Capacity development in community based tourism

Abstract

Community based tourism (CBT) is tourism that takes environmental, social and cultural sustainability into account. It is managed and owned by the community for the community. This thesis will enter into a critical re-construction of the central concepts related to CBT in order to create a localized conceptual framework where analysis is based on a bottoms-up sociocultural sustainable view. Through this framework I will investigate the importance of capacity development in CBT. This will be done using a case study from Southern Thailand. CBT is often perceived as a sustainable and responsible form of tourism. However, there have been numerous examples of community based tourism failing. One main idea is that CBT fails if the community does not have the capacity to manage CBT in a sustainable way. The hypothesis of this paper is that capacity development of the villagers is essential to ensure a successful and sustainable outcome of CBT. Capacity development strengthens participation, ownership and local leadership in CBT and creates a sustainable base on which the community can develop. The purpose of this research is to analyze whether capacity development is an essential component for successful CBT projects. This research has an ethnographic approach and it includes a field study in two communities conducting CBT through the social enterprise Andaman Discoveries in the south of Thailand. The idea for tourism development in the area started in earnest after the tsunami as a part of a livelihood strategy that saw CBT creating a secondary source of income for the villagers while empowering them and developing their capacities. Data for the research was collected through semi-structured interviews and participatory observation from April to July 2013. The results of this study support the assumption that capacity development through CBT can create sustainable development. By working with CBT the people in the communities have increased their capacities, leading them to feeling more self-confident and possessing freedom of choice through new contacts, knowledge, new skills and cultural pride. The communities of the North Andaman coast and Andaman Discoveries seem to have struck up a great balance where the communities themselves are in charge of running and managing the CBT, and Andaman Discoveries helping with capacity development and marketing. The results of this study can help development actors wishing to use CBT as a way to achieve sustainable development in communities by guiding them to the defining aspects essential for a successful CBT endeavor, namely capacity development that strengthens participation, local ownership and local leadership.