Tourism plays an important role in the economy of a developing nation and is considered as one of the main industries for moving the country's economy. Rural tourism has been actively promoted by governments as well as the tourism industry in Malaysia. It is important to note that stakeholders like industry players do play a crucial role in sustaining tourism development. The purpose of this study is to assess the perceptions of rural tourism industry players on tourism development from four main perspectives, namely business environment, infrastructure quality, organizational management, and performance measures in rural setting. 168 respondents comprising of rural tourism industry players from 34 rural tourism sites in Malaysia took part voluntarily in this study. To assess the developed model, SmarPLS 2.0 (M3) was applied based on path modeling and then bootstrapping with 200 re-samples was applied to generate the standard error of the estimate and t-values. Interestingly, the findings suggested that tourism industry players were most concerned with the infrastructure quality and organizational management on repositioning of the rural destinations. Hence, rural tourism marketing efforts need to leverage on the existing strengths and maximize the available opportunities in order to achieve sustainable tourism development. This study has suggested implications for policy implementers and planners for tourism development. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]