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Abstract
Among central approaches when studying the basic problems of the tourism geography, e.g. visitor's relationship with a visited location is research on perception and image of visited locations, motivations, preferences, and experience of visitors. This study aimed to determine the impact of motivation to visit on the satisfaction with the respective visit to chosen types of locations attractions in the mountain and sub-mountain areas linked with the water component of the landscape. The study was carried out in the northern part of Malaysia specifically in Kedah State. A questionnaire survey was used to collect the required data. The targeted respondents were the visitors include both residents and non-residents who visited the attracted places in this mentioned state. This study could identify some useful motivational factors that cause an impact on the tourism industry in Kedah State, and it could also determine the level of satisfaction. The results revealed that beauty of scenery, cleanliness, hospitality and recommendation by friends are among the significant motivational factors in attracting tourists to visit the tourism destinations in Kedah State, whereas food, climate condition, personal safety, cleanliness and cultural diversity are of significant importance factors in attracting tourists to visit the State of Kedah.
Keywords: Impact; motivation; satisfaction; attractions; tourism; Malaysia
JEL Classification: L83; L59; Z30.
Introduction
Tourism sector has been a major contributor to the economy of Malaysia over the past decades and Malaysia is ranked 9th in the world for tourist arrivals (Wikipedia 2017). The Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report issued in 2017 ranked Malaysia 25th out of 141 countries overall, which was the fifth best in Asia. The Malaysian government pushed to increase tourism in Malaysia as a diversify for making the Malaysia's economy less dependent on exports. The latest results did show that tourism has become Malaysia's third largest source of foreign exchange income. Tourist arrivals in Malaysia decreased to 2129013 in August from 2263478 in July of 2017. Tourist Arrivals in Malaysia averaged 1643767.38 from 1999 until 2017, reaching an all-time high of 2806565 in December of 2013 and a record low of 459374 in April of 2003 (Tradingeconomics 2017). In December 2016, the total number of tourist arrivals was reached 2,646,610 compared with the other months of the year (Figure 1).
Tourism...