How should We Developed Community based Tourism Planning?

Ok, last question. So aiming for sustainable tourism, how should we develop a community based tourists planning and less community benefit from the local tourism industry? It’s interesting because in the duty familiar with the sustainable development goals of the United Nations, there are a few that are specifically focused around tourism. And one of them, I think it’s fifteen, if I recall correctly, talks exactly about this subject. It says that tourism should be targeting, especially in developing countries. It should be targeting disadvantaged groups. These are people who may be poor, they may be unemployed, they could be women or could be minority groups, they could be disabled, for example.

so this is something about the fact tourism target,these group benefit opportunities for maybe poverty reduction, or to share resources So community based tourism planning is a critical part, because for example, I can give you a case in recently in the Philippines Barrack Island. You’ve probably heard of was closed down for six months. Now, the reason why was closed down was because of environmental concerns. But the interesting thing is that the community, the population of thirty five thousand people in the municipality has a twenty one percent poverty rate. And yet you have an island which is generating something like eight billion dollars a year in expenditure. Almost none of that stays in the community. All of that is exported out.

so the whole island was broke,simply, unclearful And so the the challenge is how do you bring the communities, especially the twenty one percent thirty five thousand is not a small number in, you know, how do you bring them in. So this means that you need to look at how you get your handicraft from for example, how do you take the tourists out into other parts of the municipality, aside from the island so that they can provide benefits. How do you encourage local production of fruits and vegetables and meats rather than bring it from outside. So those are the sort of challenges that are involved. And that means that you have to actually engage the communities in the planning process.

You have to find where they can engage in the supply chain. And you have to adjust the supply chain to make sure that there’s room for them. And so that’s the challenge and quite a big challenge across the whole region of community based tourism. And that’s one of the reasons why one of is targeted specifically at that courtesy of the United Nations World Tourism Organization.

Yes, I agree with that entirely. You see, if you look at the tourism literature an enormous amount is written about sustainability, there’s no agreement of what it is and how you achieve it. And now we collectively use the description stakeholders. And what Ludwig says absolutely right. Because really the impacts of tourism should be where tourism takes place. And mostly it takes place in an urban environment or in a village environment. The real question is, you know, does that bring benefits or is it too little? Does it create jobs? Does it create income? And example Barrat suggests it doesn’t do very much at all. But then you have the other problem is a social problem.

You know, it’s because very often in development we were concerned only about economics development. And of course governments are always concerned about this. But you mentioned earlier on about carrying capacity. So you know, we as planners, we agree on one thing, I think this is a universal agreement is that if you don’t get the support and backing of the community, I don’t think tourism is sustainable because people become antagonistic towards tourism. They say where are the benefits and I’m getting all the disbenefit, litter and noise and bad behavior, not just in developing countries, developed countries as well.

So then you’re looking at balance, I come back to in the points is making nothing in the first question was that you’ve got to look at tourism in a balanced sense. It’s not just economic and social environment. And you know, again, another thing we I think agree on, I think came out of the the real conference was that, you know, we have to look at economic benefits, social benefits, and cultural benefits. And we all agree, but to try and do it sustainable, trying to build it into a sustainable plan is a real challenge. That is not going go away.

But one thing we have an advantage of by studying tourism, particularly developing countries right around the world, we have good ideas now of what works and what doesn’t work. And that’s a big, big advantage. But I’d agree with what Ludwig said. You know, if you don’t have a support of the community, you’re not going to have sustainable tourism. And maybe I could just add another note to that one of the sustainable development goals is about sustainable production and consumption. Now that’s about it says we have to change the way we produce and the way we consume and the waste, the whole instead of moved from waste management to resource management is the concept that engage that requires local communities.

Because what it means is that we have to produce more locally. So did you don’t have the packaging in the transportation costs in the carbon footprint that goes with that. Things like handicraft, for example, food production, right? Where it can be done? Obviously, not everything is possible, but that’s the way that you need to think. So the local communities are crucial to achieving that goal. if it’s not a critical point site, if that doesn’t happen, not only will we not get to the sustainable development globally, but what will happen it will be unsustainable and all the consequences to the planet? Thank you for sharing.

In China, I think this topic is extremely important, because, you know, our Chinese government has launched this a specific program. So tourism play an important role in local economic development. So benefit from your sharing, I think before we do tourism planning, we need to carefully think about what they need, how should the tourism will bring to them. And after tourism planning, we need to carefully evaluate what the impact to them has beennot only economically, but also environmentally and even are ecologically. Thank you so much for today’s interview.