Community-based tourism gives residents a management role. It still needs customers, skills and fair decisions to benefit the community.
Community-based tourism gives local people a role in managing tourism and deciding how its benefits are used. It is often small-scale. Examples include homestays, farm visits, local guiding and craft activities. Location alone is not enough: an outside company operating in a village may leave residents with little control.
Local management can keep more income in the community. Residents can also set limits on visitor behaviour and decide which cultural practices to share. Farm visits can add to farming income, while homestays use local knowledge and existing homes.
The businesses still need skills, booking systems, safe facilities and cooperation. Small operators may struggle against larger firms with more money, advertising and access to customers. Partners can help them reach markets, but contracts must preserve their agreed decision-making rights.
Benefits may also be uneven within the community. Better-connected households may gain more business. Growing visitor demand may pressure people to change cultural practices. Check who takes part, who decides and who benefits instead of assuming every resident agrees with a community-labelled project.
Step by step
Check who decides
Find out who chooses the activities, prices, visitor limits and use of income.
Follow the benefits
Explain how homestays, guiding, farm visits or crafts create work and income.
Check the limits
Consider competition, skills, facilities, cultural pressure and residents who may be left out.
Worked example: Banishanta, Bangladesh
UNDP's 2022 account describes an initiative in Banishanta, near the Sundarbans in Bangladesh, involving local food, crafts, performances and skills training. It shows how several local activities can serve visitors. The account does not establish that every household benefited equally or that benefits will last indefinitely.
Watch out for this
Community-based tourism means that every local person receives an equal income.
Ownership, skills, assets, access to work and decisions about shared funds can produce different benefits. Distribution must be examined.
Check your understanding
Which evidence best supports the description community-based tourism?
- The business photographs a village in its advertisement.
- Local residents have a real management role and influence the use of benefits.
- An external company makes every decision and calls residents decorative hosts.