Domestic tourist’s perception on Sarawak ethnic native’s food

Abstract

Continual efforts have been made by national organizations to discover new tourism products and activities that have the opportunity of being marketed and promoted in Sarawak. Gastronomy has been identified as one of the new tourism product which is directly relevant to the Sarawak context. At present gastronomy is a valuable source of attracting tourists from all over the world and this has led to the empirical investigation on domestic tourist perception of Sarawak ethnic native’s food. This research is to determine the most popular preference of Sarawak ethnic native’s food among the domestic tourist in Malaysia and to perceive the image of Sarawak ethnic native’s food from the domestic tourist point of view. This research was conducted to identify the potential of Sarawak ethnic native’s food to be developed as a main tourism product in Sarawak. The sample population was randomly selected among the domestic tourist in Malaysia those who come from Peninsular Malaysia and Sabah that had consumed and experienced Sarawak ethnic native’s food during their vacation in Sarawak. In this research, predominantly the data were based on self-completed questionnaires using SurveyMonkey software. A series of statistical analyses were employed by looking at the frequencies, mean scores and standard deviation through descriptive and parametric statistics. The results revealed that the majority of domestic tourists perceived that Sarawak ethnic native food has a original and exotic taste. Most of the domestic tourist said that the Sarawak ethnic native’s food look attractive and has a very unique cooking style. Majority of the domestic tourists perceived that the identity and culture of each ethnic native’s group in Sarawak can be seen through their food. The findings demonstrated that the Sarawak ethnic native’s food can be a catalyst for boosting the local economy in Sarawak.