Abstract
The paper presents an investigation on local community participation and barriers in rural tourism. It identifies two sides of community participation in tourism as identified by Timothy [5], which are; the benefits point of view and from the decision making process perspective. It also identifies the communities’ barriers in engaging in tourism and uses Tosun’s [18] approach in examining the barriers. A total of eighty-three questionnaire forms were completed by respondents from seven villages in Kiulu, Sabah, Malaysia. Respondents involved in tourism were mainly engaged as river guides, homestay operators and Tagal participants. Their involvement in the decision making process were limited to attending meetings and giving ideas and opinions only. The main barriers to participate in tourism were related to their limited knowledge about tourism, lack of capital, unable to communicate well in English, lack of information about tourism development in Kiulu, and limited incentives or support from the government for tourism development. The findings have significant implication to community participation in tourism especially in rural settings. More efforts should be made to ensure many more communities participate in tourism so as to share the benefits of tourism.
Highlights
Rural tourism is associated to destinations located at rural areas that is developed and promoted as a tourism product
Rural tourism is characterised with local community participation as they present much of the rural tourism experiences
41 percent of the respondents are involved in any tourism activities in Kiulu and their involvement are as river guides (15.7%), participants in Tagal (13.3%), homestay operator (10.8%) and an operator for a camping site (1.2%)
Summary
Rural tourism is associated to destinations located at rural areas that is developed and promoted as a tourism product. Local communities played a vital role in tourism development as they provide essential services to the visitors [1]. Local residents’ participation in tourism development has been widely discussed. Works on their roles and nature of participation together with the barriers that prevents their participation especially in rural areas are quite limited. This paper seeks to examine the local community’s participation and barriers in a rural tourism setting and the site for this research work is in Kiulu, Sabah, Malaysia. Kiulu does not have a name, but since there are so many Tulu trees, local people began to associate Kiulu with Kitulu which means areas that have this type of trees.
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