Community-based tourism in a degrowth perspective.

Abstract

Abstract This chapter highlights that despite the large body of existing literature on community-based tourism there is a lack of research adopting a degrowth perspective, as well as those conditions in which degrowth can happen in the case of community-based tourism. Based on the negligence of past research, the chapter explores the potentialities and limitations of community-based tourism experiences in Central America from the perspective of a socioecological transition. The chapter analyses three community-based tourism initiatives in three Latin American countries: Cooperativa Los Pinos (El Salvador), Ecoposada El Tisey (Nicaragua) and Stribrawpa (Costa Rica), and highlights both their commercial success and their potential to show possible emancipatory paths. In doing so, in-depth interviews were conducted with the members of the three initiatives, and systematization of their main characteristics and results, as well as the identification of the adopted strategies, were reviewed in order to be considered as examples for a debate on how tourism can be rethought in a degrowth perspective.