Community Based Tourism: An Analysis of consumer Behaviour

Abstract

As one of the global economic success stories, tourism has experienced continued growth to become one of the largest and most competitive economic sectors in the world. But this success has been often counterbalanced by the negative impact of unplanned growth of mass tourism, which jeopardizes the sustainability of environment and damages economic and socio-cultural structure of a region. As a result, academics, practitioners & advocates of sustainable development often propose Eco tourism as the future avenue of the sustainable tourism. At the same time, for Eco tourism to be an ideal instrument for sustainable development, there is a growing need to address the interest and benefits of local communities and their active participation in tourism activities. Like mass tourism also eco tourism treats local communities as passive receiver of tourism impacts rather than active player to be involved and participate in the process of tourism development. So this paper throws light upon a modified version of sustainable eco tourism, community based tourism (CBT), which focuses on the protection of host communities’ socio-cultural values, ensuring their active participation in tourism development, conservation of natural environment along with generating economic benefits. Literature provides that Consumer or tourist behavior is the pivotal point of planning and promotion of any tourism services. Tourists are influenced in their decision making processes by many push and pull motivating factors when they choose their holiday destinations. This paper diagnoses sampled tourists’ behaviour pattern to develop and manage the newly emerged concept of community based tourism. The study has analyzed the tourist behavior pattern to identify the critical factors in developing and managing CBT in a destination. Questionnaire based survey method is used for this purpose.