Marketing Strategies of Kota Johor Fort in Malaysia: Tourism Report

This report provides a comprehensive literature review on the marketing strategies for Kota Johor Fort in Malaysia, focusing on its potential as a premier tourist destination. It explores various marketing approaches, including leveraging social media, creating a strong destination image through television advertisements, and promoting the natural elements of the surrounding Kota Tinggi region. The report discusses the positive impacts of commercialization, such as increased economic income and employment opportunities, while also addressing potential negative impacts like overcrowding and cultural disruption. Furthermore, it emphasizes strategies to protect and preserve the authenticity of the fort, including the use of travel video marketing and ensuring that marketing efforts consider the local community. The findings highlight the importance of offering exceptional experiences to attract visitors, ensuring both social and economic benefits for the region.

Running head: MARKETING STRATEGIES OF KOTA JOHOR FORT IN MALAYSIA
Marketing strategies of Kota Johor Fort in Malaysia
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1MARKETING STRATEGIES OF KOTA JOHOR FORT IN MALAYSIA
Table of Contents
Literature Review............................................................................................................................2
Introduction.................................................................................................................................2
Strategies for Marketing Kota Johor Fort...................................................................................3
Major Impacts Taking Place from Marketing of Johor Kota......................................................4
Strategies to Protect and Preserve Authenticity..........................................................................5
References........................................................................................................................................7

2MARKETING STRATEGIES OF KOTA JOHOR FORT IN MALAYSIA
Literature Review
Introduction
Malaysia Tourism Promotion Board focuses on promotion major tourist spots of
Malaysia in both the domestic and the international levels (Wiedmann and Langner 2016). The
objective of the marketing campaign for the tourist paces of Malaysia will be to market the
nation as a premier destination of excellence within the region. The objective of this paper is to
develop a literature review on Kota Johor Fort in Malaysia for “visit our country 2019” that is an
initiative of “National Tourism Organization” of Malaysia. A detailed literature review will also
be conducted on Kota Johor Fort as a tourism destination will facilitate in explaining the
importance of tourism in Malaysia along with explaining relevant strategies to turn Kota Johor
Fort into a tourism attraction.
Wiedmann and Langner (2016) stated that “The Old Johor Fort or Kota Johor Lama” is
renowned as a site of huge wars between the local Malays and the outer enemy forces. Ahmad
(2014) explained that this fort was built in the year 1540 at the time of kingdom of “Sultan
Alauddin Riayat Shah II (1528-1564)” that positioned itself as the best defense fort build at the
site of the Johor River at that time. These researchers also revealed that after decline of “Malay
Sultanate of Malacca in the year 1511” Johor River turned out to be one of the renowned
administrative centre along with defense fort in order to attack the Portuguese position within
Malacca. The natural surroundings of this fort turned it simpler for monitoring ships movements
particularly threat from Portuguese and Acehnese. However, Azizuddin Mohd Sani (2015)
revealed that in the year 1587, the fort was lost by the Malaysians to Portuguese because of
which the fort was burnt along with all its assets and the weapons were also taken away. As a

3MARKETING STRATEGIES OF KOTA JOHOR FORT IN MALAYSIA
tourist spot the destination is a very attractive place that is located in the Kota Tinggi Town in
Teluk Sengat. Moreover, Chang (2018) revealedthat the authority of Southeast Johor is focused
on encouraging the rural tourism to support the development of the place. The region has a great
importance to serve as an attractive tourist spot as this place enjoys a rich diversity of natural and
scenic attractions like beaches, rivers, waterfalls, natural habitats and traditional fisherman
communities that serves as perfect “Village Tourism Packages” (Chang 2018).
Strategies for Marketing Kota Johor Fort
Donaldson (2018) indicated that to market this beautiful touristdestination of Kota Johor
Fort several effective marketingstrategies can be developed in attracting the international
tourists. As a staff of “National Tourism Organization” of Malaysia certain effective marketing
strategies for promoting this tourist spot among the international tourists are explained.
Donaldson (2018) stated that the nature elements of Kota Tinggi where the fort is located
can be promoted that includes waterfall and museums in increasing the international visitor’s
motivation to enjoytheir vacation in relaxing and peaceful surrounding. Creating a destination
image can serve as an effective marketing tool to influence tourist decision tovisit Kota Johor
Fort through television advertisements. The Malaysian Tourism advertisement can consider
promoting the place by advertising attractive images of the region and all its main tourism
attraction along with declaring the place as “Historical Tourism District”. Such marketing
strategy can attract students from other nations to make an educational visit to the Kota Johor
Fort.
Kiráľová and Pavlíčeka (2015) revealed that website and social media advertising
through Instagram and Facebook can make a huge base of target consumer base aware of the

4MARKETING STRATEGIES OF KOTA JOHOR FORT IN MALAYSIA
attractive destinations of Kota Johor Fort. Through employing such strategy in promoting the
tourism destination, building a compelling and memorable visual brand will be possible through
collaborating with team and hired experts. Lim (2017) added that they can design attractive fonts
and photos to be put on the homepage of the website which can attract attention of international
tourists. Moreover, such visual content marketing ill reflect the aesthetics and characters of the
destination that can make it more compelling to visit the place.
Major Impacts Taking Place from Marketing of Johor Kota
The positive and negative impacts that can take placefirm commercialization of Kota
Johor Fort of Malaysia are explained. According to Lima and Canbarro (2015) the positive
impact of such commercialization is that for promoting the tourist spot as a lot of amount is
invested to act as local heritage of Malaysia along with offering better local facilities, which, in
turn can facilitate in promoting education along with better leisure facilities. Few other positive
impact of commercialization also includes organizing most of the social events which can
improve lifestyle of locale people. Interactions with international tourists can also increase
through mixing with tourists from diverse backgrounds that can create a cosmopolitan culture
within the region. Lima and Canbarro (2015) indicated that due to increased demand of better
tourism services, several employment opportunities will also be created within the Kota Johor
Fort region along with increasing economic income of the nation.
Perez-Mujica, Duncan and Bossomaier (2014) indicated that the negative impact of
commercialization considers that because of heavy traffic within the region, the infrastructure of
Kota Johor Fort might be incapable to deal with high rush due to high tourist visits that can lead
to overcrowding, poor sanitization that might result in disease of the tourists along with the local

5MARKETING STRATEGIES OF KOTA JOHOR FORT IN MALAYSIA
people. The involvement of outsiders within the area might affect the local culture along with
generating unrest among locals.
Strategies to Protect and Preserve Authenticity
Chang et al. (2018) revealed that the managers associated with cultural heritage tourism
need to be mindful of the overall experience rather than single events or sites. The customers
always expect that the sites would provide integrity and truth related to presentation and
preservation. The political mandates or boundaries need not mire them at the time of developing
authentic experience and therefore, the customers need to be served with integrity. Primarily, the
products help in creating any particular market. If a quality and consistent authentic experience is
provided daily to the customers, the positive word-of-mouth generated from the current
customers becomes the strongest marketing tool available. Travel video marketing is an effective
tool through which visual and audio technology can facilitate in making the tourism spot more
engaging for consumers. Martin strategies such as “360 degree virtual tour” can walk the viewer
through an entire new experience regarding all the attractive destinations in Johor Kota region
(Chang et al. 2018). Videos on the places can be distributed through channels like YouTube
where it can gain maximum number of viewers. This can promote the tourist place among the
target travelers through making the place seem unique for them.
In case, Yin (2016) revealed that the resources are not protected, each opportunity in
attracting visitors having authentic experiences vanishes. In relation to cultural heritage tourism,
authentic resources are described by overall scenic beauty of place including gateway, landscape,
built environment, cuisine, cultural traditions along with souvenirs in buying. If residents are not
taken into account in marketing, development and management of the spot, benefits are lost.
Marketing is highly effective, as people value the real aspects and these aspects do not have any

6MARKETING STRATEGIES OF KOTA JOHOR FORT IN MALAYSIA
meanings. Maintenance needs to be assured, as the community finds it worthwhile and valuable
for nurturing and sustaining is regular along with irreplaceable cultural assets. Finally, Yoo and
Gretzel (2016) also indicated that the visitors would carry on to focused on Malaysian cultural
heritage destination, if they identify value within exceptional experience, which is by a nostalgic
experience or through education, which carries meaning and fulfills expectations. This would
assure both local social as well as economic benefits and those messages marketed to draw
visitors authentically depicted the stories of present and past of the individuals.
It was gathered from the findings that the region has a great importance to serve as an
attractivetourist spot as there are a diversity of natural and scenic attractions like beaches, rivers,
waterfalls, natural habitats and traditional fisherman communities that serves as perfect “Village
Tourism Packages”. It was also revealed from the literature review that creating a destination
image can serve as an effective marketing tool to influence tourist decision to visit Kota Johor
Fort through television advertisements. Moreover, Website and social media advertising through
Instagram and Facebook can make a huge base of target consumer base aware of the attractive
destinations of Kota Johor Fort. Such visual content marketingwill reflect the aesthetics and
characters of the destination that can make it more compelling to visit the place.

7MARKETING STRATEGIES OF KOTA JOHOR FORT IN MALAYSIA
References
Ahmad, A.T., 2014. Forts, history and culture in Malaysia. NUS Press.
Azizuddin Mohd Sani, M., 2015. Political marketing in Malaysia: examining the case of political
campaigning in the 2014 Kajang by-election. Philippine Political Science Journal, 36(2),
pp.167-189.
Chang, H.L., Chou, Y.C., Wu, D.Y. and Wu, S.C., 2018. Will firm's marketing efforts on owned
social media payoff? A quasi-experimental analysis of tourism products. Decision Support
Systems, 107, pp.13-25.
Chang, W.Y., 2018. A Study on the Impact of Tourism Product Placement Marketing on
Tourism Intention. KnE Social Sciences, 3(10).
Donaldson, R., 2018. Some More Branding:‘Town of the Year’as Stimulus for Tourism Growth.
In Small Town Tourism in South Africa (pp. 71-85). Springer, Cham.
Kiráľová, A. and Pavlíčeka, A., 2015. Development of social media strategies in tourism
destination. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 175, pp.358-366.
Lim, W.M., 2017. Restoring tourist confidence and travel intentions after disasters: some
insights from a rejoinder to a series of unfortunate events in Malaysian tourism. Current Issues in
Tourism, 20(1), pp.38-42.
Lima, C.C. and Canbarro, D., 2015. Role Of Spot Look And Its Presentation By Site Keepers To
Attract Eco-Tourists-Spot Marketing Strategy. Scholedge International Journal of Business
Policy & Governance ISSN 2394-3351, 2(6), pp.25-31.

8MARKETING STRATEGIES OF KOTA JOHOR FORT IN MALAYSIA
Perez-Mujica, L., Duncan, R. and Bossomaier, T., 2014. Using agent-based models to design
social marketing campaign. Australasian Marketing Journal (AMJ), 22(1), pp.36-44.
Wiedmann, K.P. and Langner, S., 2016. Open source marketing in tourism: motivational drivers
and practical approaches. In Open Tourism (pp. 61-77). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Yin, S., 2016. Sustainable City Tourism in Developing Countries: Malaysia Experience.
Yoo, K.H. and Gretzel, U., 2016. The role of information and communication technologies
(ICTs) in marketing tourism experiences. In The Handbook of Managing and Marketing Tourism
Experiences (pp. 409-428). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.