Community assimilation towards Melaka tourism product / Nurizzati Hassan, Nur Amirah Rosdi and Nurul Jannah Hussin

Melaka is one of the historical place that received high tourist arrivals every year. Melaka tourism destination have been well promoted along with the uniqueness of the culture which is an exciting blend of the Malay, Chinese, Indian and other native Subculture. However, there is another factors that attract tourists come to Melaka. After all these years, there is still a misunderstanding that today’s people had towards Baba Nyonya ethnic. Many people assumed that Baba Nyonya only the mixed of Malay Chinese, however Baba Nyonya also mixed from other ethnics like Indonesia. Besides, in language dimension, most of people though this ethnic would speak Malay but mostly Baba Nyonya would speak Hokkien. Nowadays, the future generations tend to forgot the heritage food of their ethnics. This problem can lead to confusion of originality and authenticity of Melaka heritage food towards tourists who come visit Melaka. This study was conducted in Bandar Hilir, Melaka. This research intends to measure community assimilation dimensions towards Melaka Tourism Product and to investigate the most influence factors of community assimilation that contribute to Melaka tourism product. These objectives would help the researchers to find results of the problem statement. The community assimilation like custom, language, and food & beverages model was used to enable management to better understand the dimensions and how these dimensions contribute towards Melaka tourism product. The successful survey in these three variable may lead to increase the tourist arrival. This study encountered that the variables was part of Melaka Tourism Product. The researcher conducts a survey of 362 respondents by using simple random sampling. The researcher collects the data through questionnaire around Bandar Hilir where it involved both the domestic and international tourist. The findings of this research was all the three dimensions or attributes of community assimilation which are customs, languages, and food and beverages contributed to Melaka tourism product, however the most influential factor among these three is food and beverages dimensions that give the highest correlation toward Melaka tourism product. It was found that this research will benefit for state government, tourists, host community and academician.