Sustainable Agrotourism Curating by Conferring Community Involvement in Tanah Rata, Cameron Highlands, Malaysia.

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.