The Unsustainability of Community Tourism Donor Projects: Lessons from Zambia - Responsible Tourism: Critical Issues for Conservation and Development - page 302

The reasons for poor performance
The reasons given to explain the poor performance of community tourism are
similar and resound throughout the literature. Hitchens and Highstead (2005)
identify the major causes in Namibia as the isolation of community tourism from
the mainstream private sector, the remoteness from tourism routes, as well as
dependency on external support. Goodwin (2006a) also suggests that failure is
driven by a lack of commercial orientation, engagement with the private sector
and proximity to tourism centres. Additional reasons appear to be that commu-
nity projects had developed inappropriate tourism facilities and enterprises were
in competition with national parks for business. Analysis in South Africa also
highlighted the fact that community enterprises may not be well positioned to
compete against state-supported protected areas and private ventures making
tourism a risky strategy (Turner, 2006).
An examination of community tourism case studies from Namibia, Uganda,
St Lucia, Ecuador and Nepal also identified critical factors of access of the poor
to markets and commercial viability (Ashley et al, 2001). This review of experi-
ence also highlighted the importance of institutional and policy frameworks and
implementation challenges in the local context. The main obstacles to a commu-
nity-based heritage trail in Uganda that was strongly supported by donors,
government and traditional cultural institutions included a low level of develop-
ment and lack of skills in communities in poor rural areas and limited
international tourism arrivals (Holland et al, 2003). A study of the Amadiba horse
and hiking trail in South Africa also stressed that a lack of skills in communities
imposed real limitations on collective and participatory forms of management as
professional skills and specialist knowledge of the tourism market were needed for
successful enterprise development (Ntshona and Lahiff, 2003). These findings
are reinforced by a review of 54 community tourism enterprises in Namibia
which concluded that ' the starting point of many communities in terms of their under-
standing, social and institutional organization and capacity to manage community
tourism effectively appears extremely low ' (Hitchens and Highstead, 2005, p2). A
review of five community tourism initiatives in the Windward Islands of the
Caribbean identified similar key constraints including a lack of management
capacity and market research, poor marketing and weak institutional arrange-
ments (CANARI, 2004).
A few studies argue that the challenges in community tourism development
must be seen from a broader political economy perspective. Turner (2006)
explores the historical legacies of exclusion and dispossession and shift to liberal-
ization and democratization in his study of community tourism in the Makuleke
region of South Africa. Duffy (2002) highlighted that the constraints working
against the success of community tourism in Belize were inextricably linked to
wider processes that continue to marginalize the Mayan communities involved.
Manyara et al (2006, p30) assert that community tourism is used as an additional
conservation strategy in Kenya and therefore ' reinforces the anachronistic colonial
model of tourism development. '