Small islands have great potentials for the development of resourcebased industries, such as fisheries, manufacturing, and tourism. These islands will provide productive natural resources [1]. Small islands are potential resources in having coral reefs, sea-grass, mangrove, fishery resources and agriculture land areas. These resources would be tourism opportunity as well as visitor attraction to tourism development for current condition in Semau Island. Practically, the current condition must be managed well to be sustainable.

Tourism development depends heavily on environmental conditions, whether natural or man-made, for its market, its sustainability [2] and must be carried out in a way that is compatible with the principles of sustainable tourism development. McIntyre [3] defined sustainable tourism as an alternative tourism form that improves the quality of life of the host community, provides a high quality experience for visitors, and maintains the quality of the environment on which both the host community and visitors depend. Moving from those early studies about sustainable tourism, it can be stated that sustainable tourism seeks to minimize negative impacts on the local culture and natural environment while generating benefits for local residents. While sustainability has many definitions, it is fundamental to synchronize about good collaborative planning and about not spending more capital than possess – economic capital, environmental capital, or socio-cultural capital.

The problem of this research pointed to the Semau Island synchronization within readiness in planning and development of sustainable tourism. The key factor in achieving participatory planning is community ‘readiness’: i.e., Readiness with respect to tourism knowledge, resources, and commitment” [4] should be well managed. The Island is consists of host community, tourism attractions, environmental and sustainability that must be ready to be developed through tourism development management and practice ready can be described as a behavior. The research is concerning community respect related to readiness linkages on tourism and visitor attraction towards sustainable tourism. When the community and visitor attraction is closely linked, tourism on Semau Island is ready to be developed. The research methods provide primary data and discussion data about the relation between tourism development and its impacts on local community readiness or not in a wide range of projects and sectors. The analyses of the results gathered provide a valuable tool in order to establish some general conclusions

Readiness on sustainable tourism

Readiness in Change Management has been defined as the cognitive precursor to the behaviors of either resistance to, or support for, a change effort [5]. Furthermore, readiness is reflected in organizational members’ beliefs, attitudes, and intentions regarding the extent to which changes are needed and the organization’s capacity to successfully make those changes. In other words, community ‘readiness’: i.e., Readiness with respect to tourism knowledge, resources, and commitment should be well managed. The literatures identify that some level of readiness is necessary, it remains to determine, how and when community or organizational should be deemed ready to participate in the planning process to successfully make those changes. Knowledge as results from processing information in ways that are actionable [6] that used to a guideline to community for tourism information and development. Knowledge is contextual, relevant, actionable and can be used to solve problem has been defined in a pragmatic way. Knowledge can be classified as

(a) Declarative knowledge and

(b) Procedural knowledge [7]

Thus, declarative knowledge is factual knowledge of the industry such as data about tourist markets, environment, tourist behavior, competition and details of a destination and pprocedural knowledge includes the methodology used such as tourism planning models, communication tools, forecasting and quantitative methods.

Knowledge was different from information. Information relates to data, while knowledge involves a wider process that involves cognitive structures that assimilate information and put it into a broader context, thereby allowing actions to be undertaken on that basis. Information exists in dependently of the receiver and transmitter [8]. Knowledge is information that has been translated so that humans understand it. Knowledge cannot be said to ‘flow’ but can be said to be ‘shared’ or ‘transferred’. Related to tourism products, knowledge with cultural and unique attractions including festivals and events, nightlife and performance facilities is needed so that tourists can see and experience the destination, including restaurants with diverse menus in different languages.

Tourism resources, the interpretation of the resource should, however, remain the key feature of the attraction visit, with increasing focus on catering for broader markets or more specific niche markets. Stage in classification usually focuses on the nature of the resource itself, be it natural or built. An accurate and honest assessment of the community’s resources and possible tourist attractions addressed, both human and physical as one of the tourism Development assessment. Main reasons for this categorization result from the different approaches required for their management, with natural sites usually requiring fewer staff, incurring lower fixed costs and having a more open attitude towards access than in the case of built properties. Attractions are the raison d’être for tourism; they generate the visit, give rise to excursion circuits and create an industry of their own . The Island, a sample of destination product must be tries to be sucessful or fail tourist attractions and local destination management. An example of the island has been changed to create their own industry, Bali Island was well managed by Bali Tourism Board.

A community may be regarded as a repository of tourist resources by way of its bio centrality and ethno centrality [9]. The natural resources of a community (both physical and human) are often the raison d’être for the industry. Thus, a community offers its nature, culture, society and even its economy as commodities for tourism and to tourists. As a commodity, the community’s intensive interaction with visitors is of utmost importance in the long-term sustainability of the industry since it is the culture and hospitality, along with the natural attraction, that create the image and experiences which attract visitors [10]. None the less, considerable development activity and income generated by tourism have not always been compatible with a location’s social and economic objectives and can threaten the community’s integrity.

Transformation in geography and typology of visitor attractions as tourism resources more generally, the visitor attractions sector arguably needs to adopt a more strategic approach to managing it activities to create quality relationship value for futures in local destination management. Commitment, generally described as a desire to maintain a valued relationship is recognized as one of the building blocks of relationship marketing among physical ttourism attraction and ccommunity. Related to community, Lauren Schlep Consulting [11] stated as a coordinated community commitment to plan and execute an effective strategy in terms of product and people to attract and satisfy visitors. When marketing approach tries to create quality relationship value with their effective strategy, community as host and resources must be agreed to have interrelationship to attract and satisfy visitors.

Three hypotheses were developed related to the model:

(1) H1: declarative knowledge has a positive influence on community responses.

(2) H2: natural resources have a positive influence on community responces toward visitor satisfaction on Semau Island.

(3) H3: procedural knowledge has a positive influence on planning of tourism development. Hhypotheses above predicting community readiness and it components in tourism development process to increase tourists number will be portrait on the readiness framework below (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Sustainable tourism readiness framework.

The causal and explanatory research design are used to develop research model aims to test research hypotheses have been determined and expected. “Nor does the ability to predict accurately demonstrate anything about causality” [12]. Visual observation and a cross-sectional analysis or sample survey with a self-administered questionnaire were used to collect data. All closed-ended questions in the questionnaire were developed by reviewing relevant literature. The questionnaire was comprised of three sections. The first section was designed for demographic information divided into three constructs, they are: sex (male and female), education (high school, bachelor and master) and age (youth, adult, citizen). The second section was designed to measure three constructs of readiness, including six dimensions of knowledge (declarative and procedural), resources (physical and natural attraction) and community commitment (planning and satisfaction). 17 items adapted from prior empirical studies were measured using a five-point Likert-type scale (1: totally disagree to 5: totally agree). The last section of the questionnaire was designed to capture respondents’ demographic characteristics (Table 1).

Table 1: Items of instruments

Before distributing the survey questionnaire, the pilot test was conveniently circulated to graduate students in a southern university to identify the appropriateness and wording of the questions, sequence of the questionnaire, and analysis procedure. A total of 29 responses were analyzed for crosschecking the reliability of the measures. Cronbach’s alpha of knowledge variable (α = 0.993), resources variable (α = 0.813) and commitment variable (α = 0.851) were all higher than the lower limit of 0.70 suggested by Hair. The result above clarified that all instruments had internal consistency or reliability and validity with correlation analysis (**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level 2-tailed).

Instruments was distributed in community along six months from November 2012 to April 2013 to collected the data. A non-probability sample with systematic sampling was used to draw samples. A total of 430 questionnaires were distributed to selected subjects directly, but only 405 successfully delivered. Of these, 344 participants responded to the survey. After removing the cases with excessive levels of missing data, 310 responses remained in the analysis. Then, the SEM Analysis was developed to find the model and value of tourism readiness on Semau Island.

Semau island profiles

Administratively, Semau Island is one of small islands and part of Kupang Regency, East Nusa Tenggara province located in the north of Timor Island. More than 10.000 residents live there. The island area is about 246.66 km² and the total of land use is 97 percent from the total area. Moreover, Semau Island is divided into two districts, such as: Semau district and the capital city is Uitao, with eight villages and 35 sub villages, and South Semau district and the capital city is Akle, with six villages and 27 sub-villages.

Topographically, 60 percent of Semau Island has sloping surface with 3-20 meters height above sea level. As for the village area Uitao, Otan and Huilelot villages have a surface of highland with an altitude up to 243 meters sea level above. Thus, the potential of the agricultural sector, farming and fishing are the main occupation on the Semau Island to develop the product. Those activities are supported by the island and ecosystems, local commodity which has many variance of strategic location on the island.

Geographically, the coordinate of Semau Island is located at 10° 10° 14’ 0’’ LS 123° 23’ 30’’ BT. Semau Island is a flat area with low rain debris and has a tropical climate. Rainy or Wet season will be started from December to February and summer season up to 37 degrees started from March to October. It has many potencies of water source actually. Not to mention, the beach condition with various sea biotic and white sandy beach will show a beautiful scene for tourists (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Semau Island Map, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia. The map was created data and content from GIS map-Ina; ESRI produced, 2013.

Indigenous culture called as Helong society had unique ethnic and cultural heritage can be developed as community and cultural tourism and alternative in modern mass tourism. Thus, these heritage such as: Lingae dance, corn ritual and harvest moment needs to be conservated. Unfortunately, since the recent traditional culture was affected by Christian since 1980s, the indigenous community of Semau or Helong society destroyed the traditional culture and heritage from their ancestors.

Respondent profiles

The sample of 310 respondents comprised males (41.6%) and females (58.4%). The majority of respondents were youth (58%). About 34% of the respondents were adult and the rest of respondents were the silent generation or citizen. Over 48.1% of the participants reported having completed high school, with 35.2% having bachelor degrees and 16.8% having master degrees.

Testing hypothesis model

The proposed conceptual framework was tested by AMOS structural equation modeling (SEM) with a two-step approach recommended by Anderson and Gerbing. With this approach, a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was first performed to establish the acceptable levels of goodness-of-fit with the measurement model, and then SEM was performed to test the hypothesized model. The default model of readiness framework is significant because P value=0.00 with **P ≤ 0.05).

Undertaking CFA, a total of twenty-four measured variables were constrained into three hypothetical constructs as follows: Knowledge variable (two items), Resources variable (two items) and Commitment variable (two items). The goodness-of-fit statistics (X²/df ratio=2.75, RMSEA=0.250 [CI for RMSEA=0.11, 0.398], PCLOSE=0.017, CFI=0.973, GFI=0.857, AGFI=0.501, TLI=0.934, SRMR=0.032, NFI=0.960) fell within the acceptable ranges, signifying that the overall measurement model provided an adequate fit to the data. The reliability and validity of the constructs were also tested. The analysis revealed that all seven constructs had Cronbach’s alpha higher than the lower limit of 0.70 [13]. The test revealed that all value estimates were greater than the corresponding inter constructs squared correlation, supporting discriminant validity of the measurement model (Table 2).

Table 2: Sample Correlations (Group number 1).

After the overall measurement model was tested by CFA and shown to have adequate fit, as well as construct validity, SEM was followed to test the hypothesized structural relationships among constructs presented. In addition the result of SEM revealed that all six structural path estimates were statistically significant in the expected direction.

Sample correlations and Testing hypotheses model resulted that H1 is accepted that declarative knowledge has a positive correlation value 0.261 on physical resources and knowledge has influence value 0.541 on community responses (Table 3). It can be argued that improving declarative knowledge of tourism is the central prerequisite for enhancing community participation tourism development [14] in Semau Island. Eventhrough low correlation value has been predicted, declarative knowledge related to tourist markets, environment, tourist behavior, competition and details of a destination as important thing for community must be well introducted. A tourism destination products and services must constantly evolve and innovate to ensure that the demands and needs of visitor markets are consistently met. More than 10.000 residents have to know and responces about tourist and their behavior to attract more tourist and increase benefits from tourism activities.

Table 3: Testing Hypotheses Model.

Moreover, H2 is accepted that natural resources have a positive correlation value 0.966 on community responces toward visitor satisfaction on Semau Island and influence value 0.516 toward commitment. Natural attractions can be natural site and event or activities. Tourism activites as commodity on sites create community responces to participate as hosts. As commodity, the community’s interaction is very important for long-term sustainability, along with the natural attraction, that create the image and experiences which attract visitors as satisfaction of host services. The assessment examines both existing attractions and attractions that have half potential for future development or sustainable tourism and ready in going to sustainable tourism development for better changes.

Thus, the last hypothesis is accepted that procedural knowledge has a positive correlation value 0.953 on planning of tourism development and influence value is 0.516 toward knowledge. Lauren Schlep Consulting stated that “a coordinated community commitment to plan and execute an effective strategy in terms of product and people to attract and satisfy visitors”. Methodology and marketing approach as part of planning structure will develop to create tourism development on Semau Island. When marketing approach tries to create quality relationship value with their effective planning, community as host and resources must be agreed to have interrelationship to attract and satisfy tourists. It means that community on Semau Island is absolutely ready to go to sustainable tourism development for better changes trough planning process.

Linking knowledge, resources and community commitment towards sustainable tourism development

Tourism will be main concern if community and natural attractions syncronize within tourism activities. Community responces and participation in tourism development in poor rural areas has the potential capacity for increasing incomes and employment, developing skills and institutions, and thereby empowering local people [15]. Increase benefits (income generating, knowledge, etc.) from sustainable tourism resources for communities on Semau Island. Solutions to keep visitor attraction, host communities (local or indigenous) as a stakeholder to be sustainable or match with tourism development plan and strategy.

Brourke and Luloff said that community ‘readiness’: i.e., Readiness with respect to tourism knowledge, resources, and commitment must be developed. The literatures identify that some level of readiness is necessary, it remains to determine, how and when community or organizational should be deemed ready to participate in the planning process to successfully make those changes. According to the finding above, successfully planning for tourism development requires the active support and involvement of the local community. Community participation as one of tourism plan elements in tourism development [16,17]. Tourism development must be created and well managed to sustainability. It is important to recognize that host communities have a stake in ensuring that tourism does not compromise their quality of life. Then all of indicators of sustainable tourism and development planning process will ready to implement tourism planning into development to sustainability.

Tourism development must be carried out in a way that is compatible with the principles of sustainable tourism. Moving from those early studies about sustainable tourism, it can be stated that, sustainable tourism seeks to minimize negative impacts on the local culture and natural environment while generating benefits for local residents. Then, related to tourism readiness on Semau Island, it can be explained that they have good knowledge related to their opportunity to increase benefit in tourism industry, half Resources availability and high commitment related to satisfactory result. It means that Community is ready to increase Tourism Development on Semau Island. Some level of community readiness is necessary, it remains to determine, how and when a community should be deemed ready to participate in the planning till development process.

The main objective of the research stated clearly through the analysis that is linking community respect on commitment in tourism and visitor attraction towards sustainable tourism that will be seen from visitor satisfaction. When the community and visitor attraction is linked enough, it means that tourism is ready to be developed and sustainable in the Island. The opportunity can be described as recommendation for the government that visitor attraction must be developed well. It will be linked by lacking of support services and community participation in increasing number of visitor on Semau Island because of their readiness response for sustainable tourism.