MEGALITHIC STONE HERITAGE TRAIL MAPPING FOR RURAL TOURISM USING GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEM (GIS) IN TAMBUNAN, SABAH

Abstract

Heritage trail is an important part of rural tourism especially for community development, community participation, for discovering community heritage, and for involvement by community in developing trails to promote the history, natural and the cultural heritage of the area. One of the cultural heritages that are increasingly extinct is the megalithic stone
ritual which was a daily practice in the lives of the people in the past. Megalithic stone can be found scattered in rural area of Sabah such as Penampang, Keningau, Kota Belud, Tuaran, Papar, Tenom and Tambunan. The megalithic stone or Menhir was usually used for worshipping the ancestral spirit. The megalithic stone is unique as it has many shapes such as flat, horn, triangle and round. However, this was not practice anymore and the stone is disappearing or broken one by one. Since the numbers of megalithic stones in Sabah are many, it is not feasible for all location of the stones to be gazetted for the preservation of the stones. Therefore, heritage trails is the best solutions that can be used to protect the stones and at the same time get the local community involved. However, in order to make it as one of the rural tourism in the area, several criteria need to be met to attract tourists to participate the heritage trails. These criteria include; accessiability to the megalithic site, near to accommodation, closer to other side attraction, transportation availability and
support services around the area. Thus, GIS mapping is needed to assists this as it can show the suitability of the heritage trails location by identifying whether all the criteria can be found near the area. The purpose of this study is to show the effectiveness of GIS in analyse the suitability of the heritage trail route and its location for the tourists. In this case,
the area of Tobilung village in Tambunan was used as a study area in this paper. Having known all the location for each criteria in the study area using google map, the proximity analysis was then conducted to identify the suitability of the heritage trail location. Based on the result, the heritage trail that features the megalithic stone in Tobilung, Tambunan is
suitable for rural tourism as it has most of the criteria required for a tourist especially in terms of accommodation, transportation, places of attraction and services such as food and beverages, accessibility and utilities. This paper presents the significant role that GIS can play in rural tourism development in Tobilung, Tambunan and subsequently enhance the local economy of the village.