Winners and Losers: A Further Exploration and Reflection on the Influence of External Actors on Community-Based Tourism

Abstract

Community based approaches to development have been touted as alternative modes to achieve sustainable community development. As such, CBT resonates with the alternative development paradigm. This article examines the influence of external actors in community-based tourism. It argues that while it may be helpful to have external actors during the initial stages CBT ventures, the overbearing influence of foreign actors, especially when they engage in direct competition with local communities, can work against the attainment of holistic community development and may result in losers and winners which results quite often in communities becoming losers given the power, financial, experience, capacity and resource differentials between multinational operators and local communities. This article posits a framework containing principles of engaggement between communities and external partners: The principles include voluntarism, mutual learning, information sharing, trust-building, mutual respect, equality of partners, common cause, independence, zero tolerance to exploitation, joint-problem solving and survival and prosperity,

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n14p104