Advantages Of Community Based Tourism

Tourism has always been the door to opportunities for countries that have no other options to generate revenue for the people. Generating income from tourism allowed people from the rural areas to garner more money to raise their standard of living and livelihood. Community Based Tourism (CBT) became popular after its introduction when community development became the priority for many countries. Community development is when people who lived together in one community worked in groups for the betterment of their economic growth and development. The process related to the development of the people in the community depended not only on the enhancement of the living standards of the people but also entails education among the adults. (Garzotto & Paolini, 2004) Countries that were more rural based used tourism, in this case community based tourism, as a vehicle to provide more options and diversification for their economic foundation. (Busby & Rendle, 2000) CBT became an alternative to farming and agriculture proving that tourism was an advantage in terms of raising the life standards of the rural people and ultimately brought positive changes to the communities. (Murphy, C., & Halstead, L. (2003)

The Malaysian Homestay Tourism Master Plan (2001) introduced by the Ministry of Tourism Malaysia was the start of the homestay entrepreneurship. This was introduced to the rural population to facilitate the development of any communities in the country. Not only did it provide