Tourism social entrepreneurship for sustainable community tourism development

ongoing

Tourism social entrepreneurship is an alternative development strategy and catalyst for the host communities and plays a crucial role in delivering sustainable community tourism development outcomes. Community-based tourism is one of the categories of tourism social entrepreneurship. Community-based tourism projects usually use heritage as a tourist product to achieve sustainable community tourism development. This project aims to develop a policy model for the creation and development of cultural heritage tourism in rural communities, integrating elements of sustainability, creating sustainable jobs and enterprises, with gender equality and social responsibility, and strengthening national identity. To achieve this, a multi-method qualitative data collection strategy will be employed where data will be collected through face-to-face semi-structured interviews, field observations, and informal conversations in the rural communities of Zimbabwe and Botswana where there are functional community-based tourism projects. The project results will contribute to the generation of quality new knowledge (scientific impact), the promotion of gender equality in communities (social impact), and the promotion of sustainable cultural heritage tourism products (economic impact). The fellowship will provide the fellow with new scientific and practical skills and new contacts. The host institution will benefit from the transfer of skills, as the fellow plans to organise workshops, academic and public lectures, seminars, presentations, and to supervise MA and undergraduate students together with the supervisor.