Mekong River Homestays

Traditional agriculture and fishing practices in rural Laos are often unable to provide the income needed for households to cover all expenses. Because of this, communities are in need of alternative income opportunities in order to stay in their ancestral villages. Planeterra believes that the travel industry can provide such opportunities for remote areas in Laos, while also providing a platform for a cultural celebration. The Ban Pak Ngum and Ban Huay Tom communities along the Mekong River are made up of three Indigenous communities: Laos, Khmu, and Hmong.  Entering the tourism industry for the first time, the Mekong River Homestays were in need of training to create a meaningful experience for guests and hosts.

Maribojoc is a seaside community on the island of Bohol. There are 50 families that rely on fishing and farming for income. In 2013, Bohol was hit with a 7.2 magnitude earthquake, followed by typhoon Haiyan which devastated much of the country. During this time, many people in Maribojoc lost their homes. Gawad Kalinga, the Philippines’ largest non-profit organization, works to build homes for marginalized communities across the Philippines. Their social enterprise offshoot, Make A Difference Travel, has helped the community of Maribojoc develop the organization’s first community-run homestay.

The village of Ngadas is home to 1,898 people in central Java. Ngadas is inhabited by the Tengger tribe, who claim to be the descendants of the Majapahit princes. This community acts as the protectors of the mountain, Mount Bromo Volcano, one of the most sacred sites in Indonesia. Over the past few decades, the Tengger people’s land has been subjected to illegal logging activities by external parties, and younger generations have begun relocating to urban areas. This has caused a loss of cultural retention in the area, leaving the older generation to sustain themselves. The Tenggerese people rely mostly on subsistence agriculture as their main source of income; with changes to climate in recent years, crop yields have also varied. Ngadas village had been introduced to homestay programs by the local government as part of a community tourism development program. Unfortunately, the homestays were left widely unvisited by travellers despite the community’s unique culture.

Hilltribe trekking in Northern Thailand has been a popular tourist experience over the last 20 years; however, the product has not changed much and the most popular routes visited are saturated with limited benefits to the greater hill-tribe communities. There are several hill-tribe communities between Chiang Mai and the Myanmar border that have limited access to the tourism market as they are deemed too far and too remote to access by many tour operators. 

These communities mainly rely on subsistence agriculture as a primary source of income and utilize slash-and-burn agricultural techniques to farm their heavily forested areas. With unpredictable weather patterns, harvest and crop yields have become less consistent over time, and a means to develop alternative livelihood programs and income-generating activities for the remote hill-tribe communities is vital.