Community Approaches in Tourism Planning at Grass

A community-based approach to tourism development is a prerequisite to sustainability as the concept of community involvement moves nearer to the centre of sustainability debate. Several advocates of participatory planning in tourism development have argued for an issue-oriented involvement of residents in decisions at an early stage in the decision process, before commitments are made. Thus, community participation in many ways has become an umbrella term for a supposedly new genre of development intervention and an ideology in tourism planning, akin to the participatory planning ideologies in urban and regional planning. By utilizing emic-study method, this paper attempts to appraise the prevailing planning practice and community mechanism at grass root levels in rural areas, particularly in tourism context in this country. In general, it can be contended the level of public participation in Malaysia sits in the first lower quarter of Arnstein’s ladder, and it is more in the form of informing rather than sharing powers to decide on policies and strategies