Social Engagement - Semester 2, 2018/2019 (Detail 1)

Summary : 

Malaysian tourism sector is the 3rd highest contributor of foreign exchange. Visitor demand for heritage tourist attractions is sizeable with approximately 40% of global tourism relating  to heritage-based travel (Kempiak, et al, 2017). Thus, heritage tourism is considered as one of the fastest growing sectors within the tourism industry bringing significant contribution to local and national economies. However, it was reported that our heritage attractions have lack of guided information, which require tourists or even local visitors to hire a tour guide for them to learn about our legacy (Ming, 2017). This is accordance with experts’ views, where we have a lack of systematic documentation for educational of heritage buildings (Khalid, 2012). Visitors have only reference to information on the board, resulting to limited knowledge dissemination and appreciation of our built heritage. On another hand, our local people are also not welcoming enough to help explaining to visitors about built heritage; mainly because we ourselves lack of knowledge (Loong, 2015). Studies have proved that, having tourist-friendly of local people is crucial in portraying our history and culture and the good of entire nation (Groundwater, 2015). This project is undertaken as part of our volunteers’ academic program, which should be completed in 3 month time, starting from 18 February 2019 to 31 May 2019. There are 53 volunteers, which will be divided into a number of groups which each of the group will be allocated at different sites.

Objective : 

1. To act as a voluntary tourism ambassador in assisting visitors about Malaysian built heritage hence contributing to the promotion of our country, which provides opportunities for UM to transfer knowledge to the community.  

2. Collect information on Malaysia's heritage building on the history of cultural and construction technologies.

3. To digitize KL Building Heritage information and make it accessible using Quick Response (QR) code, which we believe it has outstanding potential to transform public experience in a cost-effective way.