The Importance of Community-Based Tourism
This is a blog by Trove Associate Olivia Silverman-Franklin.
The future of a successful travel destination lies in the hands of those who live and work there. Locals are the main drivers of impactful experiences for tourists. Sure, tourists from afar come for the stunning views and unique food, but the impression from the people that actually live, breathe, and operate in the destination is what they’ll remember the most. But the underlying question is: how can tourism destinations ensure local communities are not left out of the narrative and establish a sustainable method that is equal to both tourist and local?
Hawaii has become an example for all to learn from. Hawaii, which became a U.S. state in 1959, has been facing numerous problematic concerns over the last few decades due to over-tourism. Many Hawaiian natives have been forced out of their original localities to make way for new infrastructure to accommodate the exponential growth of tourists visiting each year. In 2019 alone, Hawaii had an estimated 10 million visitors, whereas there are less than 1.5 million people that actually live on the islands. The capacity of tourists has blown out of proportion leaving locals increasingly frustrated.
The Hawaii Tourism Authority released a destination management action plan before the pandemic and had begun to be implemented. Unfortunately, their funding has begun to be dimished. As of right now, the responsibility has been put on the locals who operate and work at popular Hawaiian locations to implement their own rules and regulations to protect resident establishments and the community and sustainability elements of Hawaii.
In terms of resident sentiment, many locals across the islands have been sharing their emotional pleas for travelers to Hawaii to not come. HTA has begun to invest more and more into community building, with an announcement of a $2.9 million award just this month to support 86 community-based projects, festivals and events through its Community Enrichment program for 2022. In addition, HTA has planned - as part a broader campaign- to create new branding complete with education for the travel trade and visitors on how to sustainably vacation in the islands.
Organizations such as Sustainable Travel International have provided transformative action plans for destinations. Here are steps that your destination can take into consideration when re-evaluating your next tourism management strategy:
Including local communities in the conversation and decision-making
Balancing visitor growth and tourism development with locals
Forming jobs with livable wages and ensure that economic benefits go towards local communities.
Celebrating cultural heritage in an authentic way, not accommodating to those visiting.
Stimulate sustainable development and build community resilience.
We encourage every destination to let us review and analyze resident sentiment and their sustainabile tourism agenda. We have also done extensive work in gauging and changing visitor sentiment and behavior of the destinations they are traveling to and similar destinations. We have completed sustainable tourism marketing strategies to help destinations create content and marketing materials that incorporate sustainability and educate the visitor on how to sustainably interact with the community they are visiting. And lastly, we have worked to evaluate and integrate sustainable certification programs in local communities around the world. These are all important aspects to a community’s tourism development strategy and are central to Trove’s approach.