ANDROID BASED MOBILE APPLICATION FOR HIKING IN SABAH, MALAYSIA: SabaHike

Tourism is defined as individual or group travelling and staying in places outside of one’s usual environment not for more than one consecutive year for leisure. Over the past few decades, tourism has grown and emerged with various diversifications to become one of the fastest growing economic sectors in the world. These days, the business volume of tourism may even outrank big industries such as oil exports, automobile or food products. Thus, tourism has become one of the primary players in the international commerce and being the sources of income for many developing countries. Consequently, with global spread tourism has produced economic and employment benefits through chained sectors such as construction to telecommunications. As such, there are many branches of tourism available that varies from medical tourism to space tourism that is available as of today, although this research would focus on mountain tourism in Malaysia. Unfortunately, there is no mobile application currently available to offer services to these outdoor enthusiasts to expand their hiking experience with correct information available just at the tip of their fingers. The objective of this research is therefore to fill the gap mentioned earlier by implementing a mobile application based on hiking for Sabah, Malaysia. Additionally it also provides a platform for companies to promote their hiking products and brand. The scope would focus on internal and external tourists involve in extreme tourism activities in Malaysia. The research method used will cover the qualitative method by posting surveys via the target groups in social medias. Eventually, a mobile application that have all the information for hiking activities in Malaysia would be delivered as a proof of concept.