What Hinders Community Participation in Tourism Development

1.1 PROBLEM STATEMENT

The participation of local communities in tourism development process is seen as an important means of ensuring sustainability and success of tourism as a socio-economic activity. This follows that community in any tourism destination is a key determinant of the final tourism product offering since the success of any tourism activity, to a greater extent, depends on the goodwill of the community. In addition, owing to the fact that residents of a destination area are the ones who enjoy the benefits or suffer its evils, their involvement in the decision making process is crucial if success in tourism is to be achieved. Nevertheless, there are a number of factors that hinder active participation of local communities in tourism development.

Local community participation in tourism development often occurs in a very haphazard manner especially in the developing countries where no functional frameworks have been put in place to encourage active participation of residents in matters that affect their lives. As noted by Rosener (1982), citizens tend to participate only when strongly motivated to do so, and most of the time they are not motivated. This mainly arises from the belief that their ideas will not be considered, which does not motivate them to express an interest and indeed many poor people, which is a key characteristic of many tourist destinations in developing countries, often act with fear of making objections which could be used against them at a later date. In this regard, the current style of tourism development has increased alienation among many local populations and quite often, it is this kind of alienation that causes local people to be apathetic which causes low level of awareness about potential and current costs and possible benefits of tourism development. Ultimately, alienation of local people often stops them from having sufficient knowledge about the nature of tourism development in their locality.

In a nutshell, apathy...