Community Based Tourism
Finding the Euilibrium in the COMCEC Context
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2.2.1. Community Analysis
Since the community is both a part of the product and the end beneficiary of the CBT
development, understanding the community is critical. Community’s needs, expectations,
and worries about tourism development need to be identified. Among locals’ needs and
expectations of tourism, financial goals are usually the most common drivers. Financial
goals are defined either in general terms or defined as specific as dollar amount increases
in annual household income. In the case of Uganda (Bwindi), for example, the discussions
with the target group revealed that households needed specific additional income to cover
the costs of school fees and health treatment.
Furthermore, socioeconomic conditions of the locals, namely economic, education,
employment, family life cycle, standard and quality of life factors, as well as strengths,
weaknesses, prejudices, stereotypes about other groups of people, negative images and
perceptions about tourism and/or tourists need to be identified. Also, psychographic
factors including lifestyle, outlook on life, religion, and cultural values need to be identified
and considered in defining the expectations from tourism. Therefore, extensive research
needs to be conducted at first to understand locals utilizing both qualitative (in-depth
interviews, focus groups, observations) and quantitative methods (individual and
household surveys) to capture true nature of their opinions and feelings.
2.2.2. Social Network Analysis
Existing social networks within the community need to be identified since they could
facilitate collective decision-making, participation and co-management of tourism
activities. In Bali, the pre-existence of a tradition that enabled social discussion and
collective decision-making allowed for a natural adoption of the participatory aspects of
CBT. Local communities may be readily engaging in collective decision-making through
various institutions or activities such as local foundations, organization of local festivals,
religious gatherings, etc. The stronger the tradition of collective decision-making is, the
better the principles of CBT are adopted.
2.2.3. Supply Network Analysis
In a well-developed destination with an already well-established tourism supply structure,
stakeholders of the tourism industry are usually extremely fragmented, dispersed and
heterogeneous, including local governments (national, regional, state, county, provincial,
and municipality level), tourism offices, departments, commissions, convention and visitors
bureaus (CVBs), tourism development councils or commissions, chambers of commerce,
public and private suppliers (tour operators, travel agents, attractions, transportations,
accommodations, restaurants), and associations and organizations (hotel, travel agent,
restaurant). All the mentioned bodies have different characteristics, interests, abilities,
roles, perspectives, values, agendas, resources, actions and reactions concerning the
tourism planning and development process. Therefore, it is likely that stakeholder
involvement, collaboration and support in all phases of research, planning, implementation,
evaluation and control could be hindered. The problem may be bigger when stakeholders