Popular Tourist Attractions in Male'

POPULAR
TOURIST ATTRACTIONS
IN MALE’
2013
AHMED SHAH, 00037390
RESEARCH METHODS
BACHELOR OF SCIENCE IN HOTEL AND RESORT MANAGEMENT
FACULTY OF HOSPITALITY AND TOURISM STUDIES
MALDIVES NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

INTRODUCTION
“Popular Tourist Attractions in Male’,” has been selected for this research due to various factors of its importance to the tourism industry of the Maldives. Tourism industry has been successfully functioning in the country for over four decades. Daily hundreds of tourists visits the capital City Male’, for shopping and sightseeing from nearby resorts and airport. These visits have become a source of income for locals, especially tour guides. This research will provide information about tourist attractions in Male’ and its popularity among the tourists visits Male’.
DEFINITION
Without tourist attractions there would be no tourism (Gunn 1972). Without tourism there would be no tourist attractions. Such an argument still points to the fundamental importance of tourist attractions and the attractiveness of places to tourism. Most researchers agree that attractions are the basic elements on which tourism is developed.
In essence, tourist attractions usually include landscapes to observe, activities to participate in, experiences to remember and many more. However in this research considerations will only be given to the selected popular landscape tourist attractions in the capital City Male’.

They are: Grand Friday Mosque and Minaret
Islamic Centre
Sultan Park
National Museum
Medhu Ziyaraith

OBJECTIVES
To collect historical information about the popular attractions in Male’.
To evaluate the popularity of these attraction among the tourist.
To find out the importance of the attraction to the economy.
To prescribe necessary suggestions for the future developments of the attraction.
DESIGN AND MECHANISM
There are three main stages, planning, data collection and analysis through these stages focus will be given to achieve the objectives of the research. This social basic research will help to generate knowledge, understanding and personnel view of the research population. Agents will be visiting to tourist attractions in Male’ on the spot interview and questionnaire is the source of data collation. To find out the popularity specially designed questionnaire will be asked to fill by the tourist and random verbal interviews will be conducted to collect data. To overcome from the language barrier needed helps will be seeking from the tour guides on the spot. To know more about these attraction related literatures will be reviewed to support the data. Mixed of qualitative and quantitative method will be used to analyzed the collected data to find out the target goal of the research. To conduct the study a target of 200 individual questionnaires will be filled from 200 different tourists. Consents will be informed to participants in respect of privacy and confidentiality to overcome the ethical issues. Collected data will only be used for educational use of this project.
TIME TABLE

#

Process
1-7 Dec13
7-14 Dec 13
14-21 Dec 13
21-27 Dec 13
27-31 Dec 13
1 – 7 Jan 14
1
Data collection

2
Literature review

3
Data analysis

4
Compiling the report

5
Report review

6
Final report

REFERENCES

Alan a. Lew (1987) A Framework of Tourist Attraction research, Northern Arizona University, USA

Ishitha, A., and Nusrat, J. (2013) Rural Tourism Prospects in Rustic Bengal,
M.Saunders, et al, (2009) Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, Prentice Hall
C. Dawson, (2009) Introduction to Research Methods: A practical Guide for Anyone Undertaking a Research Project 4th Revised Edition. How to Books Ltd.
I amsterdam (2012) Culture becoming increasingly important to visitors to Amsterdam [Internet], Available from [Accessed 15 October 2013].
Places to See in Maldives (Online Image), Available from: [Accessed 16 October 2013].

APPENDICES
Popular tourist attraction in Male’ (page 7)
Research Questionnaire sample (page 8)

Popular Tourist Attractions in Male’ Grand Friday Mosque and Minaret Islamic Centre

Sultan Park National Museum Medhu Ziyaraith

References: Alan a. Lew (1987) A Framework of Tourist Attraction research, Northern Arizona University, USA Ishitha, A., and Nusrat, J M.Saunders, et al, (2009) Research Methods for Business Students, 5th Edition, Prentice Hall C I amsterdam (2012) Culture becoming increasingly important to visitors to Amsterdam [Internet], Available from [Accessed 15 October 2013].