Community based tourism (CBT) could be one way of creating a more sustainable tourism industry. This article critically reviews the CBT approach in light of fieldwork in a North Queensland tourism destination. The literature on CBT has three major failings from a community development perspective. Firstly, it tends to take a functional approach to community involvement; secondly, it tends to treat the host community as a homogeneous block; and thirdly, it neglects the structural constraints to local control of the tourism industry. Attention to these issues could contribute to a more sustainable and equitable tourism industry.
This article was inspired by the author’s community study of an Australian tourism destination, Port Douglas. This explored the everyday reality of living in a tourism town, in order to advocate for change. Unlike most tourism research, the study focused on residents living with tourism rather than the experiences of tourists.
Port Douglas is one hour ’s drive north from Cairns, the main tourism and regional center for North Queensland. It was transformed from a small fishing village with less than 200 inhabitants in the 1970s to an international resort by the development of the $183 million Sheraton Mirage integrated resort in 1987 (Craik, 1991). The 1990s saw a rapid increase in tourism development, with the number of tourist beds doubling to approximately 16,000 between 1997 and 1999.
