Domestic tourism: a study of government servants perception towards the effectiveness government’s policy / Mohd Khairul Hakimin Muthar and Hasawardi Hazmi

Tourism is now widely acknowledged as a social phenomenon, as the nature of society in most advanced developed countries has now changed from one which has traditionally had an economy based on manufacturing and production, to one where the dominant form of employment is services and consumer industries. In Malaysia, the government aggressively market and promoted domestic tourism among public through tourism campaigns such as Cuti - Cuti Malaysia and now Zoom Malaysia to encourage them to take up vacation locally. However, how far the strategies, policies and campaigns implemented by the government are successful and the public give support to the domestic tourism because at the same time the airline company such as MAS and Air Asia aggressively promote and market the international destinations with a low price of holiday packages to the Malaysians.The study examines the perception of government servants towards the domestic tourism policy, the roles played by the government servants in supporting the domestic tourism and the effectiveness of domestic tourism policy. A total of 114 responses were collected in this study and then analyzed the feedback in 3 issues which is the perception of government servants, the roles played by government servants and the effectiveness of domestic tourism policy. The result of this study indicated that the positive perception from government servants on domestic tourism in Malaysia. It was also revealed that the government servants have played their roles in supporting the domestic tourism in Malaysia. In this study also shows that the domestic tourism policy was effective even though it faces challenging from low tour packages promotes by local airlines to international tourism.