Sustainable community tourism development revisited

✍ Scribed by Marion Joppe

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1996
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 515 KB
• Volume: 17
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0261-5177
• DOI: 10.1016/s0261-5177(96)00065-9

✦ Synopsis

Efforts to make tourism a more sustainable option have been focusing increasingly on a community development approach, but an analysis of the differences between traditional community economic development and community tourism development clearly shows that tourism continues to be driven by levels of government rather than community interests. A closer look at the interests that influence decision making, or for that matter non-decision making, with respect to tourism development also points out the level of rhetoric that surrounds 'community involvement' in the process, while perpetuating many of the biases found in the system. There is a great need to evaluate the implementation of so-called community-driven tourism development plans to determine to what extent the local residents truly share in the benefits supposedly derived from increased visitation, since it is quite clear that they support the majority of the costs associated with tourism.