Community-Based Tourism (CBT): A Community Development Tool

Community-based tourism (CBT) has often been viewed as a community development tool for alleviating poverty and improving community lifestyle standards. The mention of community-based tourism was seen in the 1970s and started to get attention in the 1990s. In community-based tourism, the locals have full authority and ownership of tourism businesses, ensuring that tourism's financial benefit stays in the local economy. Community-based tourism is associated with other forms, such as pro-poor, sustainable, alternative, and rural tourism. This paper presents an overview of community-based tourism with the help of a rigorous search of secondary information. The findings of this study include the concept of CBT, factors facilitating CBT, challenges of CBT development, and the role of CBT in the development of the local community. This paper expounds that the development of community-based tourism has a massive contribution to local employment creation, increase in local income, improved knowledge and skill of locals, and increase the local standard of living. Keywords: Community based tourism, CBT, Factors facilitating CBT, Challenges of CBT, Community participation, Empowerment DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/15-17-01 Publication date: October 31 st 2023