Week 2
Hi. I have to start brainstorming on ways to deliver my topic, with relevant contents that could engage with my target audience.
To identify my target audience, I first need to gather thoughts and opinions of the public towards my topic. In this blog, I will be going through my collected data, the analysis of the data and my decision on the target audience. I will then start with case studies research and analysis.
Adding on to the data collected from the 2 surveys from Tourism Malaysia about Domestic Travel in Malaysia after (MCO), I did my own survey findings by sending out a questionnaire relating to NATURE and ECOTOURISM in Malaysia.
Results/Data collected:
Total respondents: 40
Questions:-
1. How important is "NATURE" to you/us; humankind?
At least 90% of them agree that nature is indeed very important to us
2. Do you think "NATURE" is being taken for granted?
80% of them agrees that nature is at some point being taken for granted
3. What is your level of interest towards "NATURE"?
75.8% are leaning more towards interested, whereas 21.2% feels neutral towards this area of interest and 3% is not at all interested
4. What is your relationship with "NATURE"?
51.2% of them feels that they are somewhat still in touch with nature but do not consider themselves to be very close. 45.8% of them have a mutual relationship with nature, neither far or close. 3% has totally no contact with nature
5. For the following two questions are based on 9 ecotourism spots that I presented to them
(1) How many locations have you heard about?
78.1% of them have heard about at least 6 out of 9 places, while 21.9% of them have heard about at least 3 out of 9 places.
(2) How many locations have you been to in person?
34.1% have been to at least 4 out of 9 places. Whereas, 65.9% have been to at least 1 out of 9 places.
6. How deep is your understanding towards Malaysia's ecotourism?
18.2% have a general amount of knowledge towards ecotourism in Malaysia, whereas, 78.8% of them have little or are unsure about the knowledge that they should know about ecotourism. And 3% have no knowledge on ecotourism at all.
7. I further asked about whether they would prefer travelling domestically or internationally and what are the factors that affect their decision.
8. Are ecotourism spots in Malaysia being appreciated enough by Malaysians?
After this question, I further prompt them for more specific answers.
Summary of the respondents' thoughts on why Ecotourism in Malaysia is not being appreciated enough by Malaysians:-
- The location itself not being maintained properly or consistently. Most of them are complaining about the cleanliness of the places
- The lack of knowledge towards the ecotourism places or ecotourism in general. Unable to see the beauty of our ecosystem
- The lack of transportation service, unclear on the accessibility of these places
- The misperception from people, where they prefer to travel to other countries or cities because it is better than Malaysia
- The lack of promotion/exposure of ecotourism in Malaysia. Especially on social media. Weak engagement.
- Influence by lifestyle, people are too used to the urban lifestyle which makes them prefer to be travelling in cities/urban areas
- Personal mindset. Malaysians lack appreciation and care towards the importance of nature/ecosystem in our country. Malaysians are not consider to be responsible travelers too as they tend to litter and leave rubbish everywhere, polluting the environment
Ideal target audience
Age:-
Primary: 21 - 35
Secondary: 35 - 50
Occupation:-
- Working class
- Graduate student
Lifestyle:-
- Urban lifestyle
Perception:-
- Lack of maintenance
- Lack of promotion/exposure
- Lack of educated knowledge
Vision/hopes:-
- The beauty of it can be seen by others
- Locals could play their part in sustaining this industry
- The importance of it can be value by others
Needs:-
- Able to learn more about the local ecosystem
- Able to find motivation in supporting this industry
- Able to view others' experience and thoughts
Case studies
I investigated a few areas on the ways people promote ecotourism spots using different media.
The different ways are:-
Photographs
Website/App
Videography
Social media
Visuals/Posters
Photographs
I notice that majority of the projects uses photographs to attract people's attention, this makes a lot of sense because photographs are able to show people the beauty/uniqueness of a place.
VISIT HUNGARY - ARTIFICIAL LAKES OF DÉLEGYHÁZA FROM ABOVE
This is a project that consists of a series of photos about the artificial lakes in Hungary. A photographer was commissioned by the Tourism Board of Hungary to promote the countryside of Hungary.
Photographer - Sanjitpaal Singh, Malaysia Instagram: @jitspics
This is a famous Malaysian photographer that captures variety of animal species found in Malaysia's ecosystem. He shares the photographers in his public Instagram account, every posts that he shares, will be accompany by a short description about the species.
Tourism Malaysia's website also provides a gallery of images categorized by states. It shows the different landmarks/places in different states.
Personal analysis:-
Photographs could really engage with people as it could convey a story that the audience can interpret themselves. However, we are at an era where photographs and visuals are everywhere. If I were to promote a local place to Malaysians, photographs might not be sufficient. I feel like photographs accompany with a certain educational value would be much more meaningful to Malaysians.
Website/app
I wasn't able to find official website/app that entirely focuses on ecotourism, but I was able to find them focusing on tourism or specific places.
This website is an international website that covers a lot of countries. It provides services like tours packages and accommodation bookings. It also allows people to write reviews and rate the places that they have visited.
This is an official website of Taman Negara, Malaysia. This website focuses a lot on selling their different range of travel packages. It provides full-fledged itineraries with different price range for people to place their bookings.
KOMOOT app
This is an app that allows people to discover different trails and places. This app is different from others as it does not provide any tours or accommodation bookings. It mainly focuses on catering to people who enjoy trekking, cycling, hiking, etc.; basically outdoor land adventures. The features in this app are:-
- Planning routes and saving them
- Sharing community
- Navigation app for their desire trails
Personal analysis:-
- Tripadvisor covers a lot of places, however the details provided for the places are insufficient to attract local tourists. From the reviews sections, majority of them are foreign tourists which find Malaysia to be a different experience. It also heavily focuses on promoting tour packages and accommodation bookings.
- Taman Negara website was a little disappointing. As this website is already focusing on a specific place, I feel like it could promote more on its specialty to engage with local tourist. However, it is heavily promoting the different range of travel packages and itineraries with different price range to target foreign tourists too
- KOMOOT app is something that I uses occasionally. I personally feel like this app is great in a way that it connects a niche community of outdoor activities enthusiasts. However, this app is also pretty international, the places in Malaysia are quite outdated or under-developed. There are not much details of what to expect from different places except knowing the accurate trails to proceed, which I think is the purpose of this app. Users could also create a profile to share their experience/tips on different trails.
Videography
The videos that I am mainly analyzing are from Malaysia.
This video was published way back in 2014 to promote tourism in Malaysia. The video captures different areas of Malaysia from nature to cities to culture. However, I feel like it is heavily targeting foreign tourists as the video are portraying the experience from a tourist couple.
This video was quite recent. Compared to the previous video, this video has more color in it, in terms of local elements and culture. Through this video, you could see more local people and feel more lively. Aside from all this, the video also allows people to know the places being captured.
Social media
For social media, I went through different accounts and platforms to analyze the public comments and the community towards this area of interest.
These Instagram accounts are different in their own ways, I feel like is an opportunity for me to study this community. From my personal POV:-
This account repost photographs of tourism spots in Malaysia by other users. This account is an compilation of the different tourism spots or culture in Malaysia, which provides people variety of contents instead of just focusing on a specific area. Each photographs pinpoints the location and provides a short caption to relate to the photographs.
Note: repost photographs from the community
This account is different from the previous account as it is more on a personal level. This is a travel account by @syafii3, where he shares his travel journey through photographs by posting them on his account. The captions that he provides are short and simple with just the name of the location.
Note: passion in sharing travel journey through photographs
3. @iamnazirul
This account is on a personal level too. This user focuses on lifestyle sharing where he shares his travel journey, amazing food and lifestyle through photographs. I used him as a reference because I want to point out that there are users that do not focus on just travel contents but also others. However, occasionally he will still share his experience when travelling.
Note: occasionally sharing travel journey
4. @_muhdfahmie
This account shares photographs of his personal life. In-within the gallery, photos of him travelling can be found. He is a good example on representing the community that likes to share their experience and enjoyment in life with others.
Similar to the account previously. This user also shares her travel experience through a personal level. She is another good example in representing the community that I envisioned.
However, Instagram is a platform that people focuses more on visuals, heavy texts/description are seldom found. I analyzed the different account more by studying the number of likes and comments.
Conclusion:-
- their number of likes varies from 2-digits to 4-digits number, this could mean that there are similar people out there in this community that like learning about experience or admiring the wonderful photographs
- the comments can justify more on my assumptions towards this community. I found many users commenting on the different accounts or photographs sharing their thoughts and feelings. I could feel their passion towards this area of interest.
Not just focusing on Instagram, I also went and study on the users of Facebook as some people prefer a certain social media platform compared others. I especially study the posts that were shared by Malaysia Truly Asia for comparison towards Instagram. The photographs are the same one shared in their Instagram account, and it also receives comments from passionate users and most importantly you could see people sharing their posts.
Visuals/Posters:
I personally enjoy this project. I really like the graphics and art style on the print items. I feel like the concept of "Map" could be an interesting way to deliver the different places in Lithuania.
With an interesting art style and color combination, the designer applied a puzzle game concept into a tourism map to engage with people. The designer gamified the process of the traditional way of going through maps.
The use of icons and simple illustrations, the overall design looks clean and easy to understand. A brochure that delivers important information to tourists that visit Seoul.
The different case studies provided insights and inspirations on how I can execute my project. After analyzing them, my thoughts are:-
- there is a community out there that are very much into sharing experiences and photographs
- and there is another community that enjoys seeing others' experience and getting inspired
- photographs plays an important role in promoting locations
- an online platform could be a strategy to bring Malaysians closer to each other towards ecotourism spots
- more local culture/lifestyle/experience engages more with Malaysians
- interesting illustration that could represent the countries/locations' identity could attract attention from others
After going through the research and analysis, I am inspired and I feel like it would really help in identifying the way I want to deliver my project. I have to structure out everything and make things connect with one another especially my solution with the needs of my target audience.
That's all for now, stay tuned for the next blog to see how I structure things to come up with an execution.
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