Perceptions of Tourists Towards the Role of Stakeholders for Tourism Development

This paper studies the role of stakeholders for tourism development in Malaysia based on the perceptions of tourists who come to the Melaka city. Even though the tourists are satisfied by the existing facilities available presently, there are a few shortcomings that need to be addressed such as neglected traditional issues, bureaucratic barriers, definition of sustainable tourism and communication problem with the local communities. The purpose of the study is to find out the roles of public, private and local community stakeholders of the historic city of Melaka for meeting the needs of tourists for tourism development. The findings indicate that the government, private and local community stakeholders have played positive roles for satisfying the demands of the tourists in shaping the development of sustainable tourism in Melaka. The primary data were collected through survey via interviews with 135 respondents based on their responses to a set of questionnaires which looked into the tourists’ perceptions in connection to the facilities available for sustainable tourism. The Likert scale data analyzing and reviewing the role of stakeholder’s towards perceptions of the tourists. The implication of the study is that majority of the tourists were positively satisfied and receptive towards tourism in Melaka.