Sustainable tourism planning and management for sustainable livelihoods

Abstract

Communities play an important role in the process of tourism development and their support is essential for the development, planning and successful operation of tourism development, and for attainment of sustainable livelihoods. Community-driven tourism projects are supposed to benefit the community and contribute to their livelihoods. However, the majority of community-driven tourism projects ultimately do not benefit communities because of poorly or mismanaged institutional structures. This paper presents a review of various planning and management strategies that have been used for community-driven tourism projects and also identifies some case studies where applications of some of these strategies have worked. Critical sustainable tourism indicators were adopted to provide the basis for a stakeholder-oriented model for community-driven tourism projects. Furthermore, an all-stakeholder-oriented model is proposed where the community is at the centre with an element of co-management with other sectors, bearing in mind the sustainability of communities’ livelihoods.