Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Lessons learnt and critical issues
This review has found that the vast majority of CBTEs in southern Africa are
small enterprises with between one and ten rooms. The total capacity identified
was for 6531 people in either rooms, dormitories or camping areas, across 12
countries. Prices were generally budget, ranging between an average of US$10.23
to $39.08 per room. Occupancies were relatively low, and on average the enter-
prises had 885 visitors per year, and the average length of stay was 3.9 nights.
Many of the businesses were owned by individual entrepreneurs (52.3 per
cent) or by community trusts (29.4 per cent), which showed an encouraging level
of local equity. Landowners were often private individuals, companies, or proper-
ties were leased (45.4 per cent) or were on communal (31.7 per cent) or
community organization land (10.6 per cent). Half of the CBTEs reported that
the host community made decisions about how the enterprise was run, through
meetings, elected community trusts/committees, or using a village representative
or council. Playing an active role in decision making is very important in CBTEs
that are collectively owned, but not as relevant to individual entrepreneurs or
SMMEs from the community, which could be a reason behind this figure.
Several of the enterprises were able to provide very limited information about
their business. For example, 14 enterprises could not report how many visitors
they received during the past year. Key business limitations reported included
accessibility (90.8 per cent), market access (71.6 per cent), advertising (70.2 per
cent) and communications (57.3 per cent). Similarly, 22 of the enterprises could
not state how much money they spent locally each year. This has critical implica-
tions for the commercial viability of CBTEs operating in southern Africa. It is
clear that substantial efforts need to be made to provide training and small
business support to many struggling small businesses. Since more than half the
CBTEs have some form of external support from a third party, and yet these
problems were still widespread, and therefore it may be beneficial for a regional
capacity building programme to be considered. Only a small proportion of the
enterprises had the support of the private sector - either directly from a particular
accommodation enterprise, tour operator or tourism association - and this lack of
a 'mentoring' support base may be part of the problem. A key focus of NGO and
donor agency interventions should be building the business and tourism manage-
ment capacity of CBTE managers and employees. Where they have not
previously been implemented, business plans built on solid market research
should be used to establish the commercial viability of CBTEs. Also important,
and potentially controversial, should be the ability of CBTEs to accept that they
are unviable, if market research and business plans deem ventures to be commer-
cially unsound, and concentrate efforts on alternative livelihood activities instead.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that stakeholder institutions establish and then
support the operation of well-intentioned, but commercially unsound commu-
nity-based tourism ventures, in the name of 'capacity building'. Such a
condescending attitude fails to respect the people living in 'beneficiary' communi-
ties, and certainly undermines any opportunity for sustainable development.
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