What is Community Tourism

What is Community Tourism?

Community Tourism is tourism owned and led by communities, who decide how it’s developed and delivered, how benefits are reinvested, and how it strengthens local livelihoods and culture.

Community Tourism is tourism that is owned, led, and delivered by communities, including tourism experiences provided by social enterprises, cooperatives, nonprofits, Indigenous-owned businesses and other similar organizations. While these models may look different, they share a common principle: communities have decision-making power over tourism, and reinvest its benefits into the local community.

Simply put, Community Tourism is tourism designed to create value for communities, not just visitors.

How It’s Different

Mainstream Tourism	Community Tourism
Communities “take part” in tourism experiences designed by others	Communities design and lead tourism experiences
Ownership may sit with private operators or outside investors	Ownership and governance sits with the community, through cooperatives, nonprofits, social enterprises, and similar community owned-and-led organizations
Tourism businesses build the experience	Communities and Travel Partners build it together
Tourism revenue and other benefits may leave the community	Benefits are retained locally and contribute to community priorities

You Can’t Always Tell By Looking

Picture a small restaurant in a tourist area, the kind of place tour groups are typically brought to …

It looks local. It might even be staffed by people who live nearby. But decision-making power can sit somewhere else entirely, with a corporation based on the other side of the world, and the money you spend may leave the community as fast as it arrived.

You cannot see that difference by looking at a menu or a storefront. What matters is who decides, who benefits,  and where tourism income is reinvested. That’s what distinguishes Community Tourism from tourism that  simply looks local.

A Few
Things to Remember:

01.
Community Tourism is about who decides, not what you experience as a visitor.
02.
Looking local and being locally owned are not the same thing.
03.
Community Tourism is led by many kinds of organizations, cooperatives, nonprofits, social enterprises, not just informal or individual ownership.
04.
The goal is for benefits to stay in the community, not just pass through it.
05.
There is no single model. Every community defines its own model on its own terms.

Mto wa Mbu Cultural Tourism Enterprises, Tanzania

What Do We  Mean By “Community”?

A community isn’t defined by geography alone. It can be connected by territory, identity, culture, livelihood, or shared purpose: Indigenous Peoples, rural villages, women’s groups, farmer and artisan networks, youth organizations, and conservation groups among them. Migrants and newcomers can be part of a community’s identity just as much as people  born there. 

These groups participate in tourism through enterprises or associations owned and led by the local community, such as cooperatives, nonprofit organizations, social enterprises, and majority Indigenous-owned small or micro-enterprises. 

The structure varies by context. What stays consistent is that decision-making and benefits sit with the community itself, not with an outside operator or investor.

Community Tourism in Practice

For more than two decades, Planeterra has worked alongside communities and the tourism industry to make this approach work in practice.

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Community Positive Framework

Learn how Planeterra is working with communities, researchers, and the tourism industry to define Community Tourism and measure equitable tourism impact.

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