CULTURAL HERITAGE TOURISM: DETERMINANTS OF BEHAVIORAL INTENTION TO VISIT A HISTORICAL CITY FROM EXPERIENTIAL PERSPECTIVES

The aim of this study is to investigate the determinants of behavioral intention to visit a historical city in the context of cultural heritage tourism from a marketing experiential perspective. Specifically, the main objective is to investigate the relative influence of the three experiential constructs identified as service experience, novelty experience, and leisure experience towards the tourist’s intention to recommend and return to the historical city of Malacca. To the best knowledge of the researcher, this study is the first to incorporate all three variables together in a single research model. A total of 300 respondents consists of both local and foreign tourists were involved in this study. Data were collected around the historical city of Malacca, a popular UNESCO World Heritage Site in Malaysia. To qualify as the respondents of this study, the so-called cultural tourists must have been visiting the historical city for at least 2 days. Multiple Regression Analysis was employed to test all hypotheses developed in this study. The results showed that two of the independent variables namely leisure experience and service experience were found to have positive relationships with behavioral intention. Interestingly, this study found no evidence to support the relationship between novelty experience and behavioral intention in the context of cultural heritage tourism. Undeniably, the novelty of the cultural heritage tourism products is not the core determinant of tourist’s revisit intention as well as favourable word-of-mouth as these products are considered as distinctive in nature and standing on their own.