Responsible Tourism guru, Harold Goodwin, posted the dismal news that Community-Based Tourism (CBT) projects are overwhelmingly unsustainable in economic terms. He and his colleague, Rosa Santilli, gathered data from hundreds of experts in the field, identifying 116 CBT projects. 28 of those responded and only 4 were economically sustainable.Grim news.
Based on the findings, Goodwin makes seven recommendations to guide CBT projects. He also notes that there isn't a common working definition of what a CBT project is, and that the term is widely (mis?)used. Read his full post here.
I had my own thoughts about the problematic role of charity in all of this. When I queried Dave Martin at Bulungula about it, he replied with what essentially amounts to the same concern:My guess is that the bulk of the failed projects were set up using donor funding, while the successful projects were partly or fully privately funded. There's nothing like using your own money to make you efficient and profitable!Sobering information for NGO's and governments looking to leverage tourism for economic development and social transformation. In short: most CBT projects are setting communities up to be dependents of the state or of charity. Exactly the opposite of the desired goal.
What's missing in the equation is more transparent information. Many of the projects are set up and disappear without the players knowing about it.
ReplyDeleteSince the 2002 Financing Sustainable Tourism Conference I have argued that we need online directories of these initiatives. In this age of Wiki simplicity, this idea is simply a must. Donors need some encouragement to be more transparent, otherwise the failures will continue without anyone able to learn from the mistakes and therein lies the real shame.