Community empowerment to improve local welfare is a big challenge for almost every rural area in developing countries as thematic empowerment's programs has to be launched in order to make it happen. The objective of study is to examine how sustainable tourism and creative economy development as local community's empowerment theme in rural area can be utilized as means to improve local welfare. This study uses a quantitative approach through distributing questionnaires to 137 respondents located in five villages, Samosir Regency -Indonesia as an effort to collect local community perceptions of the observed variables. The data collected are analyzed by structural equation model. The results of the study show that community empowerment influences significantly on sustainable tourism development and creative economy, while its effect is greater on sustainable tourism development, while both sustainable tourism development and creative economy are positively contributed to community wellbeing. Recommendations are given in following up on research findings for stakeholders developing tourism industry to empower local community on sustainable tourism development to enhance and strengthen creative economy in order to improve people's welfare. © 2022. AJHTL /Author(s). All Rights Reserved.