COMMUNITY PERSPECTIVES VISVIS SUSTAINABLE TOURISM COMMUNITIES AND TOURISM

COMMUNITY PERSPECTIVES VIS-À-VIS SUSTAINABLE TOURISM

COMMUNITIES AND TOURISM Community members may play many direct roles in the tourism industry, in the following ways: Renting land for development Working as occasional, part-time, or full-time staff for private tour operators Providing services to private operators such as food, guides, transportation, lodging Forming joint ventures with private tour operators, who usually provide marketing, logistics, and bilingual guides, while the community provides most services Operating independent community-based tourism programs

COMMUNITIES AND TOURISM cont … Where they are not directly involved in the tourist industry, they play many indirect roles that affect the success of any sustainable tourism enterprise e. g. : Local residents’ informal interactions with tourists play a large role in making the tourists’ experience a positive or a negative one, i. e. whether the tourists feel welcome, safe, and comfortable. Local landowners also play a crucial role in the ecological health of the area, especially in buffer zones of core protected areas, near beaches, around river mouths, etc.

SOCIO-CULTURAL INCLUSION IN TOURISM Social inclusion entails a series of positive actions to achieve equity of the stakeholders in the tourism sector for access to goods and services, to assist all individuals to participate in community and society including women and youth, to encourage the contribution of all persons to social and cultural life and to challenge all forms of discrimination. Ensuring that the marginalized especially the local community have greater participation in tourism decision-making will allow them to improve their standard of living and overall wellbeing through their engagement in the tourism sector.

COMMUNITY BASED TOURISM AND SUSTAINABILITY Community based Tourism (CBT) a form of tourism in which a significant number of local people has substantial control over tourism development and management and major proportion of the benefits remains within the local economy” takes into account the environmental, social, and cultural sustainability. generally small scale and involves interactions between visitor and host community, particularly suited to rural and regional areas

CHARACTERISTICS OF COMMUNITY BASED TOURISM

ATTRIBUTES OF COMMUNITY BASED TOURISM OPERATIONS benefit local communities, particularly rural or indigenous people’s or people in small towns, contributing to their wellbeing and the wellbeing of their cultural and environmental assets hosting tourists in the local community managing a tourism scheme communally sharing the profits/benefits equitably using a portion of the profits/resources for community development and/or to maintain and protect a community cultural or natural heritage asset (e. g. conservation) involving communities in tourism planning, on-going decision making, development and operation

ELEMENTS AND KEY CONSIDERATIONS FOR COMMUNITY BASED TOURISM