a few. Due to the positive demand received from the post modern tourists, the dark tourism sites which covers the visitation to places associated with tragedies or deaths is gradually becoming a large trade and turned into new worldwide phenomenon. Realizing the importance and contribution of dark tourism, Malaysia without doubt perceived dark tourism generating revenues to the country’s economy. Some efforts are undertaking by local tour operators to promote the dark tourism activities to the international tourists with the aims of making money. However, to what extent tour operator perceived the importance of dark tourism and transform it into action behavior was not yet been discovered. This study therefore aims to investigate the relationship between perceived importance of dark tourism attributes consists of cultural, historical and heritage and education toward tour operator’s action behavior in promoting the dark tourism sites. Using the quantitative approach the tour operator’s perception on dark tourism attributes and how they translate their perception into the action behavior were tapped. The sample population was selected among the tour operators that selling inbound and domestic tour packages within the Klang Valley and Kuala Lumpur areas as the contextual setting for the data collection. The information required was gathered through self-administered questionnaire. Through a series of analyses like frequencies, descriptive (mean score) and inferential statistic (standard multiple regressions), some useful insights on the issue investigated were obtained. Findings clearly revealed that dark tourism attributes (cultural, historical, heritage and education) are slightly contributed to the tour operator’s action behavior. Therefore, the collaboration and cooperation between local tour operators and other tourism bodies are therefore crucial to further promote more Malaysia dark tourism sites in increasing the business profits as well as boosting up the local economy and push Malaysia dark tourism to a greater height.