BELT AND ROAD INITIATIVE INTENDED TO BOOST THE MARITIME TOURISM SECTOR

The initiative of One Belt One Road (OBOR) has economically benefited many countries in terms of export and import cargo. Malaysia is one of the countries that greatly export and import commodities business across international borders via different modes. However, this study shows that the OBOR initiative’s adaptation in Malaysia seaports is still beginning. The purpose of this study is to identify the issues faced by Malaysian seaports, to adapt the OBOR initiative, as well as to develop a new approach to overcome the obstacles that have been identified. A qualitative research approach was carried out to archive the objective of this study. A total of six maritime experts were interviewed and the results were analyzed by content analysis and coded using Nvivo 12 software. The results show that Malaysia suffers from financial instability, a lack of port capacity, and poor employee readiness. To overcome the issues, the experts proposed upgrading the port capacity, improving the port system with modern technology, and expanding the employee’s knowledge, as well as the safety and security of the port. This study proposes a novel framework to adapt maritime tourism as a new business market into OBOR strategy. This framework will overcome the current issues that Malaysian seaports have encountered. In the current digital world, the introduction of many advanced technologies known as “Smart” has great potential to progress the maritime tourism agenda into a smart maritime tourism industry to gain more benefits.