Dive Tourism and the Entrepreneurial Process in the Perhentian Islands, Malaysia

Dive tourism is a high growth, niche sector for island and coastal developing nations and is propelled predominantly by local tourism entrepreneurs and small businesses. This chapter examines dive tourism in peninsula Malaysia and particularly the factors influencing the entrepreneurial process. Much research on tourism entrepreneurs is derived from analysing business in the developed world, and has focused on the individual, not the process. Significantly less research exists for middle income and less developed countries despite the critical role tourism plays in national development planning. Similarly, a significant amount of dive tourism research has emerged from the science disciplines, but less so has originated from the social science community. This chapter contributes primarily to the initial knowledge gap by drawing upon extensive fieldwork interviews in the Perhentian islands. The findings broadly reveal dive tourism as a low cost industry that is transforming into a strategically competitive one. A more nuanced analysis reveals that the factors influencing the dive tourism entrepreneurial process are embedded within the social and historical context of Malaysia

The political economy of international dive tourism

Using a critical political economy approach and the concept of labour precarity, the international dive tourism industry in Sabah, Malaysia and its workers’ vulnerabilities are interrogated. Fieldwork data highlights dive tourism’s socio-economic impacts and the precarity of labour within the international tourism sector and also critiques it as a development strategy for a peripheral region. The paper challenges the optimistic views of labour precarity found in the existing political economy literature. Rather than identifying labour empowerment, evidence demonstrates significant worker vulnerability, uncertainty, and contingency - especially among ethnic minorities - resulting from Malaysia’s state-led rentier econom

Opening the box: Tourism planning and development in Myanmar: capitalism, communities and change

Myanmar (formerly Burma) is emerging from almost six decades of international isolation into a period of rapid economic growth. Following moves towards increasing democratisation since 2011, Myanmar’s tourism industry has been propelled from “tourism pariah” to rising “tourism star” and is experiencing an extraordinary growth in tourism arrivals with associated revenues and investment. The unique rapidity of Myanmar’s recent transition enables an examination of how contemporary forces of globalisation and neoliberalism determine the direction and mode of tourism development from its beginnings. We show how tourism is perceived by the national government as an engine for rural development, conservation and livelihood creation for poor and rural communities. We then demonstrate how this is re-shaped by a globalised tourism industry into a socially and economically exclusive model which capitalises upon weak governance and disempowered local stakeholders. We conclude with observations which may point towards a more sustainable and responsible tourism industry