Episode 20. Tourism in Malaysia (Book overview)

And so of course the first issue to consider within critical tourism studies is the power and equality balances within that industry.

So of course tourism is a global industry and that means that a lot of transnational corporations are at the top of this industry and are just extracting all of this wealth and resources from their various locations to their corporate headquarters and to their CEOs and towards their elite members of that company.

And so one of the things that critical tourism studies can provide us is just the perspective from the people that are actually involved in the industry, especially the service workers on the entry level of the industry, and also of course the community members of that location to which tourists travel.

And so I just wanted to overview, this is a very short book, but I just wanted to overview some of the topics within this book since it was an empirical study based on interviews and surveys within the Malaysian population and especially coming from residents and people working in the industry about their perspectives on tourism in Malaysia and some of the issues that they find significant from their own perspective.

As a sociologist within any kind of study, we do use these big numbers and overall statistics just to help us make sense of the magnitude of the social phenomenon we're studying.

And so in this case, for this book, we're looking at the tourism industry in Malaysia and how it's changed.

And since the book was published quite a while ago, we can understand that the numbers might be different, but I would focus more on the percentages and the relationships between the different statistics, I would assume that those proportions and relationships remain somewhat equal.

And of course we can look up like how things have changed in the last decade.

And so in the very beginning of the prologue of this book, he's talking about how at least 10% of the country's GDP is stemming from the tourism industry, that this industry provides employment to millions and millions of people.

And therefore he also speculates that more precise numbers in the millions of people that work in the industry.

But again, if you consider the different categories that would contribute to tourism industry, it's just hard to really differentiate those from other industries.

For example, hospitality, restaurants, hotels, coffee shops, all of these service industry stores, retails, of course, their customer base is not just tourists, but other consumers.

But he states on the first page of the prologue, this research is designed to examine people's perceptions and feelings about the sociocultural and environmental impacts of tourism in Malaysia by conducting an empirical research in Kelang Valley, adjoining Kuala Lumpur City.

And that this research took place between 2012 and 2014, and it was in order to gather viewpoints on tourism from the local community.

And so this in itself is really interesting because I think within tourism studies, you have so many interviews with management, with companies on how they can extract more wealth and resources and make money for their business.

So it's very business perspective.

Tourism and hospitality is going to likely be associated with, you know, the business college in a university.

But I'm a sociologist.

And so we're coming from this kind of critical perspective that really centers the people.

And so we wanna center the perspective of the workers in these industries, how empowered they are within these industries, as well as these local residents that are ultimately, this is their home that's being disrupted by the tourism industry.