Tourism development and local community wellbeing: understanding the needs

Tourism, which is considered as an approach to enhance community development while conserving natural resources, has been receiving support from governments and academics to help achieve sustainable development. Sustainable tourism is increasingly being considered as a tool for improving local livelihoods. It is believed that sustainable tourism has the power to enhance the economy which in turn can provide enough benefits to offset the conservation cost and improve local people’s livelihoods. However, tourism development may also result in unwanted consequences such as negative environmental impacts or illegal displacement of local communities in many areas. Differences in the nature of local communities make it impossible to adopt the same development approach for every community. These differences can be seen in terms of community characteristics such asreligion or traditional beliefs or even in term of problems and demands they might have.