Sustainable tourism and the influence of privatization in protected area management. A case of Kinabalu Park, Malaysia

The worldwide evolution of park management has revealed the dual roles of parks in meeting nature conservation and social objectives. Sustainable tourism is able to support these roles by providing financial support to nature conservation, benefiting local communities through providing employment opportunities and capacity building as well as by maintaining visitor satisfaction. Kinabalu Park in Malaysia is a World Natural Heritage Site and well known for its floral diversity and mountainous landscape. Tourism generates substantial financial income to the park, which is essential to support nature conservation and also provides job opportunities to the local communities. Nevertheless, the steady inflow of park visitors raises concern over sustainability of tourism in Kinabalu Park. A privatization program was introduced in 1998 to manage the tourism facilities so that the park authority (Sabah Parks) can focus on the nature conservation and tourism impact management. No study is known to exist that evaluates the park management in Kinabalu Park after privatization. Hence, this research evaluates the park management against the socio-economic principles of sustainable tourism. Specifically, it aims to determine how the privatization program assists the park authority in 1) enhancing conservation activities by channeling the tourism revenue into research activities, training programs and tourism impact management, 2) benefiting the local communities through job opportunities and capacity building, and 3) improving visitor satisfaction. A case study approach is adopted incorporating both quantitative and qualitative research methods. These include questionnaire survey, semi-structured and unstructured interviews and observations. The findings reveal that the tourism revenue generated in the park does not significantly contribute to nature conservation, but rather supports tourism development such as upgrading and creating new tourism-related facilities and activities. No monitoring system exists for evaluating the human impact on flora and fauna despite the existence of tourism impact management and a large staff. Local communities have benefited through creation of jobs for mountain guides and porters, at Sabah Parks, the private operator (SSL), and KOKTAS (Multipurpose Cooperative of Sabah Parks Staff). However, the living standard of porters and the operation of KOKTAS have been negatively affected by the privatization program. The local staff of SSL expressed worries about job insecurity and income instability. In terms of visitor satisfaction, the overall rating on tourism facilities in the park is high. However, the guiding services provided by the mountain and nature guides need to be improved. This indicates not only the rising demand for knowledge-based experience by the visitors is not well understood by Sabah Parks, but also the training provided to mountain and nature guides is unable to meet the visitors’ expectations. The results of this study show that the privatization program has not been able to shift the focus of Sabah Parks to nature conservation, and that the private sector is unable to fulfil all objectives of sustainable tourism. The financial budget analysis and visitor satisfaction survey reveal that Sabah Parks has not showed strong support to nature conservation, i.e., staff training and human impacts monitoring, and to enhance the visitors’ educational experience. Nachhaltiger Tourismus und der Einfluss von Privatisierung auf Schutzgebietsmanagement am Beispiel von Kinabalu Park, Malaysia