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Determinants of Excursionists’ Satisfaction and Loyalty Towards Architectural Tourism in Ipoh Township, Malaysia

This study examines the determinants of excursionists’ satisfaction and destination loyalty towards architectural tourism destination in Ipoh Township, since in view of its economic, social and cultural importance, there are limited studies focusing on tourist satisfaction and destination loyalty towards architectural tourism in the extant literature. In addition, the downturn of the tourism sector in Malaysia has mirrored in the state of Perak which raises an alarming signal to the state tourism authorities as domestic tourists are shifting away to tourism destinations in other states and cities in Malaysia. It is postulated that Destination Image, Authenticity, Safety of Destination and Cultural Differences as direct determinants of excursionists’ satisfaction and destination loyalty. Using convenience sampling technique, this study surveyed 250 excursionists who are visiting architectural tourism destination in Ipoh Township. The data were analysed to ensure the attainment of internal reliability before further analyses were conducted. Multiple linear regression analyses found that all determinants had a significant positive effect on excursionists’ satisfaction and destination loyalty. The findings suggest managerial implications to the tourism stakeholders in preserving the heritage and cultural value of the Ipoh Township. Limitations and suggestions for future research are also highlighted.


INTRODUCTION
The term architecture does not have a specified definition due to the lack of consensus and varying opinions by the extant researchers. However, architecture can be referred as an expertise and science of designing buildings. Also, architecture is an enduring existence that shapes our surrounding and forms a destination image in the mind of both citizens and visitors. While tourism involves people travel from their original setting to a tourist destination, architectural tourism is an act of going by dated residence such as a standard structure or an antique house for witnessing and embracing the architecture (Lee, Jiun, Kuo & Muhos, 2015). In simpler terms, architectural tourism involves people travel to a tourist destination to visit historical monuments and architectural buildings. The association between architecture and tourism is clear as both have an imperative part by becoming a fascination for tourists.
Most cities and townships have a mixture of old and new buildings. The design of longestablished architectures in Malaysia have a strong cultural influence of the Malay, Chinese, Indian, Sarawak and Sabah, as well as colonial styles of the Dutch, Portuguese and British. In contrast, modern architectures such as the Merdeka PNB118, The Exchange 106, the Petronas Twin Towers and the KL Tower exhibit the evolution of architectures in Malaysia. Credit to the unique blend of old and contemporary buildings, architectural tourism is now one of the noteworthy branches of tourism in Malaysia that visitors are enthusiastic about. The World Tourism Organisation (2019) reported that Malaysia is currently ranked 15th in international tourist arrivals and 21st in international tourism receipts. Nevertheless, Malaysia failed to maintain its position as the top ten most visited countries worldwide since 2013 and overtook by Thailand as the most visited Southeast Asian country since 2015 while Thailand and Singapore replaced Malaysia as the Southeast Asian country with the highest tourism revenue (World Tourism Organisation, 2019).
Our study interest is located by the Kinta River: Ipoh -the capital city of the state of Perak, is one of the largest cities in Malaysia with rich cultural heritage values. In the late 1870s, the British colonisation and exploitation of the tin industry had transformed the Malay villages into a thriving mining town which saw a mushrooming of colonial buildings left by the colonisers and wealthy traders. Being a colonial centre means Ipoh was a melting pot of numerous cultures that were brought by the colonisers and traders, leaving abundance of heritage assets in Ipoh. The township has quintessential and pre -war architectures that were previously built by the colonisers and used as government administration offices which are now becoming historical landmarks and architectural tourism destinations most sought-after by domestic and international tourists. However, the downturn of the tourism performance in Malaysia has mirrored at the state level when domestic tourists in Perak contracted by 12.72% in 2018 despite other states and cities in Malaysia recorded a positive growth (Department of Statistics Malaysia, 2019). The scenario raises an alarming signal to the state tourism authorities as domestic tourists are shifting away from Perak to other tourism destinations in other states and cities in Malaysia.
The attestation on mutual correlation that connects architecture and tourism are very little. Hence, extant studies that relate to visitors' satisfaction and destination loyalty are exceptionally slender in the context of architectural tourism. In terms of the research framework, this study aims to examine the determinants of excursionists' satisfaction and destination loyalty toward architectural tourism destination in Ipoh Township. An excursionist can be anyone who leaves his or her residence to visit a tourist destination and less than 24 hours.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Despite that architectural tourism destination allures the visitors, most townships still have problems in forming a well -defined selling proposition that promotes its destination image (Souiden, Ladhari & Chiadmi, 2017) since the attitude and behaviour of the visitors are arduous to be forecasted and evaluated. Thus, generating effective motivation to travel and encouraging emotional image among the visitors can be challenging (Jamaludin, Johari, Aziz, Kayat & Yusof, 2012). According to Albaity & Melhem (2017), the relationship between destination image, satisfaction and destination loyalty has only been studied by very few researchers. As a consequence, visitors' motivation is an intricated area of exploration in psychological theories content (Albayrak & Caber, 2018). Furthermore, there are no specific studies conducted to observe the differences with destination loyalty to a single destination and numerous destinations at one time (Almeida -Santana & Moreno -Gil, 2018), added with the influence of various factors on travel satisfaction make the viewpoint to be rather complex that it is yet to be completely understood by the researchers (Khuong & Nguyen, 2017), which generally results in lesser studies conducted to study on destination loyalty (Almeida -Santana & Moreno -Gil, 2017). Literature has accentuated concepts and definitions related to excursionists' satisfaction and destination loyalty toward architectural tourism destination which discusses on several variables as follows:

Destination Image (DI)
Destination image can be explained as a set of expectation, impression and the impact generated by an excursionist (Lu, Chi & Liu, 2015) or as the amount of detailed, presuppose and informational belief that he or she has on a specific tourist destination (Souiden et al., 2017). Destination image is a cognitive perception which is formed by an excursionist throughout several sources of information (Jamaludin et al., 2012) by which the image reflects on his or her perception of how a tourist destination is built in his or her mind (Stylos, Bellou, Andronikidis & Vassiliadis, 2017). The creation of image is developed from symbolic products, national features, economic, political, culture and history (Souiden et al., 2017). Certainly, image is created when the overlapping concept of "tourist destination image" and "product -country image" evolves separately (Souiden et al., 2017). Past researchers have also discussed on the elements which are considered in a destination by an excursionist which are convenience, richness of culture, impressive resources, security, enjoyment and night life, as well as the proportion of price and quality (Ramseook-Munhurrun, Seebaluck & Naidoo, 2014). Gartner (1993) developed the traits built in conceptualisation of the image of a tourist destination consist of cognitive, affective and conative segments. Cognitive view of a tourist destination entails the beliefs and associated facts, that mirrors the excursionist's evaluation of the perceived characteristics of the tourist destination; affective image reflects feeling, response or evaluation of an excursionist on the tourist destination; conative image explains the excursionist's active discussion of a place of promising tourist destination that sketches the approaching state the excursionist wants to perform (Stylos et al., 2017).
As it happens, the overall image of a tourist destination is different for an excursionist who is visiting for the first time compared to an excursionist who is repeating the visit (Abdullah & Lui, 2018). Furthermore, international events and broadcasting media are also important factors in contributing and influencing the image of a tourist destination (Souiden et al., 2017). It is the responsibility of businesses to promote their townships and well-known tourism spots in their countries to increase excursionist's destination image (Frangos, Karapistolis, Stalidis, Constantinos, Sotiropoulos & Manolopoulos, 2015). This is because it is important to attract more excursionists since a destination with a solid and positive image is much more preferable (Stylos et al., 2017). The previous studies have also confirmed that the relationship between destination image and satisfaction is significantly positive and has a direct relationship with intention to revisit (Albaity & Melhem, 2017;Loi, So, Lo & Fong, 2017;Ramseook-Munhurrun, Seebaluck & Naidoo, 2014). Thus, it is hypothesised that destination image has a significant positive effect on satisfaction and destination loyalty.

Authenticity (AT)
The anticipation of authenticity was inceptively advanced by Trilling (1999), for the purpose of museums, and eventually was widen in the coming years to cater for tourism to speak about customs and heritage as well as reviewing a sense of validity, aberrant and genuineness (Nguyen & Cheung, 2015). The definition of authenticity was also later altered from the field of heritage and upkeep that reflects on the value of a site (Swanson & DeVereaux, 2017). Belonging naturally at a place is regarded as authenticity, likewise perception or an excursionist's experience also proposes authenticity (Nguyen and Cheung, 2015). Authenticity is supplemented as the origination that can be used as emotions and knowledge (Yi, Fu & Jiang, 2018).
There are numerous classifications for authenticity such as constructive, existential, symbolic, natural, original, referential, influential, stages and, cool and hot (Shen, Guo & Wu, 2014;Thyne & Hede, 2016). The most common classification of authenticity that has been mentioned in past researches are cool and hot, whereby the cool authenticity is fixed according to customary rules, criticism or knowledge of expert as of object -based authenticity; hot authenticity is constantly varying, allied to the exploration on an authentic self and others using constitutive technique (Yi et al., 2018). Architectural inheritance relies on original structure, decorations of the interior and ornamentation of the architecture, atmosphere and settings; folk customs encompass native people's collection such as carvings, paintings, folk tales, traditional apparatus which are still used in everyday life (Yi et al., 2018). Authenticity also significantly increases the attribute of tourism that will escalate an excursionist' satisfaction and perceived value , as well as indicating by being the crucial factor in influencing the overall excursionist's evaluation and positively influence loyalty (Shen, Guo and Wu, 2014). Thus, it is hypothesised that authenticity has a significant positive effect on satisfaction and destination loyalty.

Safety of Destination (SD)
Numerous researchers have claimed on the idea of safety and have classified risks as accidents, natural disasters, terrorism, health issues, crime and violence, and presence of undocumented immigrants that will affect the performance of tourism (Kordić, Živković, Stanković & Gajić, 2015). Hence, an excursionist's safety is an important factor that causes a global menace for sustainable tourism (Lai, Hitchcock, Lu & Liu, 2018). Therefore, a destination has to be assured that it is safe to be visited, otherwise perceived risk or insecurity may cause the excursionist not to visit the tourist destination (Simpson et al., 2016).
According to Kordić et al. (2015), the most common accidents that happen to an excursionist are traffic accidents. Furthermore, sicknesses such as cholera, malaria, AIDS and as well as unsafe drinking water are threats for excursionist as the country's poverty unable to adequately safeguard the health of its citizen. Currently, it has also become a trend for terrorists to target excursionists and tourist facilities by purpose has caused distress among excursionists (Kordić et al., 2015). Foreign excursionists, particularly females are also at risk of becoming a crime victim, especially burglary that happens in the hotel or lodging (Millar, Collins & Jones, 2017) as they are most likely to be unfamiliar with local legislation and procedures making them to be a target of crime (Lai et al., 2018). According to Rindrasih (2018), it is explained in Maslow's Theory that higher needs can never be satisfied unless safety and security is fulfilled. Hence, safety and security should be prioritised to avoid negative word-of-mouth. Thus, it is hypothesised that safety of destination has a significant positive effect on satisfaction and destination loyalty.

Cultural Differences (CD)
Cultural and historic attraction can be defined as the creativity, civilisations and practice identified in a specific community and nation (Khuong & Nguyen, 2017) or even as a conventional concept and custom deep-rooted in the diverse experiences that are significant in the community (Swanson & DeVereaux, 2017). Symbols, rituals, values, heroes and practices are ways of cultural differences being performed (Albu, 2015). According to Albu (2015), symbol has a specific meaning that can be only recognised by those who are a part of the culture while rituals are shared actions that are fundamental in a culture. Hence, the completion has a value within itself and is focused on the culture that is of bipolar spirit with magnitude that is positive and negative (Albu, 2015). Heroes are individuals who are given the qualities in veneration to a culture and finally, practices are included of signs and ceremony that are observable and the cultural reputation remains imperceptible and depends on how these are concentrated within the circle.
Cultural charms are also essential features that motivate an excursionist to go on a trip (Vinh, 2013). The rare features of individual and collectivistic culture have a strong influence on individual's behaviour and psychology (Park, Kim & O'Neill, 2014). According to Kani, Aziz, Sambasivan & Bojei (2017), there is a significant effect of cultural standards on destination image and that cultural differences affect destination image which has a precise effect on an excursionist's conduct. Thus, it is hypothesised that cultural differences have a significant positive effect on satisfaction and destination loyalty.

Satisfaction (ST)
Satisfaction is a subjective assessment of an action or experience (Wu & Zheng, 2014). However, satisfaction can also be defined as the level of positive feeling that is activated from the experience during an excursion (Jamaludin et al., 2012) and may even apply to the denouement of an excursionist's evaluation and comparison of the performance of the product or services is observed (Sangpikul, 2017). Abdullah & Lui (2018) also defined satisfaction as a pragmatic perception or a feeling that is established or gained by contributing in leisure events and is expressed as the level of contentment obtained from that involvement.
Satisfaction is categorised with two common natures, that is transaction-specific and overall, in which transaction-specific satisfaction produced instantly after the visit, that takes place during the post -visit stage, whereby overall satisfaction is the fundamental of every encounter of destinations by evaluating the choices of past visits (Kim & Thapa, 2018). Above all, satisfaction can also be measured using the "expectation met" model that weighs the elements through attributespecific precedence and determine if one's satisfaction assistant with one's willingness to revisit a tourist destination (Vinh, 2013).
Satisfaction also acts as an evaluation medium to assess the excursion experience, at the same time resulting a major impact on choosing a tourist destination, using a product or receiving a service and as well as the intention to revisit the destination . The excursionist also analyses his or her satisfaction by analysing the performance of the tourist destination with the information received by him or her through word-of-mouth and promotions (Jamaludin et al., 2012). Excursionists' satisfaction is essential to be monitored by tourism authorities by obtaining responses and detecting the reasons of which cause discomforts as these reasons will cause a negative impact in the future visits (Sangpikul, 2017). The service quality also develops satisfaction in excursionists through a long-range relationship which results in destination loyalty (Bazneshin, Hosseini & Azeri, 2015) which is essential for the overall level of economy (Vinh, 2013).

Destination Loyalty (DL)
According to Frangos et al. (2015), "loyalty is defined as a deeply held commitment to repurchase or re-patronise a preferred product or service consistently in the future, thereby causing repetitive same-brand or same-brand-set purchasing, despite marketing efforts to cause switching behaviour". Destination loyalty is in relative to the intention or desire to repeat the visit to the exact same tourist destination and having the intention in recommending the destination to others (Albaity & Melhem, 2017). Loyalty can be categorised as behavioural and attitudinal, whereby behavioural loyalty will be reflected when an excursionist revisits a destination, meanwhile, attitudinal loyalty will be the effort hold on by the excursionist to recommend to their social circle by sharing their experiences by a positive word-of-mouth, that is also commonly known as post visit response, in which the personal attitude and emotion that reflects to destination loyalty (Almeida-Santana & Moreno-Gil, 2017). Furthermore, when an excursionist intended to visit the same tourist destination again and keen to recommend the destination to others, it is denoted that the excursionist is loyal to the destination (Sangpikul, 2017;Khuong & Nguyen, 2017). Loyalty to a tourist destination can also be described as the firmness of relationship between the attitude of an individual and to repeat visit that comes from being contented with a destination and compliant to offer continual business (Wu & Zheng, 2014).
Cossío-Silva, Revilla-Camacho & Vega-Vázquez (2018) said that loyalty will be attained when the destination outperforms an excursionist's hopes by providing an experience which is exclusive and engaging. Almeida-Santana & Moreno-Gil (2018) also mentioned that horizontal loyalty approach is evident when an excursionist portrays loyalty to a different destination within the same level in the tourism framework. As it happens, it is said that an excursionist projects loyalty at a time towards multiple destinations. There are two classifications for loyalty, which are the attitude of excursionist to repurchase and secondly, the tendency of excursionist towards destination (Cossío-Silva, Revilla-Camacho & Vega-Vázquez, 2018). Albaity & Melhem (2017) also measured destination loyalty with the number of days of stay that subsequently measure the experience obtained by excursionists is much greater as the days increase due to the reverberation on accommodation, attraction, transportation, commerce and food in general. Therefore, destination loyalty is the result of attachment that was established by the excursionist which is caused by fulfilling a specific goal for its symbolic meaning that had resulted in attachment (Kani, et al., 2017).

RESEARCH METHOD
In studying the determinants of excursionists' satisfaction and destination loyalty towards architectural tourism destination in Ipoh Township, descriptive research design was applied as the researchers acknowledged the problem situation at hand. Mirrored by the downturn of the national tourism sector, the tourism performance in Perak is deteriorating in recent years as domestic tourists are shifting their preference of travel destination to other states and cities in Malaysia (Department of Statistics Malaysia, 2019). This study is classified as a descriptive research as it based on a research framework to test research hypotheses using primary data sources collected through a survey. Figure 1 illustrates the research framework of this study. Four variables namely Destination Image, Authenticity, Safety of Destination and Cultural Differences are postulated as the direct determinants of excursionists' satisfaction and destination loyalty toward the architectural tourism destination in Ipoh Township. A total of eight hypotheses are developed.

Figure 1: Research Framework
Self-administered questionnaire was developed. Part A seeks to collect respondents' demographic information such as age, gender, nationality, marital status and occupation. Part B seeks to understand respondents' travel behaviour such as travel frequency, travel purpose, travel preference and source of travel information. Part C aims to gather respondents' level of agreement pertaining to the proposed determinants of excursionists' satisfaction and destination loyalty toward the architectural tourism destination in Ipoh Township, namely Destination Image (seven items), Authenticity (six items), Safety of Destination (six items), Cultural Differences (six items), Satisfaction (six items) and Destination Loyalty (six items). All items are measured using five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = Strongly Disagree to 5 = Strongly Disagree. Before data collection, a content validity was conducted among subject matter experts to ensure clarity and relevance of the survey instruments using four-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = Very Unclear to 4 = Very Clear (for Degree of Clarity) and 1 = Very Irrelevant to 4 = Very Relevant (for Degree of Relevance).  (2019) with regard to nationality of tourists, 86.8% of the respondents are locals. In this study, majority of the respondents are married (48.8%). While most of the respondents are employed (56.4%), one-fifth of the respondents are students (21.2%). Table 1 shows the respondent's demographic profile. Majority of the respondents in this study travel once in a year (39.6%). Consistent with Domestic Tourism Survey (Department of Statistics Malaysia, 2019), the top three travel purposes among the respondents are vacation (67.2%), visiting relatives and friends (37.6%) and shopping (21.2%). In addition, most of the respondents prefer to travel with their family and friends (76.8%). Social media (62.4%) is the mostly referred source of travel information among the respondents, followed by word of mouth (33.2%). Table 2 shows the respondents' travel experience. Based on a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = Strongly Disagree to 5 = Strongly Agree, all variables recorded a relatively high mean value ranging from 3.65 to 3.83. Furthermore, the collected data is deemed to be normally distributed. Skewness and kurtosis statistics of the variables are well within the tolerable range of -0.412 to -0.298 and -0.396 to 0.010, respectively. Skewness and kurtosis statistics beyond the range of ± 3 and ± 10 respectively suggest that data is not normally distributed. In addition, the Cronbach's Alpha statistics of all variables which range from 0.753 to 0.821 are considered to achieve the critical value of greater than 0.75 and reflected a good internal reliability of the data (Nunnally, 1978;Peterson, 1994;Sekaran, 2000;Sekaran & Bougie, 2009). Table 3 to 8 shows the mean, normality and reliability of items measuring the variables of the study.       Multiple linear regression analysis was conducted to determine the linear relationship between the independent variables and Satisfaction. indicated that at least one independent variable has a significant contribution to the model. The Coefficients table confirmed that all the independent variables were significantly associated with the dependent variable (p < 0.05). Cultural Differences was found to be the strongest determinant of Satisfaction with the largest β value (0.359). The regression model can be written as Satisfaction = 0.597 + 0.110 Destination Image + 0.167 Authenticity + 0.180 Safety of Destination + 0.359 Cultural Differences. The first research objective (To examine the determinants of excursionists' Satisfaction towards architectural tourism at Ipoh Township) is achieved. Table 11 shows that Hypothesis 1 to 4 are supported. Next, multiple linear regression analysis was conducted to determine the linear relationship between the independent variables and Destination Loyalty. architectural tourism at Ipoh Township) is achieved. Table 11 shows that Hypothesis 5 to 8 are supported.  Supported H2: Authenticity has a significant positive effect on satisfaction.
Supported H3: Safety of Destination image has a significant positive effect on satisfaction. Supported H4: Cultural differences has a significant positive effect on satisfaction.
Supported H5: Destination image has a significant positive effect on destination loyalty. Supported H6: Authenticity has a significant positive effect on destination loyalty. Supported H7: Safety of Destination image has a significant positive effect on destination loyalty.

Supported
H8: Cultural differences has a significant positive effect on destination loyalty. Supported

CONCLUSION & FURTHER RESEARCH
The findings of this study provide important managerial implications to the tourism stakeholders, namely the tourism authorities, management of architectural tourism destination, associated tourism businesses and the local community. The tourism stakeholders should protect, preserve and conserve cultural diversity of the Ipoh Township as Cultural Diversity is found to be the strongest determinant of visitors' satisfaction and destination loyalty toward the architectural tourism destination. According to the Department of Statistics Malaysia (2020), the Population and Housing Census 2010 reported that Perak is one of the states in Malaysia with a more balance ethnicity distribution such that the 2.3 million of entire state population comprises of 57.2% of Malay and other indigenous (Bumiputera), 30.3% of Chinese, 12.3% of Indian and 0.2% of other ethnicity groups. The multi-ethnic society allows the people to freely practice different religions, rituals, traditions and customs. Such diverse cultural background can be seen from various old worship places, namely the 122-year-old Panglima Kinta Mosque, 100-year-old Perak Tong Cave Buddhist Temple, the 150-year-old Sri Maha Karumariamman Muneeswarar Hindu Temple, the 130-year-old St. Michael's Church, to name a few. In addition, the local tourism authorities should work closely with the local museums to showcase arts and live cultural performances to the visitors who love to explore and learn different cultures and ways of life of the local community.
Furthermore, in light of the National Heritage Act 2005 (Akta Warisan Kebangsaan 2005), the Department of National Heritage (Jabatan Warisan Negara) should work collaboratively with the local tourism authorities to preserve, conserve and manage both tangible and intangible cultural heritage assets of national importance. Such effort will preserve the originality of the architecture tourism destination to enhance tourists' experience of authentic history and culture of the Ipoh Township. Furthermore, the Ipoh City Council (Majlis Bandaraya Ipoh) should maintain the destination image of Ipoh as a progressive township through development planning and control, maintenance of street buildings and upgrading of public amenities. A distinctive destination image provides tourists good value of money for visiting the architectural tourism destination in Ipoh Township. Moreover, the municipal council should improve rubbish collection services and manage businesses and hawkers licensing to ensure architectural tourism destinations to comply with high standard of sanitation and hygiene level. Last but not least, the municipal council should work hand in hand with the Royal Malaysia Police (Polis Diraja Malaysia) and Road Transport Department Malaysia (Jabatan Pengangkutan Jalan) to improve road and traffic management in the township so that road accidents and crime rate can be reduced to improve destination's safety.
The current study encounters several limitations like many others. First, the findings are only geographically confined to the architectural tourism destinations in Ipoh Township. As a result, generalising the findings to other destinations is not feasible. Thus, future researchers are suggested to replicate this study in other architectural tourism destinations in Malaysia such as the UNESCO World Heritage Cities of Melaka and Georgetown, or other architectural tourism destinations in ASEAN region. Secondly, future researchers should examine other determinants of tourists' satisfaction and destination loyalty to improve the explanatory power of the underlying determinants in this study.