People-First Tourism Lab Blog

In Europe rural tourism is dominated by small enterprises, most of them in the form of independent family-owned businesses and there is a multi-actor complexity of the destination that needs to be taken into account.  Global brands, multinational retailers, and tour operators have been exerting a growing pressure on small and medium enterprises, which are facing difficulties in forming a unique destination image and are struggling to sell their products widely. In this context, new forms of interaction between different tourism stakeholders have emerged recently.  These include actors from the public and private sector, as well as local populations and entrepreneurs - all with common interest in the development and development of tourism destination networks. Joining forces with multiple partners permits the integration of resources and creation of more comprehensive offerings thereby improving the effectiveness of marketing strategies.  Such a collaborative approach to...

"Much of the criticism of economic globalization has centered on factory labor abuses.  But the majority of the world's poor are not employed in factories; they are self employed - as peasant farmers, rural peddlers, urban hawkers, and small producers, usually involved in agriculture and small trade in the worlds vast 'informal' economy. Social entrepreneurs seeking to alleviate poverty among this target group usually begin by asking: How can we help these small producers benefit more from their trade and productive activities?" (p. 156) Bornstein, D. (2007). How to change the World. Oxford. So... how can we help small tourism entrepreneurs benefit more from their work?  Are there frugal ways to help micro-entrepreneurs network with each other to share know-how and engender a collective consciousness and bargaining power?  Can information technologies be used to provide micro-entrepreneurs with direct access to markets?  Can clusters of micro-entrepreneurs com...

A manuscript describing the concept-testing of People-First Tourism in rural South Africa was selected by Jafar Jafari for inclusion on the book " TOURISM STRATEGIES: Development, Governance, Climate Change " to be published by UNWTO and the University of Algarve.  In this manuscript, we report findings from fieldwork in the Gauteng and Limpopo provinces - the study revealed that vulnerable residents in peri-urban and rural communities use cellphones widely socially and to support their livelihoods; many are involved in some form of entrepreneurial activity targeting other members in their community; the most critical challenges to their ability to raise from poverty and dependence through micro-entrepreneurship are access to micro-credit and access to markets outside their immediate ties/community.  We will announce when the book is published and available, but we can send a pdf copy of manuscript upon request.

People-First Tourism has a page on Twitter.  We post thoughts about social entrepreneurship, human development disparities, travel trends, progress on the project, etc.  Visit twitter.com/PeopleFirstTrsm to become a P1T follower.

This week our colleagues at NC State's ITng accomplished the first step in developing the beta version of the People-First Tourism Marketplace, an open source web-based IT system designed to mediate interactions between networks of tourists and networks of micro-entrepreneurs.  With this system, tourists will be able to browse lists of People-First Entrepreneurs online (even with smart-phones) and entrepreneurs will respond to their inquiries using the simplest cell-phones. This step consisted in writing a detailed "Statement of Requirements" that will inform their programming work during the next couple months.  This document is available to your perusal at http://bit.ly/jg0LDq    Please do let us know what you think by contacting us directly or posting comments to this blog. Cheers,   Duarte

Today I had the pleasure of presenting the People-First Tourism concept to students in a colleague's World Forestry class with engaging students from all across the NC State campus.  While their academic backgrounds varied from social sciences to biological sciences and engineering, they all seemed captivated by our attempts to identify a people-centered model for community development and environmental conservation.  I've invited them to visit this blog and voice their impressions, advice and questions.  Can't wait to see what they say! The People-First community is growing  :-)   Duarte PS:  In Shangri-La, Yunnan, PRC, Tibetan communities had to quickly create cooperative tourism and non-timber forest product businesses to adapt to the government's prohibition of logging in the headwaters of the Yangtze river.

Last Tuesday, April 5th I had the pleasure of participating in a panel presentation titled "Sparking Social Change" at Harvard's Graduate School of Design; the co-presenters were Marshall Ganz (prof of Public Policy at the Kennedy School) and Maurice Cox (prof of Architecture at UVa and former mayor of Charlottesville).  In this event, we discussed ways to engender change to favor the most vulnerable segments of society.  Maurice Cox spoke about the importance of building trust with communities and of identifying and empowering community champions or change agents.  Marshall Ganz elaborated on process and challenges in organizing social change;  some of his most poignant comments included: "Don't help people - lead and organize them for social change." "In a healthy democracy, equality of voice must compensate for innequality of resources." "Those with power have all the resources.  Don't wait until you get the resources, be resourceful...