Factors that facilitate and inhibit community-based tourism initiatives in developing countries

Abstract

A spectrum of operational, structural, and cultural conditions leads to the success or failure of community-based tourism (CBT) initiatives. Knowledge of these factors is crucial in the design, evaluation, and monitoring of CBT. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to identify the factors that facilitate and inhibit CBT in the natural areas of developing countries. A directed content analysis of 68 case studies from literature identified 25 external and 32 internal factors. Based on the 77 factors obtained, a methodology to evaluate CBT initiatives is proposed that can serve as a framework to (1) evaluate initiatives in terms of their feasibility for CBT, current performance, and issues to be solved by management; (2) compare the performance of various initiatives; (3) prioritize factors for the success of CBT; and (4) statistically analyse the relationships among factors. The paper concludes that although several previous studies identified success factors and barriers for CBT, surprisingly little work has been published to create a universal framework to evaluate CBT initiatives. Further research is suggested to explore the statistical relationships among the factors and to define the relative importance of each factor in the success or failure of CBT initiatives.

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