Recognizing the importance of local community participation in responsible tourism and its benefits, this case study explores and analyses the local community participation and responsible tourism practices at Lower Kinabatangan, Sabah, a premier ecotourism destination from the stakeholders’ perspectives. It also describes the perception and attitudes towards tourism development including the key issues and challenges faced by the local communities. The case study adopted multiple methods involving focus-group interviews and survey questionnaires with the respective local communities residing in Lower Kinabatangan. Findings reveal that local communities recognized that Lower Kinabatangan has great potential to be developed as a sustainable ecotourism destination and to generate economic benefit. Despite this, there is limited participation of local communities in ecotourism development and responsible tourism practices among the local communities. The socio-economic demographic of the local community shows that only 42.4% of respondents have work related to tourism activities. Lack of capital and knowledge in tourism activities are the key barriers for local participation in ecotourism development. For Lower Kinabatangan to be a sustainable ecotourism destination, the participation and engagement of the local community and the practices of responsible tourism can no longer be ignored.

This study examines small-scale tourism businesses preparedness and resilience to crisis among resort destination in the coastal area of Sabah. Limited efforts are taken by the small coastal tourism business operators in term of level of preparedness of measures in dealing with crisis faced. Although these small coastal tourism business operators have experienced crisis events, majority of them do not have crisis management plan. Therefore, this study presents empirical findings from structured interviews with 61 owner-managers of small resorts in coastal Sabah, about the level of preparedness and resilience towards crisis including natural disaster, technology failure and social threats, as well as factors influence or hinder the adoption of crisis preparedness measures into their premises. The results revealed that micro-sized resorts are less likely well-prepared and resilient to crisis, compared to medium size, specifically due to lack of operationalisation of crisis management practices and the management of human resources for crisis management. The study also found that regular security inspection on respondents‟ commercial properties area from police department and Department of Occupational Safety and Health as the most popular factor mentioned by respondents as to support the adoption of crisis preparedness measures in their premises. Meanwhile, financial constraint was mostly mentioned as the hindrance factor for not adopting the crisis preparedness measures. This study hopes to provide meaningful insights for tourism specific initiatives that complement to existing disaster management policy as well as to small resort operators to consider a formal crisis management plan for long term business sustainability

The study aims to examine whether the satisfaction of the tourists in visiting Mabul Island as a tourist destination can be influence by demographic variables. The study involves primary data collection where questionnaire was used as the instrument to collect information. The questionnaire was distributed both physically in the island and also through Google Form. The questionnaire was distributed to 169 respondents selected through nonprobability sampling, purposive sampling method. The questionnaire was divided into 2 sections. The first section enquires information on the demography of the respondents. Section 2 measures the satisfaction of the tourists. The satisfaction was measured using 5 dimensions. The information was analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The result revealed that the profiling the satisfaction of tourists in choosing Mabul Island as a tourist destination were insignificant based on the demographic variables.

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