ABSTRACT
It is nearly an unchallenged truth that the long-term success of tourism development depends first and foremost on the support of the host community. Indeed, for many concerned with the sustainability of the places where tourism activities take place, as well as the tourism sector itself, one of the most central and complex issues is the role of members of the host community in tourism development. Concerns about this role extend beyond seeing community members as key allies in terms of crafting, shaping and supporting the tourism experience to assessing their part in the process of planning the tourism development in the first instance. These, of course, are complex issues, and critiques of tourism planning processes abound. Researchers have begun to challenge us to ask tough questions about unthinking and uncritical endorsements of tourism planning that ‘engages’ the community. For instance, Blackstock (2005) asked: What or who is ‘the community’ in community-based tourism? Reed (1997; see also Mair and Reid 2007) asked: How are these planning processes developed, and who has the real power to make decisions and affect change? Deeper considerations tackle questions related not just to the degrees or types of involvement, but even more fundamentally in terms of the broader context that shapes the capacity of community members to participate in the planning process and how that might change over time. For example, Wray (2011) wonders about the impact of the socio-political context within which all tourism planning endeavours must be located.
