Despite substantial extant literature on tourists’ visiting behavior, little is known about the intention to visit, revisit, and stay longer in an emerging destination. Sarawak is an emerging destination that has demonstrated the capability to attract tourists from China. The present study lays the groundwork for the exploration of Chinese tourists’ main motives to visit, revisit, and stay longer in Sarawak based on push and pull factors. A qualitative research design was adopted, following which 355 interviews were conducted over two stages of data collection. All transcriptions were then analyzed using thematic analysis. The findings revealed three categories related to the intention to visit Sarawak, namely “China residents who have not been to Sarawak”, “China residents who have been to Sarawak”, and “China residents who consider having a longer stay in Sarawak”. In addition, the pull and push factors influencing their visiting intention were assessed. This case study offers an explanatory model that informs local stakeholders on the significant motivation factors that attract Chinese tourists to Sarawak. From a managerial standpoint, local agencies, tourism promoters, and marketers could expend more resources to advertise Sarawak’s attractions, such as ethnic food, festivals, multi-cultural heritage, adventures, and nature.

Past studies have shown that the formation of a destination image was usually perceived by tourists rather than local residents themselves. Hence, this paper aims to address the gap by demonstrating that the initial formation of cognitive and affective images of a rural tourism destination should be first investigated from its local residents' perceptions, not the tourists. In order to attain this goal, a model of destination images that place importance of the initial phase of destination image formation as perceived by its local residents was developed. A qualitative research was carried out using a sample of 100 local residents in Kampung Buntal, Sarawak, Malaysia, employing a sentence completion method, one of the projective techniques that are rarely used in mainstream destination image studies. The data were analysed using descriptive statistics and content analysis. Results indicated that the three main cognitive images of Kampung Buntal were natural environment/touristic attractions, local people and ambience, and local infrastructure. The three main positive-affective images of Kampung Buntal were pleasant, arousing, and relaxing. Using this empirical finding, tourism developers or marketers could gain better insights on the right destination images that could capture the real essence of a rural destination during promotion and marketing.

Many rural communities in Sarawak, Malaysia rely upon and view rural tourism as an opportunity for them to generate income and gain positive benefits from the unprecedented growth in the tourism industry. With increasingly competitive global marketplace, it is very crucial for the rural communities to effectively position their destination or village based on a distinctive and appealing perception or image. Creation and management of brand image or destination image is one of the most important elements in the success of any organization or destination. This conceptual paper develops a model of destination image formation effectively for rural destination or village starting with evaluating cognitive and affective components of village image perceived by its own residents as its initial phase. Analyzing this desired image should be the key input for image formation, puttingimportance on how the residents wants the village to be perceived by the visitors/tourists.Unstructured methodology using projective techniques is suggested to obtain information from residents on traits common to their village and also to capture unique features or auras which can distinguish the actual image of the destination or village from others.

Purpose of the Study: In the hotel industry, personality brings an impact on the perception of turnover intention among employees. The lack of past studies makes this present study become important to ensure employees’ performance and productivity are at highest level while reducing their turnover intention. Secondly, exhaustive review of past literature revealed that lack of studies that examined flow as mediator between personality and turnover intention in eastern phenomena, the element of positive psychology of flow necessary to be investigated. This study aims to determine whether employees’ personalities have significant relationship with the turnover intention, with mediating variable of flow which was underpinned with the person-environment fit theory to investigate the outcomes. Methodology:  This study implemented a quantitative method whereby the questionnaires were given out to the hotel’s employees in Sarawak. All data were analysed using SPSS software version 23. Results:  This study provides contributions to the hotel industry that are interested to identify prominent elements that influence, correlate and contribute to the possible outcomes of personality, flow and turnover intention among hotel employees in the context of eastern understanding. Implications: The flow associated with an employee personality and turnover intention. Meanwhile, the hotel’s human resource practitioners advise to always implement better working practices in recruitment or training functions to ensure the right personality to work on specific tasks are being employed and lead to lower turnover intention.

In the hotel industry, personality brings an impact to the perception of turnover intention among employees. The lack of past studies make this present study become important to ensure employees’ performance and productivity are at highest level while reducing their turnover intention. Secondly, exhaustive review of past literature revealed that the lacking of studies that examined flow as mediator between personality and turnover intention in eastern phenomena, the element of positive psychology of flow necessary to be investigated. This study aims to determine whether employees’ personality have significant relationship with the turnover intention, with mediating variable of flow which was underpinned with the person-environment fit theory to investigate the outcomes. This study implemented quantitative method whereby the questionnaires were given out to the hotel’s employees in Sarawak. All data were analyzed using SPSS software version 23. This study provides contributions to hotel industry that are interested to identify prominent elements which influence, correlate and contribute to the possible outcomes of personality, flow and turnover intention among hotel employees in the context of eastern understanding.