Heritage Storytelling for Destination Marketing in Melaka, Malaysia

Melaka is internationally recognised for a layered port-city heritage shaped by Malay, Chinese, Indian, Portuguese, Dutch, British, Baba Nyonya, Chitty, and other cultural influences. Yet destination promotion often presents this heritage as a list of attractions rather than as a connected narrative system. This study develops a documentary-based storytelling framework for destination marketing in Melaka. Using an interpretivist case-study design, the study analysed 20 publicly accessible sources, including UNESCO records, Malaysian heritage and tourism portals, municipal heritage pages, tourism statistics, and peer-reviewed studies. Each source was coded for narrator, heritage form, temporality, spatiality, sensory affordance, marketing function, and ethical risk. The analysis produced five narrative architectures: Melaka as a port-city crossroads, living multicultural communities, everyday heritage and foodways, performative heritage and language, and the historic street and river as an urban archive. A cross-cutting finding shows that current digital promotion remains fragmented, attraction-led, and limited in community voice. The study proposes a Crossroads-Voices-Senses-Routes-Stewardship framework to guide linked digital storytelling, including community-authored short videos, multilingual audio walks, geolocated story routes, culinary micro-documentaries, archival overlays, and transparent content governance. The study contributes a conceptual and methodological foundation for narrative-based heritage destination marketing. It does not claim empirical validation of tourist preferences, resident approval, or marketing effectiveness. These require subsequent research with residents, tourists, heritage practitioners, and destination marketing organisations.

digital storytelling, cultural heritage, destination marketing, Melaka

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