Abstract
The highest number of tourists’ arrivals recorded in Cameron Highlands was 728, 121 people. In 2014, the number declined by 30% due to landslide events. The main question for this paper is what can be implemented into the tourism strategic planning that may benefit local communities and promote sustainable tourism development in Tanah Rata, Cameron Highlands. The lack of sustainable practice has caused the highlands to degrade and the incentives for agriculture increases in parallel with unequal benefits for locals. There are two key socio economic sustainable tourism concepts which are; community involvement in decision-making and community involvement in tourism benefits sharing being proposed in this paper. Four sets of interview questionnaires were formulated based on 4 components of respondents. Based on the results, this research highlighted that the decision-making process are to be made jointly with the government and local authority in consultation with the community representative. Amongst the recommendations is fair-trade scheme of equity in payment is for locals to benefit off tourism businesses involved in agriculture to protect their working and living environment and gain control over their future. The success of the two concepts requires commitment from all parties.
Highlights
Tourism is known to be one of largest industries to date, indirectly and unknowingly tourism is a contributing factor towards issues of global climate changes, loss of biodiversity, cultural diversity, deforestation and migration of locals
Tourism development has to be in conjunction with the national visions and strategy and is supported by related authorities and board committees
R1 described the community involvement programme from a landscape perspective while R2 described the community, involvement based on the health and municipality perspective
Summary
Tourism is known to be one of largest industries to date, indirectly and unknowingly tourism is a contributing factor towards issues of global climate changes, loss of biodiversity, cultural diversity, deforestation and migration of locals. Gilpin (2009) emphasised on the four important points in developing tourism. Virtual peace amongst locals and travelling tourists and degrees of economic development. Tourism possesses the capacity of economic benefits, it may lead to harm if it is not being carefully planned. This is where benefits of tourism are carefully curated with respect to society, cultural traditions and environment. In regard to the points highlighted, tourism provides contribution in the forms of macro and micro economic development (Bhuiyan, Siwar & Ismail, 2013)
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