People-First Tourism Lab Blog

Despite increasing demand for food production, many family farms today define ‘success’ as survival.   Rather than trying to maximize profits or become large corporations, farmers often strive to simply continue their lifestyle of working with their hands in nature and preserve natural working lands for future generations (Tew & Barbieri, 2012). However, this goal of survival is becoming difficult to achieve with many farmers feeling as if farming and ranching alone does not provide sufficient income. Moreover, farmers today are also struggling to get the next generation to return to the farm. Accordingly, the average age of the American farmer is increasing, which shows that less young people are entering this occupation (Mace, 2005). As a result, many families are looking for new revenue sources that allow them to sustain their farm operations and continue their way of life.             Offering farm experienc...

The longitudinal comparison of the previous year’s website visitation performance with the most recent quarterly report provides a snapshot of the overall reach of the People-First Tourism project, as well the performance of the website source links and micro-entrepreneur network pages. Additionally, the report includes data about the reach of the project’s scholarship to the public through select social media tools – e.g., this web blog. Some significant changes in offer and marketing are tracked and have shaped the changes in the performance of the website. Here is the most recent report, P1T Dashboard Analytics Report for 3 rd Quarter of 2017 ( see inset below ). The report for the 4 th Quarter 2017 will be appearing in an upcoming posting on this blog. P1t Analytics 3rd Quarter 2017 This report revealed that new visitation to the www.peoplefirsttourism.com web marketplace during the 3 rd Quarter 2017 has slightly decreased (-21%) over the new visits seen during the 3...

Students from Duke University are collaborating with P1tLab to help rural community members in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, develop their ecotourism business. Playa Grande is a Mexican ejido , where land is jointly owned by a group of 70 community members. Residents of Playa Grande, like many rural communities in Mexico, participate in government-funded conservation programs where community members receive monetary compensation in exchange for their involvement in the sustainable management and stewardship of communal natural resources. Their conservation activities include fire prevention, protection against illegal logging and hunting, and maintaining corridors for jaguar protection. Ejido Playa Grande is part of a small group of communities that decided to invest their conservation program earnings into an ecotourism business, which is jointly owned by community members. Their company has been growing but community members are looking to improve their business stra...