Fundamental pillars of community-based tourism
In Part 1 of our evaluation of Community-Based Tourism (CBT), we got to the core of the question to understand the role of the "community" in these kinds of experiences, with the goal of clarifying the muddy waters in which this fashionable concept runs.
In this article, we’d like to take a deeper look at CBT’s main pillars, offer some examples, and break down the fundamentals of what it means to engage in Community-Based Tourism and offer examples from a community’s perspective.
Photo by GLP Films
Essential pillars of community-based tourism
Community-Based Tourism is basically intended here as a type of tourism in which the community is the protagonist and, hence, in charge of the design, development, and management of the offer. Ultimately, a CBT experience should be identified by the following:
the extent to which the local communities participate in tourism provision and services
the nature of their role in the design of those services
and the degree to which they benefit from the economic profits
If most of the profit does not stay within the community, we are not looking at an example of CBT.
In addition to this, we believe that tourism should be a complementary economic activity to avoid the destructive consequences of economic dependency we’ve witnessed at the grassroots level in the most recent global tourism crisis.
However, although practiced by many local communities, this defining pillar is unfortunately not always present, and we cannot expect to use it as a prominent indicator of the CBT experience. Mainly because realities differ significantly globally, but also, in the past few decades, many working activities in which the communities were traditionally involved could no longer be practiced for a variety of reasons.
The lack of access to natural resources, due to politically inspired revisions over the right to land use, or resulting from changes in conservation legislation, as well as the consequences of climate change, have greatly impacted living conditions and lifestyles of many traditional communities. Therefore, for many of them, tourism has, over time, become the main profitable activity that was easily available.
A modality, not a product!
To begin understanding what CBT really is, we suggest adopting a new gaze that moves away from thinking of tourism simply as a product. CBT is more a way of experiencing tourism, rather than a specific service or a series of activities. CBT focuses strongly on the relationships between the hosts and the guests, and this interaction becomes what structures the whole experience.
Gastronomy Tourism, as well as Adventure Tourism or Cultural Tourism, all have a specific object of interest; CBT, on the other hand, follows a different pattern.
In fact, you can have a CBT experience while learning about, tasting, and even making local products (Gastronomy Tourism). You can have a CBT experience while getting to know the cultural heritage of a place, its history, its places, and also the living traditions (Cultural Tourism). You can have a CBT experience while exploring the wilderness, broadening the limits of your understanding of the planet and the connections between its inhabitants, and pushing your physical limits to get closer to nature and to yourself (Adventure Tourism).
At the same time, you can have all those different tourism experiences without necessarily having a CBT experience, even though you might briefly visit a local traditional community.
So, rather than doing tourism in a community, we suggest looking at CBT as a kind of tourism done with the community.
This aspect applies eventually to the experience for the tourist, but it finds its roots in the way the community members interact with any external stakeholder, and, in the first place, in the quality of the relationship that a business partner establishes with them.
Photo by GLP Films
The benefits of community-based tourism
Localizing economic benefits
One of the main advantages of CBT is the ability to spread the economic benefits of tourism to other beneficiaries, who are usually not included in the supply chain of the industry, allowing foreign exchange in dollars to remain at the destination.
At the same time, CBT experiences disperse the pressure of visitors on a territory, moving them away from overcrowded areas towards less visited locations, which are situated mainly, but not solely, in rural and remote territories.
Therefore, CBT can represent a creative alternative response to the risks of overtourism for many crowded locations, offering additional options to outdoor expeditions and the exploration of wild natural environments with more culture-oriented and human-based activities.
Expanding knowledge and support of local culture and diversity
Another important benefit includes providing an increased knowledge and understanding of the cultural diversity of a region, or territory, foremost, in relation to its living cultural heritage.
Countries such as Chile, Brazil, or Argentina are not usually listed in tourism catalogues for their cultural diversity, even though they can proudly celebrate a great variety of cultural roots and traditions. The situation is changing, however, and countries such as Chile have started investing in responsibly promoting the richness of their diverse national cultures, composed of different indigenous ethnic groups.
Community-based tourism has the ability to highlight and showcase, in an organic and respectful way, the unicity of a place and to contribute to creating a much richer and more varied image of a destination than mainstream tourism might be able to conceive of. Even for Argentina, where diversity in marketing images is almost non-existent, CBT has the power to contribute to modifying the image by adding commercial value to the picture, since tourists are becoming more sensitive to appreciating what can be seen as national assets.
However, to represent a real advantage for the local inhabitants, tourism must be managed directly with the community and co-designed based on their wishes, needs, and priorities.
Opportunities for youth and women
Other significant positive impacts are related to women and youth empowerment.
As confirmed by the WTTC in its report, To Recovery & Beyond – The Future of Travel & Tourism in the Wake of COVID-19, the participation of women, minorities, and youth in tourism is high when compared with other sectors. In many cases in Latin America, but also in Asia and Africa, tourism activities have been used consciously by women to gain a space in society and show up as entrepreneurs, business owners and service providers.
This is so in the case of Rede TUCUM, on the coast of Ceará in Brazil, which boasts that 80 percent of those engaged in the tourism activities of various CBT networks are women.
Ana Lima, a community leader from Caetanos de Cima, informed us that only a generation ago, women were not allowed to socialize freely in public places there. Having a beer or even going to the beach on their own was not possible. A strong movement for equality started and, in tourism, found an ideal space in which to practice and nourish those incipient rights, creating an experiment in social innovation in a very male-dominated society. Today, women are fully involved in tourism as tour guides, cooks, artisans, and fishermen—they manage Bed & Breakfast facilities and even a restaurant on the beach loved by the visitors, named, of course, “Women’s Restaurant.”
There are many examples of youth starting tourism projects to gain voice and recognition in society, taking responsibility for shaping their place and rediscovering their roots. A great example of youth empowerment—beyond the historical Casa Grande in the Cariri region (Brazil), and the well-established Ethnotourism – Rota da Liberdade, in the Iguapo Valley, in the state of Bahia, Brazil—is the most recent Rede REPROTAI (REPTROTAI Network), established in the urban and vibrant community of Uruguai in the outskirts of the city of Salvador, Brazil. Thanks to the support of local NGOs and associations, and also to strategic partnerships with local tour agencies, today the network is directly managing the tours and experiences offered to tourists.
Traveller Storyteller invited the founder and one of their tour guides to the CBT Lighthouse by the Transformational Travel Council to share their story of self-empowerment through CBT. Watch the recording here.
Photo by GLP Films
Direct connections with sustainable development
A deep and direct relationship exists between CBT and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which probably needs to be explored in more detail on another occasion. However, I would like to briefly highlight some of those strong connections between CBT and sustainable development.
Although extensive scientific research on the topic is still lacking, CBT has proven its ability to contribute to the achievement of both gender equality (SDG #5) and reducing inequalities (#10), for a complex variety of reasons and in many situations. Since the traditional skills, occupations and activities that fall under the space mastered and managed by women are those that offer more potential for interaction with visitors, women in many traditional and rural communities are able to expand their influence, creating opportunities for improving their skills, strengthened by the collaborative power of the networks in which they organically grow and are naturally part of.
Traditionally, communities also create strong and inclusive bonds internally and social innovation is often registered, particularly among the younger people, who are generationally more open to exploring new technological channels from a broader social and cultural perspective, as in the case of the REPROTAI Network in Salvador, Bahia.
Beyond these, and other indirect connections, such as the ending of poverty (#1), supported by the fact that CBT projects reinvest their profit, CBT also contributes to building sustainable cities and communities (SDG #11), thanks to the priority given to improvement of the local quality of life as well as to the maintenance, protection, and enhancement of the material and immaterial cultural heritage.
Crucially, CBT also contributes directly to several other SDGs, simply by having maintained a more balanced and respectful relationship with the natural environment. This is quite obvious and intuitive to understand in the case of the indigenous communities, with their thousand years old traditions, for example. However, this relationship is also quite powerful even when the communities are relatively young and they had to adapt to the changing circumstances of the natural surroundings—as in the case, for example, of the Brazilian Quilombolas, the 400-year-old tradition of the direct descendants of the people formerly enslaved to work in the plantations.
In all these examples, as well as in other cases on the borders between ecotourism, permaculture programs, slum tourism, and agroecology communities—or in the case of Os caminhos do Lagarto in Rio de Janeiro, or Acolhendo Parelheiros in São Paulo—sustainable consumption and production (SDG #12) is obtained through conscious CBT projects and long-term commitments to the natural environment and food sovereignty.
Regarding SDGs #13 (climate action), #14 (life below water) and #15 (life on land) we can reflect on the fact that communities are traditionally those primarily responsible for the protection and conservation of the natural environment, of the vegetation and fauna in which they are embedded.
In the case of the Quilombolas from the Ribeira Valley, for example, there are scientific studies done by the São Paulo University proving that the traditional way of working the land by the formerly enslaved community, has truly contributed to the regeneration of the Mata Atlantic Biome.
Storytelling and community-based tourism
Storytelling is a unique way to encourage, share, and invest in Community-Based Tourism, and the myriad of benefits that that ultimately result from it. Sustainable Community-Based Tourism in Thailand, a film by GLP, is an example of CBT that meets SDGs, as mentioned above, and tells the story of the community that is welcoming tourists into their homes like family, sharing their food, culture, beliefs, and natural beauty. In it, we see how protecting and conserving resources creates a place worth visiting for tourists that are seeking authentic community-based experiences, and can provide tourism-based economic benefits to the local communities, all while incentivizing diverse cultural and environmental conservation.
To learn how you can leverage compelling, authentic storytelling for your destination’s Community-Based Tourism, reach out to us here.
About Elisa Spampinato
Elisa Spampinato is a travel writer and a Community Storyteller. She is a marketing and communication advisor for community-based tourism and a sustainable tourism consultant. She also creates Community Storytelling Workshops designed for Community-Based Tourism projects to support the inclusion of different narratives and grassroots stories in travel marketing. Along with GLP Films, Elisa is a fellow ally of the Transformational Travel Council. Connect with Elisa on Linkedin.