CONTOURS Vol 21, No 2 July 2011

Sustainable Tourism and CBT

‘Sustainable tourism’ has become part of the tourism discourse. However, the yardstick for assessing genuine sustainable tourism is whether it results in sustainable development, and enhances the habitat of local communities.

Those concerned with ensuring a tourism that is respectful of nature and culture will consider Community Based Tourism to be one of the best ways of implementing sustainable tourism.  It creates economic benefits for the local communities, assists with conserving resources, makes possible continuing interaction between tourists and the local people, helps with developing local capacity, and fostering greater community ownership.

Dr Peter Aderhold researching the German experience concludes that that those who might be interested in a holiday in a South destination, and would be happy ‘to stay in a small, simple hotel with typical local atmosphere’ providing ‘the closest possible contact with local people’ amounted to a sizeable 19 % of the 15.2 million potential German holidaymakers, or, more than 3 million people interested in CBT. The challenge is to develop a way forward in light of the limited availability of appropriate accommodation and destinations. In her article, Dr Kannapa Pongponrat laments how a major tourist destination such as Koh Samui in Thailand is poised to suffer ‘ a double death by sea; first by the beautiful sea that attracts unmanageable numbers of tourists, and the second by the pollution that will turn the tourists away’.  

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