Public-private partnerships and community-based tourism: between promises, tensions, and conditions for success.

In the field of community-based tourism, public-private partnerships (PPPs) are often presented as a strategic lever to mobilise funding, structure value chains, or increase the visibility of destinations. Yet their implementation raises many questions. Do public-private partnerships (PPPs), so often portrayed as drivers of community-based tourism development, really deliver on their promises?

In principle, PPPs involve cooperation between public authorities, private actors, and community organisations to develop a shared project. However, in contexts marked by power asymmetries, these partnerships can also redefine - sometimes to the detriment of communities - priorities, governance rules, or benefit-sharing mechanisms. They raise the fundamental question of whether local communities genuinely retain control over their choices, or whether they become executors of a model designed elsewhere.

Behind the well-rehearsed discourse on cooperation, positive impact, and participation, the exchanges revealed far more contrasted realities. What emerged through the interventions and the collective discussion was not so much an opposition between models, but the exposure of deep lines of tension: who decides, for whom, and in the name of which objectives?

Members of ISTO’s Working Group on Community-Based and Fair Tourism met on 16 December 2026 to address these issues, drawing on testimonies from two speakers:

• • Doris Zaccaria, Rifugio di Mare (Italy)
  • Van Thai Nguyen, TTB Travel (Vietnam)

A PPP is never a purely technical arrangement

On paper, public-private partnerships appear self-evident. They make it possible to mobilise financial resources, restore abandoned infrastructure, structure tourism value chains, or increase the visibility of little-visited territories. In the field of community-based tourism, they are often presented as a balanced compromise between the public interest, economic efficiency, and local development.

Yet a PPP is never merely a technical arrangement. It is always embedded in a specific political, institutional, and social context, with its power relations, unspoken assumptions, and blind spots. When it concerns a public asset, a natural area, or an inhabited territory, it engages far more than contractual partners: it affects uses, imaginaries, and a collective sense of belonging.

When a project led by a social cooperative becomes a source of conflict

A first testimony, rooted in a European territory, provided a concrete entry point into this complexity. The starting point was a public building abandoned for decades, located in a natural park, and subject to a national call for projects aimed at its rehabilitation through a public-private partnership. The stated orientation was clear: slow tourism, environmental respect, and soft mobility.
In substance, it was difficult to find fault with the project. It was led by a cooperative structure committed to social values, attentive to environmental impact, and eager to anchor itself locally. Yet very quickly, strong opposition emerged within the territory. Not against tourism as such, but against the way the decision had been taken.

The building, although legally public and unused, was part of the everyday landscape, informal practices, and local memories. Its transformation, decided without prior dialogue, was experienced as a confiscation. No matter how respectful the project might have been, without explanation or spaces for early discussion with residents, it was perceived as privatisation.

Added to this was extreme institutional complexity - overlapping administrative levels, contradictory messages from authorities - and a health context that prevented any public meetings. Gradually, fears accumulated, tensions escalated, and legal procedures followed one another. The project moved forward, but at the cost of considerable human and financial exhaustion.

The absence of citizen participation during the design phase is one of the main factors behind failure or conflict. A public asset is never neutral. Even when abandoned, it continues to exist symbolically. Treating it as a simple asset to be valorised, without recognising this collective dimension, amounts to ignoring part of the territory itself.

It was only once the site opened, when residents were able to see concretely what was happening there and begin to frequent it again, that perceptions started to evolve. The gradual integration of local people into the team, the use of local suppliers, openness to associations, and collaboration with schools played a decisive role. However, this rebuilding of trust occurred after the fact, where it should have been foundational.

When community-based tourism becomes an injunction: standardisation, inequalities, and greenwashing

In several Asian countries, community-based tourism is widely promoted as a tool to combat poverty, particularly in rural areas or regions inhabited by ethnic minorities. Once again, the stated intention is positive. Yet on the ground, the pitfalls are numerous.

Tourism is often designed for communities, rarely by them. Decisions come from above: public institutions, large companies, sometimes international NGOs. Local populations become designated beneficiaries, expected to adapt to a model presented as an opportunity, or even as the only possible path.

This logic creates a dangerous dependency. By specialising exclusively in tourism, some communities abandon their traditional activities, weaken their food sovereignty, and become extremely vulnerable to crises. The COVID-19 pandemic acted as a brutal wake-up call to this monoculture of tourism.

As the discussions progressed, a worrying picture emerged: standardisation of architecture and hosting practices, folklorisation of cultures, concentration of benefits among a few families, and internal tensions within villages. The vocabulary of “sustainable” and “community-based” tourism is omnipresent, but often emptied of substance.

External actors are not spared criticism. Projects led by international experts or well-intentioned NGOs fail due to a lack of fine-grained understanding of local dynamics. Training sessions that are too short, imported models, and the rapid withdrawal of partners leave communities alone with non-viable projects, sometimes generating long-lasting divisions.

However, the discussion did not remain confined to diagnosis. Rarer but inspiring examples were mentioned. Their common feature is that tourism is never the starting point. It comes later, as a complementary activity, integrated into a diversified local economy and decided collectively.

In such cases, priority is given to cultural preservation, economic autonomy, and social cohesion. Tourism becomes a tool serving a broader societal project, rather than the other way around. Some of these initiatives have even received international recognition, notably from UNESCO, proving that another idea of community-based tourism is possible.

Time as a key factor in PPPs involving local communities

Leaving this roundtable, one conviction stands out: community-based tourism is profoundly political. It questions governance, the redistribution of power, and the place granted to communities in decisions that concern them. Public-private partnerships can be useful levers, but only if they are embedded in transparent, participatory, and genuinely co-constructed processes.

Time, often perceived as an obstacle, instead appears as an essential condition. Taking the time to listen, debate, negotiate, and accept disagreement. Recognising that communities are neither passive beneficiaries nor showcases, but fully-fledged political actors.

Perhaps this is the main challenge: to stop thinking of community-based tourism as a turnkey solution, and to accept that it is above all a demanding path, shaped by dialogue, sometimes by conflict, and by shared responsibilities.

Article written by Coralie Marti (ATES).