Behind the masks: Tourism and community in Sardinia (original) (raw)
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Community involvement in tourism: exploring the place image guided by the locals
Cuadernos Europeos de Deusto, 2021
This paper is intended as a contribution to the debate on tourism sustainability and the need to involve local communities in planning practices, key to sustainable tourism. The community-based approach has been widely theorized and used in projects of sustainable tourism development, because it tends to maximize the participation of local population from the earliest stages of development and affect tourism policies, while also responding to the changing needs of contemporary tourists, especially in terms of development of niche and special-interest tourism. The only exception is in the construction of the tourist imaginary: the involvement of the community in this fundamental sphere has always been scarce, with the result that often there is a strong imbalance – even dissonance – between the image promoted through the marketing, that continuously re-shaped by the locals and that experienced by the tourists. This contribution will explore the creation of tourism imaginary as negoti...
Sinergie Italian Journal of Management, 2021
Purpose of the paper: The paper aims to study the role of community participation in an Italian marginal area in contributing to the social innovation phenomenon in which residents focus their economic efforts on tourism development. It aims to verify if community participation may enhance the tourists' perception of authenticity and the safeguarding of local resources. Methodology: The authors present a theoretical framework and a case study of Marettimo, an Italian village. The paper analyses the interrelationships between authenticity and community participation and the community role in safeguarding local resources within the tourist's "living like a local" experience. Findings: Community participation is seen as a relevant and significant factor in facilitating the interaction between the tourist and the place, and as a meaningful drive to strengthen both tourist perception of authenticity and its attachment to the place. Practical implications: The paper highlights how local communities and tourism actors, may coordinate to create "authentic" tourist experiences. In this context, the paper presents and prescribes the role of community participation and authenticity to make stakeholders feel the importance of not only becoming place ambassadors but also place resources safeguards. Limitations of the research: As for all case studies, the findings highlighted in this paper may be difficult to generalize to other rural and fishing areas without a further process of adaptation. Originality of the paper: The proposed framework fills the gap in the role of community participation particularly in those areas with environmental and anthropological resources that can create tourist place attachment but, at the same time, are characterized by depopulation and limited welfare conditions as well.
Localization in Europe's Periphery: Tourism Development in Sardinia
European Planning Studies, 2003
As a part of the south Italian Mezzogiorno the island of Sardinia is one of the most peripheral and least favoured regions in the European Union (EU). This article deals with the strategies that have been pursued to restructure the Sardinian economy during the post-war period. In particular, focus is on experiences with local tourism development. After a sketch of the key features of Sardinia, the fruitless top-down strategies of the Italian government to industrialize the island are discussed. After that, the efforts of local parties to promote tourism that builds upon locality-specific assets are analysed. Furthermore, the effects of this localized approach for Sardinia have been generally positive. Moreover, the growing interest among tourists for Sardinia's natural and cultural heritage offers perspectives for bottom-up tourism development as well. Here, however, it is important to balance the short-run benefits of tourism with the possible costs of long-term environmental and socio-cultural degradation. For the future development of Sardinia, therefore, 'eco-tourism' might be an additional tool worth considering in the island's present localized tourism strategy.
Communities in Tourism Development (Working paper)
Participatory tourism development continues to be considered as a promising strategy for sustainable development and poverty reduction. However, even supposedly sustainable models of tourism development have not significantly altered local communities’ standpoint from objects of tourism to controllers of tourism. The current challenges in local participation reveal the growing need to question the authority relationships between social scientists, tourism developers and local communities and to find better ways to reduce social exclusion through and within tourism development. The purpose of this theoretically oriented working paper is to discuss the different roles of economically marginalized communities in participatory tourism development. The approach adopted in this paper draws from postcolonialism’s critique towards ‘West’ objectifying the ‘Rest’ in its theories and practices on tourism and development. This paper suggests that promotion of local participation in tourism requires knowledge that is relevant to real life and space and political commitment to the ideal of social construction of development. This draft forms a part of author’s dissertation which aims to contribute in the discussion about the role of local knowledges in tourism development by drawing on ethnographic and participatory action research made on rural tourism development in Nicaragua. Keywords: tourism, development, poverty, community, postcolonial
2000
In recent decades tourism development has expanded on most Mediterranean islands. Focusing on the island of Crete, this study recognises tourism as a highly visible and controversial component of change. The existence of the necessary infrastructure, the natural beauty, the climate, the culture and the history have contributed to tourism expansion, with Crete now attracting approximately 25 percent of foreign tourist arrivals and 55 percent of the total foreign exchange earnings of Greece. The perceptions of the local community in tourism were studied using personal interviews with three community groups: local authority officials, residents and tourism business owners and managers. The aim was to examine their views on tourism development, in an attempt to establish overall desired directions for tourism development and to suggest effective tourism strategies and policies to reinforce positive outcomes and alleviate problems resulting from previous unplanned tourism development. The research findings identify much agreement among the three community groups suggesting that it is feasible to further develop tourism with the support of the community. Although the areas used in the sample were in the maturity stage of Butler's (1980) life cycle model and therefore it might be expected that the community would be at the antagonism stage of Doxey's (1975) model, this was not suggested by the findings. Tourism is viewed positively as a development option, and further tourism development, with conditions attached, is supported. The expansion of tourism has brought economic gains, employment creation, increased population, enhanced community infrastructure and cultural and environmental preservation. However, there is limited co-ordination of tourism activities and insufficient collaboration between the public and private sector. In addition, the island is dependent on foreign tour operators, and the tourism industry is uneven geographically and seasonally. Tourism has modified traditions and has affected the environment and society. Since community perceptions match reality (what is on the ground from development), problems are real and it is necessary to find solutions for their amelioration. As a result, policy implications emerging from the results presented in this thesis are discussed and future strategies are suggested. Keywords: Community attitudes and perceptions, development, planning, Crete
Keys for approaching community-based tourism
Gazeta de Antropología, 2017
espanolEste articulo introduce una reflexion teorica sobre el concepto de turismo de base local, destacando su acusado caracter normativo. No obstante, los multiples estudios de caso disponibles reflejan una gran heterogeneidad y diversidad interna en las experiencias analizadas. Por todo ello, se insiste en la necesidad de estudiar empiricamente los factores y elementos que condicionan el desarrollo y sostenibilidad de este modo de organizar la actividad turistica, procurando establecer estrategias comparativas entre casos. Finalmente, se proponen diferentes perspectivas de analisis y enfoques de investigacion aplicados al turismo de base local que nos permitan profundizar solidamente en su conocimiento. EnglishThis article offers a theoretical reflection on the concept of community-based tourism, highlighting its markedly normative character. However, the multiple case studies available reflect a great deal of heterogeneity and internal diversity with regard to the experiences ana...
Community-based tourism: From a local to a global push
Acta Commercii, 2016
Orientation: World inequality is growing and tourism contributes to it; an alternative option is, therefore, needed towards a more just and redistributive approach to this industry.Purpose: The aim is to propose that there is a need to advance the tourism sector to be more in line with community-based tourism (CBT) principles and practices.Motivation of the study: The current tourism system exists within the more general neoliberal milieu. Alternative tourism forms are also often co-opted and circumscribed by a neoliberal framework. The issue is to a find a possible solution to advance a tourism development approach that enhances a decrease in inequalities.Research design, approach and method: The article is a review paper.Main findings: The results propose that the actual system of the tourism sector is in line with neoliberal milieu and does not militate against various inequalities (it, in fact, supports them). Therefore, a tourism development approach more based on CBT principle...
Towards a Typology of Community Participation in the Tourism Development Process
1999
Although the notion of community participation in tourism originates from the general concept of community participation in development studies, the subject of the former seems to have evolved and popularized in isolation from the meaning and scope of its origin. This article reveals that such isolation has ushered in a rigid and simple paradigm of community participation in tourism. This is assumed to be of one form and has universal validity without considering the existence of the different circumstances at various tourist destinations. It is suggested that the concept of community participation should be re-considered in terms of an adaptive categorical paradigm, which incorporates a range of various forms of community participation. These forms of participation are outlined for a variety of abstract situations with the aim of illustrating the legitimacy of different forms of community participation in tourism.
TOURIST FORMS AND SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY: AN EXAMPLE OF RELATIONAL TOURISM IN SARDINIA
The diachronic and synchronic analysis of the dynamics and the tourist typologies puts in evidence problems and elements of crisis of the contemporary tourist phenomena. The actual situation returns a picture particularly faceted both as it regards the choices of the tourist, both for the one who creates the offer and it manages the question, and for the local societies that entertain the tourist flows. Tourism is increasingly seen as an industry that creates economies rather than a tool to regenerate urban and regional planning and indeed, often, the tourism policies are proving more oriented to the practices related to receptivity and so to the structures whether to consume the vacations, rather than to create occasions, real and not symbolic, of comparison between tourist and local society. Besides, often the tourist forms that celebrate itself sustainable put in strong emphasis either the economic sustainability or that environmental, but is it enough to exclusively consider the economic and environmental processes to be able to affirm that a tourist form is sustainable? Can a sustainable tourism socially exist? Sardinia offers an interesting field of research to study the evolution of the tourist politics, above all in comparison to the relationships between tourist and local society, because it has been, and it is still, one of the destinations of trip more aspired both in the set of the international tourism and for the one who seeks niche forms, however the tourist politics, that have driven the development of the different forms, have been driven in meaningful way, during the years, from what that can be defined the tourist ideology. Tourist ideology is the whole politics and actions that conduct to superficial fruitions of the territories, to gentrification processes, to address only the tourists on some territories, to set attention only to the receptive practice. There are however some small but significant changes in tourism context in recent years, also remaining in the set driven by the tourist ideology, with the search of new forms directed mostly to the relationship between local society and tourist, through a diffusion of the tourist flows not only along the coastal areas but also toward to the more interior territories. The tourist knows that an authentic tourist experience doesn't exist, but there are only a series of games and scripts that can be interpreted, time for time, from who organizes and manages the tourist forms and even from the local societies. There is a need to go beyond the ways traced by the tourist ideology with the purpose to track new forms down where find again the principles of the "relational tourism", new and unexpected forms which tourists and local society can enter in contact in a not programmed and not etero-organized way, in which the optimal conditions to the "mutual vulnerability" among guest and hosts are created. Sardinia’s tourist territory, in reason for its complexity and the contemporary necessity to identify new touristic forms that don't pursue the principles of the tourist ideology, as optimal place offers itself to reason on the possibility to identify appropriate fields and cases of study for new relational forms that can support a social dialogue and that, through this, can support the perception of a new sense of the place. The case study presented is an example in this direction of sustainable integration between services and tourist forms, among tourists and local society.
A critical look at community based tourism
Community Development Journal, 2005
Community based tourism (CBT) could be one way of creating a more sustainable tourism industry. This article critically reviews the CBT approach in light of fieldwork in a North Queensland tourism destination. The literature on CBT has three major failings from a community development perspective. Firstly, it tends to take a functional approach to community involvement; secondly, it tends to treat the host community as a homogeneous bloc; and thirdly, it neglects the structural constraints to local control of the tourism industry. Attention to these issues could contribute to a more sustainable and equitable tourism industry.