Ecotourism development usually takes place in rural and remote areas that lack accessibility and the supporting infrastructure to attract quality investors. While tourists are increasingly being attracted by the uniqueness of the ecotourism experience, the lack of critical mass is another major impediment against quality investments in ecotourism in Malaysia. Tourism planners have generally overlooked the potential use of micro clusters as a tool for the planning of ecotourism development in rural areas towards optimizing its economic sustainability. This professorial lecture will present the body of work that Prof. Amran Hamzah has accumulated as an academic practitioner that is specifically related to ecotourism planning and management. It will focus on the of use of horizontal and diagonal clustering in developing synergistic relationships between key stakeholders in ecotourism development so as to optimize its economic potential, which in turn, will facilitate the sustainable financing of conservation efforts aimed at preserving the natural and cultural ecotourism assets. Central to the micro cluster approach presented in this lecture is its application in the formulation of the National Ecotourism Plan 2016 to 2026, which is a testimony to the success in bridging the gap between theory and practice in ecotourism planning in Malaysia.
