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How to support local communities as tour operator?
Good tourism supports and empowers the local economy. Tour operators can directly contribute and ensure spent money stays locally. For example, you can:
- Employ locals in your business or as tour guide
- Develop or offer community-based tourism experiences
- Buy local food and souvenirs
- Support or donate to local projects
Let us know how you currently support local communities. And what are challenges for you to improve this?
New to this topic? Read our article about supporting the local economy in our library.
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3 Replies
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Hi I am Andri from Indonesia. I’ve been running a community-based tour operator providing hiking trip. We focus on community training (for guide, porter, cook, and homestay). We prepare local communities living off-grid in the mountain areas to become tourism workers, then connect them to the market. We created a tour product together with the local. Since most of them are tea and coffee farmers, we also repackage tea and coffee then sell it as souvenirs.
The challenges is more about incorporating environmental sustainability. Local people here mostly they’re not interested in that issue. However, we’ve been collaborating with related NGOs in building people awareness about environment. To reduce plastic waste on the mountain, we’re now collaborating with local NGO in building refill station. Still, a lot of homeworks in this issue, one of which is to build green electricity for our homestay and food vendor partners.
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Hi Andri, thank you for sharing and so good to see how you’re supporting local communities and include them in your travel experiences.
I can imagine the awareness of locals regarding sustainability is a challenge. Often the best approach is to make it as easy and practical as possible. Make them part of the solution and focus on the direct consequences for example.
What is your current approach with the NGOs to raise awareness?
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*Shop local souvenirs/crafts made local artisans
* sleep at local owned lodges and camp sites.
*Hire local people directly ( site guides and porters)
*Buy food stuff like fruits, vegetables, coffee from local farmers/ sellers
*participate and volunteers at community based projects.
*support and donate to local communities
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