Sustainable Tourism to Community Tourism
Travel and tourism industry creates more and more jobs. Developing tourism leads to more and more employment opportunities and greater economic growth. A staggering 10 percent of the world’s GDP lies in tourism. But still many tourist areas across the world are restricting or even prohibiting travellers due to over tourism leading to overcrowds and destruction to their environment.
Here comes the relevance of Sustainable tourism. It is the tourism where the tourists travel and try to make a positive impact on the environment, society or the economy during their travel. UN declared 2017 as the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development. Tourism got featured in three of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Community tourism is a form of sustainable tourism where the tourists get a chance to connect very closely with the communities they visit. This improves the sustainability at the local level by increasing the financial and other benefits gained by the local communities. It is actually conserving and protecting not only the environment but also the local communities.
Local communities are more into jobs such as poaching or logging. Community tourism can be a steady source of income for them thus helping their livelihoods and they consider it as a pride to showcase and explain their culture. Natural resources and local communities are equally protected and encouraged by thus.
In most cases, travel is a passion. These travellers will be never satisfied with the mechanical trips where they go, see something and come back. The passionate ones need to know the real feel, culture and create deeper connection with the destination. Community tourism can help them as they can learn first-hand about the community from a local guide and get the real authentic experience.
Community tourism is believed to be the travel of the future. In this standstill condition of the industry due to covid-19, we need to think and take preparations for the development of the industry for the coming post-pandemic days.
The daily news report of increased confirmed cases, deaths and lock downs worldwide is affecting us mentally as well. The only positive news we are having in this time is the earth coming back to normal. High decrease in pollution, more dolphins visible, more flamingos flying are all blessings of this time. So after corona, while developing and restoring any industry, the first thing we will be concerned with is how to maintain and conserve the current situation of nature. Also the local communities are the highly affected due to lack of income or even no income. Both these can be protected by developing and encouraging community tourism. Thus we believe Community tourism is the travel of the future.
Image credits: www.unsplash.com
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