Vol. 19 No. 2 (2021)

The ASEAN Journal of Hospitality and Tourism (AJHT) editorial team would like to greet the academic community and researchers in tourism and hospitality from Bandung Indonesia. Starting from volume 19, number 2, August 2021, AJHT will increase its publication time two to three times a year, every April, August, and December. So that researchers whose papers pass the publishing process can be published immediately.

This August issue of AJHT presents six papers covering several essential aspects of tourism destinations. A tourism destination is a unique place where a visitor spends at least one night and exhibits tourism products.

Such as attractions, supporting services, financial institutions in the destination, impact of destination attribute, destination image, management of destination, traditional travel agency, and the prospect of halal tourism destination. Papers published in this issue include researchers from Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, Singapore, and Malaysia.

The first article discusses to assess the role of financial institutions in promoting tourism entrepreneurship in the state of Kerala; Kerala is a brand of Indian tourism and the destiny of world tourism. The study found that financial institutions significantly assist tourism enterprises in asset creation. Further, the findings reveal a positive association between financial assistance in the innovation of recreation facilities and a stimulus to start enterprises in the tourism sector.

Then the second article discusses considering the importance of this region as the top income contributor but not in terms of the number of tourists’ visits. This study problematizes the impacts of destination attributes on tourist’s destination selection. The multiple regression analysis results revealed that characteristics of Amenities, Destination Attractions, Accessibility, Ancillary Services, and Destination Environment have a moderate positive relationship whilst the service quality weak positive relationship with Tourist’s Destination selection. Destination attraction was identified as the most influential factor of all attributes.

The third article discusses the destination image of Himachal Pradesh from foreign tourist perception. This study is an inquiry from 384 Foreign Nationals who included destination Himachal in their visit to India. The latent factors of ‘destination image’ were extracted and validated through structural equation modelling (SEM). Out of the ten explored latent factors, the affective dimension is the central element followed by infrastructure, culture, and safety are acting as significant persuading forces in destination image formation.

The fourth article is a study synthesizing the resource-advantage theory and Hofstede cultural dimensions that explore the influence of customer orientation and knowledge creation on the firm performance for small hotels. The results disclose that forging memorable and positive customer experiences and developing informed knowledge databases are business practices that sustain strong performance.

The fifth article discusses the factors influencing the selection of traditional travel agencies in Banjarmasin, Indonesia. The study results indicate that Indonesian travellers have an overall positive attitude towards traditional travel agencies due to their expertise and handling capacity of travel services. An important finding reveals transactional security as a vital factor in habitual selection. And the last one discusses the prospect of halal tourism in Ponorogo, Indonesia, using the PESTLE method (political, economic, social, technological, legal, and environmental). In general, this is a way of expanding and encouraging East Java Province to become an area capable of implementing halal tourism.

That is a summary of the six papers published in this edition. Hopefully, the next issue will be better.