How Community-Based Tourism Empowers Locals and Enhances Travel
In an age where travelers seek more meaningful and enriching experiences, community-based tourism can be a powerful tool for sustainable development and ensuring a higher quality experience for visitors and locals. Unfortunately, this model has not been implemented in many modern-day traditional tourism offerings – particularly those in developing countries – where local people do not have a voice in the destination’s management and the economic benefits of tourism don’t effectively reach local people. To help combat these potential negative implications, community-based tourism allows tourists to immerse themselves in local cultures while empowering communities to have ownership and control of their tourism offerings, which helps ensure that the local communities fully benefit economically, socially, and environmentally.
Putting People First
A woman tries on a traditional Panamanian hat made by artisans from La Pintada, Panama.
What makes travel so memorable? It is the unique, personal connections made while visiting another area or community. It is the local restaurant that focuses on fresh, farm-to-table cuisine; the group of single women artisans that create custom jewelry and home goods to provide for their families; or the community center that offers nightly entertainment while helping underprivileged aspiring musicians. When creating a travel product, the ability to partner with community leaders and amplify local narratives, history, and cultural context allows for tourism to support healthier communities that are not only great places to visit, but also to live. As travel professionals, it is our responsibility to ensure that we engage with communities in a responsible, authentic, and transparent way so that the local people are placed at the forefront and visitors can engage in a quality experience.
The Importance of Community-Based Tourism
Tourism can be a powerful tool that can be used to mitigate and solve some of our world's greatest challenges, such as creating food sovereignty, promoting gender parity, conserving natural resources, and preserving and celebrating cultures, traditions, and languages. By putting communities at the center of tourism development, resident sentiment improves with more local people and ecosystems benefiting. The experience for the traveler is also more authentic, creating a more differentiated product for the travel business. This creates a full circle of prosperity for all involved in the tourism value chain. Community-based tourism can help in many ways, including:
Empowering Local Communities: By keeping tourism revenues within the community, local people have a stake in the tourism process. This leads to economic empowerment and improved living standards.
Preserving Cultural Heritage: Community-based tourism fosters pride among local communities in their cultural and natural heritage, encouraging them to preserve these assets for future generations.
Promoting Sustainable Practices: Since the community manages tourism activities, there is a greater emphasis on environmental conservation and sustainable resource use. This, in turn, helps preserve tourism assets that make places unique and beautiful.
Providing Authentic Experiences: For travelers, community-based tourism offers an authentic and immersive experience, far removed from the typical tourist trail. Guests engage in a much deeper way and develop a more nuanced understanding of the destination, promoting repeat business.
Where to Find Community-Based Tourism
Examples of community-based tourism can be found around the world. While this is a niche market, it is growing due to travelers’ increased awareness around sustainability and climate-related issues. According to a 2023 Booking.com survey, 75% of respondents seek authentic experiences that are representative of the local culture and 69% want the money they spend when traveling to go back to the local community. To help serve this need, Tourism Cares has created its Meaningful Travel Map, which highlights sustainable tourism offerings, including community-led experiences, non-profits, social enterprises, B-Corps, and other purpose-driven businesses. Here are a few examples of community-based tourism offerings found on the Map:
Efraín Guerrero (second left) stands with colleagues during a tour of El Churillo neighborhood in Panama City, Panama.
Founded by local Panamanian Efraín Guerrero, Movimiento Identidad (Identity Movement) is a non-profit organization that leads tours around the historical neighborhoods of Santa Ana, Chorrillo, and Calidonia, in the heart of Panama City. Gurrero’s vision is to revitalize the historical significance of these neighborhoods, which have been pushed out in recent years due to gentrification. By telling the stories of these neighborhoods – and their people – he hopes to generate more economic opportunities for local people and support youth education initiatives. His idea is to transform these streets into an “open-air museum” and showcase the community’s local customs, arts, and gastronomy.
Radical Weavers, Stirling, Scotland
Radical Weavers is an independent non-profit weaving studio located in Sterling, Scotland. Visitors can immerse themselves in craft courses where heritage and culture intertwine, offering a chance to learn the art of weaving and explore Scotland's textile history. The organization’s mission places a strong focus on inclusivity, with a special emphasis on empowering young LGBT individuals, people from disadvantaged backgrounds, survivors of trauma or loss, and those at risk of social isolation. For example, its “Nip & Tuck” program has helped trans people alter clothing to make it fit and flatter them in a way that off-the-rack clothing doesn’t for non-standard bodies. They firmly believe in the transformative power of weaving and the creative arts as tools for healing, personal development, and community building.
A woman from the Ban Nai Nang community holds a group of banana leaves.
The Ban Nai Nang Tourism Community is a collective initiative aimed at promoting sustainable tourism while preserving the rich cultural heritage and natural beauty of the area. Located in southern Thailand, this Muslim-majority area has harnessed tourism to protect its mango forests and promote local industries. Visitors can experience various local enterprises such as beekeeping, mixed farming, food processing, coastal conservation, and the blue swimming crab bank, giving them a glimpse into traditional Thai life, characterized by peaceful living, hospitality, and self-sufficiency.
For tourism to thrive in destinations, communities in those destinations must also thrive. By highlighting organizations like the ones mentioned above and infusing more community-based tourism offerings into your travel product, locals will be empowered to take care of their communities, travelers will have a more enhanced experience, and the future of the industry will be more protected.