Local | PANORAMA

North America

Our Resilient Neighbourhood

Carolin

Hoffmann

Site selection and socio-environmental analysis

Community integration and co-creation process

Participatory practical workshops to transform the space and to promote financial and environmental education

Feedback workshops and maintenance of the park

West and South Europe

Hydrological restoration in drained fen peatlands

Cyr

Mestdagh

West and South Europe

Hydrological restoration in drained fen peatlands

Cyr

Mestdagh

Strong sense of community

A benefit sharing mechanism and the cooperation can only happen when the villagers have a strong sense of community and trust one another.

- Tour operators and travel agencies tend to send guests to 1-2 particular homestays and/or using the same service providers to ensure the consistent service quality throughout all bookings. A task force allows its members to work together to improve the quality of homestay and other services for consistency in the delivery of services and products.
- A local coordinator is needed in case of a tourism task force, for communication and for booking allocation among homestays. This coordinator must be trusted and transparently elected among the members. Together with booking allocation, a benefit sharing mechanism should also be deployed to make sure that the community also gets the indirect benefits from community tourism. For instance, a community fund takes 5-10% of revenue to support common affairs in the village.

Cooperation at the grassroot level may only work without a formal structure when it is organised within a community with a strong connectedness among its members. The bonding among community members enables a trusted relationship and supportive environment. It also allows amicable settlements in case of disputes or conflicts. The local coordinator should also be trusted in the community as (s)he is perceived to inherently have an advantage of knowing the booking information first-hand and being able to assign the service providers.

Despite the difference in the result of this activity, people in both PAs tend to be positive that it still contributes to the ongoing process of establishing community tourism. As pointed out throughout two workshops, the biggest concern of the local members is still the formality of such institutions, be it a network at the inter-regional level like Ecotourism Cluster Network or an association at the grassroots level like Community Task Force.

Inception phase

Local

Participatory Bottom-up Approach

In order for the initiative to harness community members’ participation and reflect their opinions, it needs to start at the grassroots or village’s level by forming a “task force” consisting of key local ‘champions’. Instead of a meeting at the high level (with local authorities and PA management boards and only a few representatives from the villages), small workshops at the local level were organised to facilitate the visioning of tourism at the early stage. Once the community has a clear vision of how they want tourism to look within their village, they would have a direction to move forward. With this approach, having a Tourism Task Force at the community level is crucial to continue the sustainability and the momentum built during the project to enhance nature conservation and promote local well-being through tourism.

Through the workshops, the following points have been discussed and determined:

Mobilising resource persons (key ‘champions’) in each village involving in the tourism development in each PA
Identifying a representative / coordinator of the Task Force
Clarifying the expected roles and responsibilities of the Tourism Task Force
Identifying the action plan with key actions to carry out for 2023

The participatory approach encourages local members’ participation but it can also demotivate them in case there is one strong negative feedback. In this exercise, two workshops were organised, only one was considered successful. It was observed that during the ‘unsuccessful’ workshop, the voice of one Village Head was very strong, making other members hesitant with the initiative although they seemed supportive in the beginning. At the community where the successful workshop took place, people have the same level of understanding about tourism and are bonding over the joint benefits of their community.

Inception phase

Local

Southeast Asia

Community Task Force fostering community involvement in local tourism management

Planeterra International

Foundation

Participatory Bottom-up Approach

Strong sense of community

Product Refinement and Testing

After the training was completed and the tour itineraries were designed, community members at Cuc Phuong National Park and Van Long Nature Reserve were ready to put their newly acquired skills to the test.

Instead of hosting familisation trips with tour operators, organising pilot excursions with real visitors would create more meaningful and practical impacts for the communities. By hosting these pilot excursions, community members would have the opportunity to be exposed to different markets and to be able to practise their activities in real-life circumstances.

In that sense, two immersive itineraries were proposed, targeting both international and domestic audiences residing in Hanoi who are incentivised to pay a 50% package rate as a donation for the communities in the protected areas and contribute to their development.

As the local champions are mostly new to tourism, it takes time for them to get used to the concept, understand what community tourism really means and start learning basic skills to welcome tourists. Even when the tour itineraries were designed and looked good on paper, it does not mean that the tour is ready for the market. Bringing in tour operators in this early stage can do more harm than good. Therefore, test trips allowed product feedback and skill improvement before introducing them to the market.

In Van Long, the visitors were impressed with the hospitality of the local people, and appreciated the training provided to the local communities by the Project. Alongside the highlights, some improvements were also pointed out. For instance, additional or feasible experiences can be expanded when the local hosts are more familiar with welcoming guests; or the timing and route of the boat ride can be adapted depending on the season and visitors.

In Cuc Phuong, Khanh villagers have been welcoming guests trekking from the Bong centre of the Park for a long time. Therefore, it took them little time to be able to organise the new experience, which is the cooking class in combination with a hiking experience. As the itinerary was designed to reduce the reliance of the village on the Park’s tourism, the route where the hiking and vegetable picking is conducted lies outside of the Park’s territory.

Inception phase

Implementation

Local

Encouragement of Product Ownership

During the training, many exercises were designed for the local community’s engagement. This is also a good way to get information from local people about their community. One of the exercises in tour itinerary development training encouraged participants to plan a full-day tour incorporating remarkable landscapes and food within their local area. However, it must be noted that the participants might have different views on what ‘remarkable’ or ‘beautiful’ is.
Training workshops also offered a good opportunity to identify ‘local champions’ who willingly initiate the delivery of tourism services and products within their communities. An assessment of infrastructure conditions and strengths / unique features was conducted to see how their stories feed into the overall theme / routes of the itineraries (majority of which was built upon the inputs of the training participants).
Not only the excursion activity but the storytelling was also important in delivering / conveying the message to customers. The training participants / ‘local champions’ were asked to create an outline of what they want to introduce to the guests.
Complete tour itineraries were adjusted, finalised and ready for testing.

The initially designed itineraries feature both conservation work of the PA and the community. However, the residents' knowledge of the conservation side was not sufficient for tour guidance. Therefore, the focus was shifted to the community aspect of the tour itineraries. This approach allows visitors to learn about the life of local communities in harmony with nature in the PAs while highlighting the conservation work at the grassroots level. The community members are also more confident in telling their own story from their perspective.

Most participants were still hesitant to engage in tourism initiatives without initial support in finance. In this case, having local champions who proactively showed their interest in initiating something new in the community really helped. Oftentimes, they might already have other livelihood tools, or the household’s finances are taken care of by their children or their spouse. It is those local champions who will play an important role in defining / shaping tourism in their community and being an example for other community members.

Inception phase

Implementation

Local

Contextualised training content

The project was designed with predefined training content in 3 topics: (i) Health & Safety; (ii) Itinerary and Product Development; (iii) Marketing & Promotion, intended for community tourism entrepreneurs, individuals interested in working in tourism in the PAs and buffer zones, PA management and other personnel involved in PA management.
After conducting a baseline survey to understand the general local context and main actors in the community, the pre-designed training content was contextualised to fit with the main audience of the training workshops.
- Different stakeholders have incompatible learning ability. Therefore, the training content was simplified with separated content for communities and for households / individuals who want to dive deeper in the topics.
- Contextualisation also helps in bringing the knowledge closer to the participants.
- As young people go to work in the daytime, most participants of the training workshops were middle-aged. A conventional training method, which is one-way communication, does not work in this case. A facilitation planning in detail was made to make sure everyone feels engaged in the training. Some methods which were used include: group discussion, resource mapping, small games with scores and prizes, etc.

Local community members are introduced to community tourism, have an overview of basic skills needed to develop community tourism in the context of protected areas. For those who do not plan to engage in tourism soon, the training provides a perspective for community development so that they can confidently raise concerns about their community’s well-being and benefits if there is a private investor coming in the community.

When it comes to training in the community, a more interactive approach to create two-way dialogues and dynamics is needed. It was clearly observed that when given more chances to talk and a safe space to speak their mind, people are more likely to engage and take ownership of their initiatives. For example, when asked to map out their community’s resources available to offer tourists, one of the villages drew a map of their community with a clear vision of who-offers-what. Additionally, although the next step was not part of the training nor required outcome, the same villagers actively came up with their own action plan to create a safe atmosphere for tourists to enjoy the village’s beauty.

Inception phase

Local