Developing sustainable resorts in developing countries: A proposed new generation rating framework for Malaysia

A commonly accepted approach to mitigate negative environmental, social and economic impacts and encourage the creation of sustainable buildings is to evaluate resort buildings to ensure their sustainability. There are two types of assessment approach for evaluating the sustainability of tourism accommodation facilities: sustainable tourism assessment systems (STAS) and green building rating tools (GBRT). In the tourism industry there is a tendency by developing countries to assimilate existing sustainable tourism assessment systems such as EarthCheck and Green Globe and green building rating methods such as LEED and Green Star. However, it is arguable if these existing STAS and GBRT could be adapted to the diverse climates, local cultures, societies and economies of developing countries. Most STAS and GBRT are developed and designed to reflect the environmental concerns, building standards and social needs of their home countries. A framework to develop a new generation sustainable resort development for Malaysia was formulated through this research. In line with this study, three existing STAS and GBRT were critically reviewed. It was found that STAS are more focused on the operational phase of resort development and GBRT are more focused on resort facility design and construction. The review also revealed that GBRT evaluations mainly concentrate on environmental performance assessment and thus are not adequate at addressing the wider sustainability issues which are important for a developing country such as Malaysia. Although some of their indicators are universal and can be adapted for use in resort development in Malaysia, others are more contextually specific and either needed major changes for adaptation or is not applicable. In combination with findings from relevant literature, interviews and survey, a suitable rating structure and a set of indicators to assess sustainable resort development were identified. To validate the overall findings of this research the identified rating framework was then tested against five Malaysian case studies. This research suggests a number of recommendations for the development of tourism sustainability rating tools in general: - Developing such a rating framework should be based on previous research and the technical knowledge of tourism experts. Local tourism experts and stakeholders should be key participants in this process, as the development of rating tools requires collaboration. Local tourism sustainability strategies and goals should be addressed as a major aim. A tourism sustainability assessment framework should suit the local context of the country depending on its culture, issues, players, practices and institutions. It is essential for each country to design its own indicators in its own way to serve its shared goals and to solve its own tourism centric problems. Countries should learn from previous established work and ideas and they should use the work of experts as inputs to their discussion. This framework can be further developed into a tool for the Malaysian context on compilation of benchmark data and weightings as appropriate.