Developing skills and local capacity to deliver CBT and sustain its legacy

CBT is totally dependent on people. Tourists’ experiences depend on quality services provided by employees trained in appropriate skills and capacity to deliver the tourism product. Assessing and understanding the required local human resources for a CBT venture is crucial in determining if a community will be able to sustain and meaningfully participate in the development of sustainable tourism. Many communities forget to include human resource development strategies in their tourism plan or don’t give it enough attention (adapted from Transforming Communities Through Tourism).

• For a community to develop a successful CBT program, it is necessary to prepare and strengthen the community to be able to manage the delivery of tourism. To
  do this community, members require several steps of capacity building supported by ongoing training and skill development.
• Keep it simple from the outset to allow the community time to adapt their CBT venture to their context and build skills to increase performance before expanding the CBT business or CBT product.
• Special attention needs to be given to local capacity development and training to ensure a quality product is delivered and community members have the confidence and motivation necessary to effectively deliver the CBT product.
• Sustaining a CBT operation and leaving a positive legacy involves compromises in trying to meet multiple objectives; CBT can generate income and contribute to community development but only with considerable investment of time and resources.