PRELIMINARY STUDY ON COMMUNITY TOURISM

It is a tendency to construct a tourist destination into a tourist community. This appears to be an appropriate approach to practice sustainable tourism development. Classic tourism, ecotourism and community tourism may be the three stages in tourism development. Classic tourism focuses on how to amuse people and to get best economic benefit. Ecotourism with the concept of sustainable development suggests what we should do in tourism development. Community tourism tells us how we can do to get sustainable tourism development. The differences among them are illustrated in the paper. Having analyzed the formation mechanism of tourist resources, the author investigates classification, stability, and evolution of tourist communities. The four types of tourist communities: natural resources based tourist community, policy oriented tourist community, economy based tourist community, and history sediment tourist community have different stabilities. The paper describes the feedback mechanism and relationship among tourist flows. It also discusses basic development principles of tourist community and points out that the optimization of the structures of a tourist community is the key way to improve the efficiency of tourist flows.

Is Tourism the (Only) Best “Choice” for Community Rehabilitation and Development?

Economic conditions,societies,and current changes make many communities in Thailand face changes in occupation and life,especially suburban communities which face loneliness and sluggishness.With this problem,renovation and development of communities ensue.Many communities have changed their image to be the“tourism community”,the result of which is generally perceived as either failure or success.According to this phenomenon,the author would like to present a story through a case study of Pak Nam Prasae Community,Klaeng District,Rayong Province.The author had an opportunity to conduct a participatory action research with collaboration for the main objectives which are to support knowledge body that leads the community out of loneliness and sluggishness and to create tourism activities.Nowadays,this community has become a popular tourist attraction,which is promoted as part of the national tourism by Tourism Authority of Thailand.The author would like to present both sides of the development through the tool called“tourism”which was employed by the community as a new approach to maintain,renovate,and develop the community.Even though in the initial stage,promotion and support from the external network were important,the most important thing is the cost of community in certain aspects that support the community to insist,improve,and connect to new networks by itself.On the other hand,the community will have to face with new different issues and challenges,especially in terms of management and share of benefit gained from using the local resources to develop the tourism in the community.According to these two pieces of information,after all,whether“tourism”is the best tool for development is an important issue that the community has to consider.