TOURISM AND WATER USE IN MALAYSIA: A REVIEW Zuraini Anang 1 , Noorhaslinda Kulub Abdul Rashid 2 & Azlina Abd. Aziz 3 1,2,3 Faculty of Business, Economics & Social Development, University Malaysia Terengganu (zura@umt.edu.my, lindarashid@umt.edu.my, aqlina@umt.edu.my) ABSTRACT Tourism is the economic driver for many emerging countries, and the main key distribution components of wealth in the world. Globally, tourism generated over 10% of the world Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and provided an estimation of 115 million jobs in 2017. Moreover, the tourism sector consumed 1% of the global consumption of water. This paper reviews the current literature that focuses on water usage in tourism sector and water management initiatives in tourism in order to identify the current and future contrast between water demand and supply for sustainable tourism, and to understand the key issues and challenges facing water usage in Malaysia. Furthermore, the paper examines the linkages between tourism and water consumption, and analyses the trends in water consumption. The paper concludes by emphasizing the importance of improving and enhancing the existing water resources policies in order to conserve nature while promoting sustainable tourism industry. KEYWORDS: water use, tourism, sustainable, management PURPOSE AND BACKGROUND Malaysia’s tourism sector has become one of the largest contributors to Malaysia’s GDP, which increased from 14.6% in 2017 to 15.2% in 2018. In 2018, the domestic visitors increased by about 7.7% and total domestic expenditures increased by 11.4% compared to the previous year in 2017. Inbound travel and outbound travel expenditures increased by about 2.28% and 5.77%, respectively compared to 2017. The tourism employment raised from 3.308 million to 3.471 million people who worked in the tourism sector (Department of Statistics Malaysia, 2019). These increases prove that tourism sector plays a major role in the economic development throughout many countries in the world including Malaysia. The tourism sector consumes 1% of the global consumption of water. Freshwater is an important factor in performing tourism activities, such as ski or golf tourism, swimming, fshing, sailing, diving and kayaking. Tourists also consume water for baths, showers, washing and using the toilet whereas the tourism businesses needs water for gardening, irrigation, snowmaking and landscaping in the touristic areas. Tourism depends on water resources in various forms, such as winter tourism, agritourism and wildlife tourism. Many countries have expansively been using water resources, with desalination being often used by some large industrialised countries such as United States, Italy and Spain. The freshwater imports with tanker ships have also become critical for the island states, such as Bahamas, Antigua and Barbuda, Mallorca, the Greek Island, Fiji and Tonga (UNESCO, 2009). The important problems that need to be considered urgently are when the freshwater usage exceeds the availability of renewable water resources, leading to signifcant shares of renewable water use. Increase in tourist numbers, higher standards of hotel and tourism accommodations, and the increase in water-related tourism activities will cause higher water consumption in the tourism sector by 2020 (Gossling, 2012). http://doi.org/10.46754/gtc.2021.11.050