ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the relevance of an education strategy towards host community involvement in tourism. It provides a general overview of the Malaysian approach to tourism planning, which illustrates the lack of emphasis on community education in contemporary tourism planning. The chapter presents the developments in the island destination of Langkawi; and discusses the choice of Langkawi by the writer’s long familiarity with the island, and its status as an emergent tourist principal destination in Malaysia. An optimal tourism planning decision is one that takes into consideration the needs of both the tourists and the resident population. In most new destinations, the religious leaders appear to be the least receptive among the locals since tourism has for long been associated with certain immoral behaviour, both among the locals as well as the tourists.
