Community Tourism Essay

Community-based tourism concept has been at the vanguard of the promotion of rural development, both in developing and developed countries (Honey, 2008). According to Cornelissen (2005:21) “the theoretical premises of community tourism have long history, originating from the participatory and empowerment development models that emerged as a new paradigm in development discourse in the 1970s”. Community-based tourism has been directly linked to local cultural especially for tourism ‘impact’ and ‘attraction’ with astuteness that this special interest tourism should respect local culture and find ways to augment and salvage local culture, environment, and heritage (Telfar & Sharpley, 2008:124; Flacke-Naurdofer, 2008:252).

Why “community-based tourism development?”

“Tourism seems tailor-made for the world’s poorer nations, and a growing number of developing countries have placed emphasis

Community participation is a vital element in the implementation of tourism plans and strategies;

2. Community participation contributes to sustainable tourism development in several ways;

3. Community participation increases tourist satisfaction;

4. Community participation helps tourism professionals design better tourism plans;

5. Public participation contributes to a fair distribution of costs and benefits among community members;

6. Community participation can help satisfy locally identified need;

7. Community participation strengthens the democratization process in tourist destinations.

William and Lawson (2001) suggested that, the impact of tourism on host government and communities has been a wide area of research because it has become extensively recognized that if the industry is to be sustainable in long term the planners and entrepreneurs must take a view of the host community into account. In economic and political resources people have equal access because community tourism analyst assumes and often utterly, that the planning and process is pluralistic one (Reed,