**2. Community capacity building in tourism development**

In the tourism development context, building capacity among local communities is seen as a 'win-win approach' that describes 'community' effort, time, resources, leadership, and commitment directed towards 'community' identified goals and change [12, p. 7]. This approach is the essence of 'community development' that helps local community to improve their ability to participate in tourism decision making and increase their influence as well as enhance local knowledge to access external resources [13, p. 31, 14]. Community development occurs at multiple levels, including individual, organisational, and community, and all levels can overlap during the empowerment process to strengthen their unexplored skills [15]. Over a period of time, each level will have the ability to manage their own affairs to meet their development priorities [11]. The ability of all individuals, organisations and communities to manage change to incorporate tourism development and to work collectively can foster and sustain actions for strengthening community benefits and welfare [16, p. 33]. Initially, com‐ munity capacity building at the micro level approach focuses on the individual component and is the target group concerned with programme for education, skills, job training, and social well-being [17]. At the organisational level, community capacity building refers to the resources, knowledge, and processes associated with local workers, technology, management programmes, networks, and financial resources aimed to improve performance and achieve sustainable goals [17]. At the macro level, community-based empowerment refers to compre‐ hensive capacities of indicators of natural resources, people, socio-cultural factors, budgets, policy, political system, education, and socio welfare in tourism activities [17]. Several tools and strategies were introduced to facilitate community capacity building process, which include community leadership, ecotourism partnerships, community-based entrepreneurship (CBE), training and education, and external support.

Community capacity building has emphasised the importance of community leadership [18], partnerships through collaboration between government agencies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), the private sector, and local people [19–21]. Leadership can be used as a strategy to increase capacity when the leaders can ensure active involvement of a diverse network of community members, thus enabling those with disparate interests to take collective action by forming a unit of solution [22]. One of the best mechanisms used towards capacity building is through community-based ecotourism partnership [23]. In fact, the partnership of multi-stakeholder at all levels can determine the kind of tourism that a community wants without causing negative impacts [24]. Three ecotourism partnerships have been suggested that can be either community-NGO partnership, community-private company partnership, or federation-private company partnership [25]. A true partnership can therefore be an effective mechanism to transfer ownership entirely to local communities and obtain mutual material benefits through the joined resources and skills to develop ecotourism [26].

Furthermore, CBE has been considered as one of the successful approaches in benefiting the community. As the small entrepreneurship became an essential characteristic of the tourism industry across the world, this approach was adopted to empower local community [27]. The involvement of the local entrepreneurs from new enterprises that operate within the local community is vital for short-term and long-term benefits [28]. In addition, education and training programmes are needed in the tourism industry to educate residents about the impacts on their community [29]. According to [30], this strategy is able to increase the community's understanding on tourism development, establishing foundation for local tourism leadership, and most importantly, create tourism knowledge awareness. Education and training programmes are best introduced at the early stage of community capacity building as it helps to create tourism knowledge and awareness [30, p. 76]. For example, some of the training programmes can provide exposure for participants to understand some of the concerns a tourist might have [30].

According to [15], external support for community capacity development can take different forms including provision of financial resources, technical expertise, training, information, political negotiation, and facilitation of capacity development processes. The approach emphasises on the transfer of knowledge, assistance by small private and community investors with product innovation, assistance with access to markets among the local community; creates spaces and social networks for local people to communicate; provides information on markets, marketing, and technology; and assists local authorities to develop support mechanisms to small tourism related businesses in the destination [31]. Therefore, capacity building strategy is crucial for Langkawi communities because it allows them to have the right to control over resources such as property, money, skills, natural resources, and knowledge in tourism development. This approach can also encourage them to recognise their strengths, values, and local knowledge that will enable them to contribute to sustainable tourism.
