Resilience planning as an alternative approach to conventional coastal tourism planning: a case study of Beserah, Pahang And Marang, Terengganu

Abstract

“Recovery” and “adaptability” are two keywords to describe the equation of resilience. But, resilience has always been popular in the health and community study. In the ecology study for example, the definition by the well-known Resilience Alliance research consortium, stipulates that “the capacity of an ecosystem to tolerate disturbance without collapsing into a qualitatively different state that is controlled by a different set of processes”. From the field of sociology, psychology and psychiatry, the term resilience revolves around the notion that individuals can bounce back from trauma, crises, risks, stress and their coping mechanism in experiencing life’s successes. In simple terms, it is about the successful adaptation to face negative and positive impacts in a person life. But how does the understanding about resilience planning can be related to the tourism industry? Is there any correlation between resilience and sustainable development approach in tourism? The sustainable tourism may revile deeply the understanding of resilience in tourism which is related with a few variables; number of tourists that is related with tourism operator, environmental quality which is the destination, the economic attraction and government control, and also the origin of social and culture at the site implemented. Opinions and views of previous researchers are taken into account as a source of understanding in this paper while the scope of it is about resilience planning as an alternative approach to conventional coastal tourism planning. From a review of the literature, variables on resilience aspects in coastal tourism planning are collated as the convenient variables and ones that are relevant to the case study are tested with analysis method implemented for the future research.