Development of tourism sector in Pulau Pinang - challenges for the future

Abstract

Pulau Pinang is an island that is rich with tourist attractions such as beaches, natural attractions, local tasty food, heritage buildings and culture. While tourism has accounted to at least fifty percent of the state's GDP, the number of foreign tourists visiting Pulau Pinang has shown a reduction over the past five years. While these had been attributed by several outbreaks (JE, SARS, Avian Flu) in Asia, Pulau Pinang is currently losing out to other tourist destinations such as Langkawi, Phuket and Bali. This paper provides an overview of the tourism development in Pulau Pinang and analyses the challenges faced by the tourism sector to compete in the global market as one of the popular tourist destinations in the world. Challenges include upgrading the image of its tourism industry, re-branding and diversifying tourism products and effective marketing strategy, Global Positioning System (GPS) is used to map the location of major attractions and potential tourism products.