Shifts in heritage tourists’ health risk and travel sentiments following COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from Georgetown UNESCO World Heritage Site

Abstract

The city of Georgetown, located in Penang, Malaysia, was awarded the UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS) in 2008 (UNESCO World Heritage Centre, 2021). Since then, it has been a popular global tourist destination among heritage tourists. However, the Malaysian tourism sector has witnessed diminishing returns for the past two years because of the COVID-19 pandemic (Hanafiah et al., 2021). Studies on health crises have shown an inverse relationship between perceived risk and travel intention (Joo et al., 2021). Nonetheless, there is evidence that a favourable destination image could diminish tourists’ uncertainty and perceived risk (Su et al., 2014). Since destination attractiveness is an important antecedent of destination image and significantly directs tourist flows, this may lead to the intention to recommend as part of an organic and holistic recovery effort (e.g. Afshardoost & Eshaghi, 2020; Jin et al., 2019; Martín-Santana et al., 2017). Notably, the attractiveness of UNESCO WHS lies in its’ highquality standard of in situ experiences (Carreira et al., 2021). Furthermore, UNESCO WHS are safer from COVID infection due to the niche, high-paying, distanced tourist market (Singh, 2021). This study aims to validate these assumptions within the Georgetown UNESCO WHS setting, which reflects tourism recovery readiness in Malaysia. Moreover, this study answered the recent research call from Matiza (2020) to provide empirical evidence on post-health crises in cultural heritage tourist behaviour, which is relatively and currently under-explored. Specifically, this research note intends to address this issue by proposing the following hypotheses: