Community Based Tourism
Finding the Euilibrium in the COMCEC Context
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necessary for such organizations to receive extensive financial and technical support from
public and private institutions. It is also evident that subsidies from local and central
governments would constitute a large portion of this external support. In the long run,
governments could support the fund-raising activities of tourism governance organizations
by employing incentives such as tax exemptions.
Locals are the true owners and managers in CBT development. However, human capital
with skills, knowledge, experience and willingness to learn and improve is required to be in
place for realistic objectives in CBT development. This is another critical area where local and
central governmental institutions need to work in collaboration with NGOs and other
relevant parties. Training is crucial for the success and sustainability of locals’ participation
in tourism activities. Based on the needs assessments conducted in preliminary stages of
community based planning, training modules should be developed targeted at enhancing
both basic-knowledge (e.g. literacy, numeracy, safety, health, and sanitation) and skill-
specific training (e.g. tourism entrepreneurship, food and beverage services, foreign
languages, and tour guiding).
Improving local governance requires elimination of community issues including traditional
divisions and tensions, conflicts, power issues typical in small communities. Ideally, when
those issues are eliminated, the result is a cohesive community that can work together in
decision making. This would enable the inclusion of locals, particularly poor, women, youth
and elderly in decision making. Cases reveal that it might be helpful to develop a system of
community participation in operations of businesses in different ways including:
 an all-inclusive and representative committee (trust, association, organization) for
effective CBT implementation;
 different groups within the community taking care of different aspects of the
management, thus creating synergy based on strengths (e.g. women’s group taking care
of sightlines of the site while youth group managing the safety and security aspect);
 sharing of different activities by different households;
 rotating governance and management positions among community members;
 ad hoc committees;
 cooperative enterprises.
Another critical element of successful local participation in CBT development is to
understand the local culture with its potential strengths to facilitate and weaknesses to
hinder CBT development. Some cultural factors have already been mentioned throughout
the study. However, each culture is unique. Hence, the locals’ culture and subcultures are
required to be analyzed case by case especially through partnerships with the educational
institutions and researchers.