Rural tourism has been shown to benefit local communities from the economic perspective. Digital marketing allows marketing information to be transmitted directly to potential visitors without the need for an intermediary, in a low-cost but effective way. Rural tourism destinations in Sarawak now have an opportunity to benefit from the Sarawak state government's initiative, the Digital Sarawak Centre of Excellence, in terms of digital content creation and website maintenance. However, the current level of adoption is zero to minimal in rural tourism destinations. This study examines the barriers towards digital marketing adoption from the perspective of rural tourism providers. Fieldwork was performed at two sites, Ba'kelalan and Long Lamai, in July 2016 and February 2017 respectively. In-depth interviews were conducted with a total of 19 respondents. The study revealed that tourism providers currently depended on word-ofmouth recommendations or direct contact for bookings, but were willing to adopt digital marketing with the assistance of knowledgeable parties. However, certain physical, logistical and social constraints may have a detrimental effect on the community's readiness level to entertain tourists on a larger scale and may further impede the overall progress of digital marketing adoption, at both the individual and destination levels.

Rural tourism is a rapidly growing tourism segment and has been given increasing importance, in view of its potential to contribute economic growth to the rural areas. However, any rural tourism destination development should be implemented in a way that maximises destination performance. In our study, we examine the relationship between support and participation of the local government, community leadership in tourism, community attitudes towards tourism, and community support towards tourism with destination performance (from the economic, socio-cultural and environmental aspects), from the local community perspective. We obtained, as voluntary respondents, 176 residents of a local community at a rural tourism destination in Sabah, Malaysia. SmartPLS 2.0 (M3) was applied to assess the developed model. Thereafter, to generate the standard error of the estimate and t-values, bootstrapping with 200 re-samples was applied. The findings suggested that community attitudes and community leadership in tourism have a significant positive impact on destination performance, whereas local government participation and support, and community support for tourism, had little impact on the same. Implications of these findings were further discussed.

Rural tourism is a rapidly growing tourism segment and has been given increasing importance, in view of its potential to contribute economic growth to the rural areas. However, any rural tourism destination development should be implemented in a way that maximizes destination competitive advantage. This study examine the relationship between stakeholder involvement, community knowledge about tourism, and the economic, socio-cultural and environmental impacts on tourism with rural competitive advantage, as perceived by the local community. This study obtained, as voluntary respondents, 87 residents of a rural tourism destination in Sarawak, Malaysia. To assess the developed model, SmartPLS 2.0 (M3) was applied based on path modelling and then bootstrapping with 200 re-samples was applied to generate the standard error of the estimate and t-values. The findings suggested that stakeholder involvement in tourism, community knowledge about tourism and the environmental impact of tourism have had a significant positive impact on rural competitive advantage, whereas economic and socio-cultural impacts of tourism, as well as community support for tourism, had little impact on the same. Lastly, such study would benefit the tourism implementers and decision-makers in tourism industry, in the sense that tourism activity can be proactively detected and curbed once critical mass is reached.