Community based tourism

Community based tourism

Community based tourism schemes, or even community-based, as our spell checker insists, are commonly referred to in the trade as CBTs and have become a popular buzz phrase in recent times. As the title suggests, they refer, in theory, to small-scale, relatively low-key tourism initiatives set up and run by local residents – family groups or villagers, for example. Certain projects are created entirely by enterprising locals, while others may rely on funding, advice and management from NGOs. The latter may also be local or larger-scale, international organisations. (Local organisations may often include, for instance, the local tourism authority, so are not always actually non-governmental as such.) Our examples below include both kinds of CBT schemes.

In theory, this is a great idea. They are often located outside of mainstream destinations, so they help to spread the financial benefits of tourism and create alternative employment opportunities where few may have previously existed. Furthermore, being small-scale, they generally help to limit the impact, both social and environmental, that tourism has on the particular area and hopefully help to enlighten local residents in the practices of sustainable tourism and environmental protection. It’s thus clear why community-based tourism projects have become so popular in the field of responsible tourism.

In reality, it isn’t always so straightforward and frankly, for every successful project, we’ve seen at least one failure. We’re thinking, for example, of one particular scheme All Points East assisted with, which was set up by a village headman in Laos’s very remote Attapeu Province.  With some fibreglass kayaks that he’d somehow obtained and a few local lads he’d trained, we ran a kayaking trip up the picturesque Sepian River, including a stop for a riverbank picnic and a hike to a scenic waterfall. A great day out and one that we declared happy to include on future tours, so we willingly invested in some essential equipment for him, such as life jackets and dry bags.  On our subsequent trip to Attapeu, we were, however, rather put out to see that all said materials had mysteriously disappeared. Although legally, we are obliged to conform to Lao, rather than UK safety regulations, life jackets were a minimum, so we unfortunately had to drop the day tour.

While such schemes are intended to benefit local communities, rather than foreign NGOs, the former may not always have the experience and management skills required to run them. Without being patronising, the headman of a small and very remote Lao village knows about rice farming but can hardly be expected to be an expert on international tourism. This would be particularly problematic as the project gets started or if visitor numbers are initially low, as, if it does prove successful, then there would be a point where the financial benefits become clear while the local staff have accrued experience. The experience and expertise, as well as financial support of larger, perhaps more professional organisations, may well be required, but this needs to be done carefully. Locals have to be involved at various levels as…this is ‘their village and their river’! There’s a fine line between assistance and interference, or at least perceptions thereof.

From a tour company’s point of view, reliability is key. We need to be confident that, having booked a visit, sometimes months in advance, local staff and facilities will be ready and prepared when our visit eventually happens.  Unfortunately, this means we can’t always include what at first sight appear to be some great initiatives, particularly in remoter, less-visited areas. While those are precisely the sort of areas we like to include, it is often a case of sticking to less-local, local schemes, so to speak, to ensure reliability and consistency of the experience.

Below are a few of the schemes that become regular fixtures on our various Southeast Asia tour programmes. We do continually look and try out new projects we come across, so hopefully, plenty more will be added in the near future. Note that we’ve just found room in this post to describe a few such projects and you will come across more schemes already in place on our Indonesia and Vietnam itineraries, for example. (They’ll have to wait for a follow-up post.)

Polonnaruwa, Sri Lanka

This fantastic scheme we’ve recently added to our Sri Lanka tours takes place in Polonnaruwa District and includes a boat tour of the nearby lake, followed by an ever-popular cook-your-own-lunch idea. Not even in a village as such, the project appears to involve 2 or 3 families of subsistence farmers who’ve knocked up some bamboo shelters next to their homes to receive guests. We’re not sure where the idea came from or what assistance they may have had, although the daughter of the family we visited spoke fluent English and was doing a degree in accountancy, so she may have helped a bit. Rowing around the picturesque lake was fun with birdlife and monitors amid the lotus flowers and the lunch was sumptuous. It’s not a full-on cookery class as such, just a case of helping out with the preparation, which was perfect and offered a good contrast to the Polonnaruwa ancient city tour.

Prek Toal Community Based Tourism Project

We’ve been visiting Battambang’s Prek Toal village for a long time now and indeed, have covered this excellent scheme in a few earlier posts on our travel blog. Basically, the community based tourism project is twofold; firstly, offering village homestays and tours of the adjacent bird sanctuary and secondly, founding a workshop to create products by weaving the dried stems of invasive water hyacinth plants that infest the region’s rivers. The Saray CBET project (that’s community-based ecotourism) is run by an Australian NGO, Osmose, which, if we understand correctly, is in turn assisted and funded by the Australian government.

The birding tours have featured in some of our private, tailor-made tour itineraries, while a visit to the weaving shop and workshop is included in every Siem Reap to Battambang boat trip appearing on our Cambodia and Laos and Cambodia tours.

Cottage Industries Tour, Battambang

Also located in Cambodia’s Battambang Province, but a very different style of community tourism scheme, is our half-day cottage industries tour in Ek Phnom District. The first incarnation of this tour – over 20 years ago, when Battambang saw very few foreign visitors – consisted of an Aussie English teacher we knew, organising a bunch of his students to take our groups on scooter tours of town. Today, it’s become one of the most popular activities in Battambang and there are a number of outfits (still often staffed by English-speaking students) offering a variety of tours by bicycle or tuk-tuk. True to the name, the tour consists of various visits to homes or workshops of local families producing a variety of products such as sun-dried bananas, rice paper for spring rolls, rice liquor, etcetera. It’s an organically grown, grassroots scheme that’s hugely popular with visitors, provides cash, employment and language practice for local students and would-be guides and provides additional income for the families. You can find more details and photos on an earlier cottage industries post.

Ban Khok Muang, Buriram

Another very good cook-your-own lunch scheme created by a family in Khok Muang Village of eastern Thailand’s Buriram Province. Again, it’s not a cookery class as such; they’ll talk you through one of the dishes and you’ll just help the family with general preparation, so you don’t need to devote an entire morning or afternoon to the visit. As far as we could ascertain, the lunch (or dinner if you prefer) and an adjacent homestay are the only elements to this project, so it’s not part of a larger scheme and appears to be another genuinely grassroots project. The village is a typical small rural community in a somewhat remote part of the country, rather off the main tourist routes, although it does possess an excellently preserved 11th-century, Angkor-period temple in nearby Prasat Muang Tam, which does draw a few of the more adventurous kind of tourists. (The better-known site of Phanom Rung is around 8 kms north of here.)

The Khok Muang lunch extravaganza features on both our Thailand World Heritage and Thailand and Laos tour, Emerald Triangle. (Again, more details and photos appear in an earlier blog post.)