Abstract:
Community
-
based tourism
(CBT) is
intended
mainly
for the
underprivileged
communities,
and it is
viewed
as a form of
tourism development that must be initiated, planned, owned, controlled and
managed by the local community members towards the achieveme
nt of their needs and wishes. CBT
takes environmental, social and cultural sustainability into account, and it is imperat
ive that community
members, regardless whether they are directly involved or not in tourism endeavours, gain some form
of benefit as well. The main objective of this article is to formulate guidelines towards improving the
economic sustainability of commun
ity
-
based tourism projects in the Thabo Mofutsanyana district of the
Free State province.
The primary goal of the study was to investigate the sustainability of financial
investment in Community
-
based tourism projects in the Thabo Mofutsanyana municipality
.
The
significant results that the study revealed
indicate that some CBT projects failed mainly because of a
lack of proper planning and ineffective financial management by the government. In some cases,
the
communities were
excluded from the initial plan
ning phases of projects, while training programmes to
capacitate the community were
also
inadequate. The major challenge in the sustainability of CBT
projects in the area was the provision of sufficient seed funding for the projects, hence the respondents
believe that
other donor agencies should be
exploited
to curb the f
unding issue. The study provides
guidelines on how to improve the economic sustainability of CBT projects
–
not only in the study area,
but also in other similar type of areas
.
