Community-based tourism affinity index: a visitor's approach

• Main Authors: Oliver Mtapuri, Andrea Giampiccoli, Sean Jugmohan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: AfricaJournals 2015-01-01
• Series: African Journal of Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure
• Subjects: tourism; community-based tourism; tourism index; tourism market
• Online Access: http://www.ajhtl.com/uploads/7/1/6/3/7163688/article50vol4_2_july-nov2015.pdf

Community-based tourism (CBT) is a model of community development which places the community at the centre of that development. It attempts to harness the effort of communities through their empowerment for the benefit of the community. This article develops a Community-based Visitors Affinity Index (CBTVAI) based on perusal of extant literature in which only secondary was used in terms of research methodology. The key contribution of this article is the development of a CBTVAI which is an instrument useful to owners/managers of CBT entities in evaluating their CBT businesses from a visitor perspective. The index does not include all possible items because CBT ventures exist in different contexts with different requirements. This index merely provides sample items related various basic aspects linkedto the attractiveness of CBT to visitors. As such, the index represents a flexible framework which can continuously evolve and be reformulated based on specific needs of a CBT entity. The CBTVAI has some strengths and weaknesses. Some of its strengths include the provision a visitor perspective grounded in real life experience; a framework for profiling CBT ventures; a platform for receiving visitor feedback in the form of immediate „post-trip‟ feedback; and a tool for assessing broad visitor/customer (dis)satisfaction with CBT offerings. The weaknesses include: failing to take into account the visitor‟s demographics and psychographics; ignores prices per item; places an extra burden on communities to undertake technical data analysis which skills could be deficient in communities.