Community Based Tourism Progress Report - September 2006

A joint initiative between responsibletravel.com and Conservation International

We contacted 150 community based tourism organisations throughout July and August 2006 for the first phase of this programme. Organisations were identified through a combination of desk research, recommendation and direct contact from community based tourism projects that had received information about the programme via Conservation International, responsibletravel.com or world media (notified of the programme by two press releases).


Communication
The first major finding was how many of these organisations (17%) did not have functioning email addresses. A further 48%, while the email appeared to have sent successfully, did not return the questionnaire (out of these 3 responded to say they were not ready for the programme at this stage, and 1 project confirmed that it had closed). 35% completed and returned the questionnaire and of these 27 were approved to be included in the first phase of the programme (18% of total).

Questionnaire sent out	Email address not working	Email address working but questionnaire not returned	Questionnaire returned	Approved
150	25	72	53	27

Community ownership
Of the community based tourism projects that returned completed questionnaires, half were community owned and operated. The remaining half were a combination of community ownership of business and state owned land, independent party ownership of land but community owned business, land leased to community but to be owned by the community in a specified number of years, and other similar variations. Those which had no community claim on the land or business were not approved.

Occupancy levels
The majority of the community based tourism projects that responded to the questionnaire were already working with existing tour operators or tourism organisations. Only 13 were not. However, even those that were doing so were not showing strong evidence of success. Although the highest occupancy* was 95%, the lowest was 1% (excluding those that were just starting up and had not yet received any bookings) and for the majority it was around 5%. Figures were not always clear due to some community based tourism projects being based around homestays in a number of different villages.

Staying power
Over half the projects that returned questionnaires had started in the last 5 years and 79% in the last 10 years. The oldest project that fitted the community based tourism definition started in 1992. This finding may be an indication that many older projects have already closed due to lack of bookings.

Progress
We have now built pages on responsibletravel.com for the 27 community based tourism projects that were approved. We will be promoting these on the site, and begin to match them with tour operators with whom we have already established relationships.

*Occupancy calculated on an assumed stay of 5 nights per person, accommodation available 365 days a year

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