Community Based Tourism: Critical Success Factors

This work appraises a CBT initiative in Peru by GAP Adventures and Planeterra Foundation. The author(s) aim to determine whether it is leading to improvements in the lives of the participants and the community, by analyzing the impact, the method of implementation and the commercial viability of the project. A deeper level of analysis aims to understand the critical success factors for this initiative: the links with the private sector, proximity to the tourism market, the creation of attractive and competitive products, the consideration of profitability, the community’s will to engage in tourism, and the implementation of a monitoring and evaluation process. It is proposed that analyzing projects at this deeper level will help take more informed decisions about what CBT projects can be feasibly supported by donors with a chance of financial survival.