Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Evaluations consisted of a site visit, completion of a questionnaire, and entry
of that information onto an online database. In return, volunteers were paid
an honorarium for each assessment and their transportation and associated
expenses.
3
A proportion - 12 per cent - of the CBTEs were re-assessed by another
volunteer to ensure the reliability of data, and the validity of the evaluation
process.
Development of assessment materials
Since a central training programme for all volunteers was not feasible given the
logistics and budget for the research, assessment materials were developed to
assist the volunteers in the assessment process. These consisted of the following:
Introductory text
, explaining what the data collection was for; how communities
would benefit; what community-based tourism is; how institutions could get
involved; how volunteers could get involved; how volunteers could use the
website; downloads (i.e. the assessment and guidance materials); and links to
various websites and sources of information.
Guidelines to plan assessments
, including useful information that volunteers could
use to plan safe and interesting assessments. Suggestions were included regarding
how they should contact the enterprise (i.e. to see if they were interested in partic-
ipating, to ensure that they were still operating, and to arrange a site visit), how to
plan their travel, how to conduct the site visit, and how to enter the information on
an online database when they returned from the site visit.
The questionnaire
to be completed by the volunteers at each enterprise, to collect
information on:
•
the type of accommodation, facilities, tours and prices;
•
levels of quality and security;
•
how the enterprise benefited members of the local community;
•
skills and training needs;
•
how they advertised and marketed their product; and
•
how their customers made bookings.
The questionnaire went through several iterations and reviews by the project
team. Two pilot tests at CBTEs were conducted by volunteers in South Africa,
before a final version was produced. The content and evaluation criteria
addressed incorporated aspects of other tourism questionnaires previously devel-
oped by WorldHotelLink (WHL, 2005), a USAID study of CBTEs undertaken in
Zambia (Dixey, 2005), the Tourism Grading Council of South Africa (TGCSA,
undated a, undated b), and the WTO's Sustainable Tourism-Eliminating Poverty
(ST-EP) guidelines (WTO, 2004). The criteria included indicators that would
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