Social media analysis on domestic travel behaviour during pandemic covid-19

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic brings tragedy to all aspect of life globally and tourism industry has been hit hardly as national boarder are closed with restricted travel permitted. From the current situation, domestic tourism started experience dramatic booming after government turns to domestic front and introduce various measures after the MCO being loose in RMCO phase. Since then, Malaysian have been encouraged to spend their leisure or their holiday to visit local destination to release their stressed after being lock up at their resident. The main objective for this study is to know the Malaysia behavior when they start travel during pandemic situation. This study was conducted by observing Malaysian review posting through Facebook about their journey that been done during RMCO phase in June 2020 until before the total lockdown on May 2021 was implemented. The result showed 423 reviews posting been collected during the time period. The data were analyzed using SPSS with descriptive analysis and cross-tabulation analysis to knew their behavior and destination preferred when they travel during COVID-19. It showed that they prefer travel with their own vehicles, stay at resort, family members as their fellow travel and travel in the city or urban area was the main chosen in this study. Furthermore, all the tourist were positively accepting the current restricted SOP for their own goods and aware about the current disease. It discovers, among others things, Malaysian are mainly made up of urban travelers, prefer to engage in rather conventional activities. The finding suggests to tourism industry player to focus more in promote with a good campaign and vouchers and improve their facilities since Malaysian are searching and ready for a fresh destination in new norm.