Community-based tourism and gentrification: how can we protect the right to live in tourist destinations?.

On 17 March, the International Social Tourism Organisation (ISTO)'s Working Group on Community-Based and Fair Tourism, coordinated by Coralie Marti (Association pour le Tourisme Équitable et Solidaire – ATES), devoted its monthly meeting to an increasingly pressing issue for destinations worldwide: the relationship between tourism development, gentrification and the right of local people to continue living in their own communities.

Drawing on a presentation by Chiara Alvarado Lopez (University of Quintana Roo, Mexico), as well as a rich discussion involving practitioners, researchers and representatives of organisations from several countries, the session highlighted a central paradox: tourism can revitalise places, yet when left unregulated it can also contribute to the gradual displacement of the very communities that give those places their identity.

Tourism and gentrification: when attractiveness reshapes neighbourhoods

Across the world, many of the most attractive urban neighbourhoods are experiencing rapidly rising housing costs, the expansion of short-term holiday rentals and profound changes to their social and commercial fabric. Traditional cafés are replaced by standardised chains, local shops give way to businesses targeting visitors, and long-term residents gradually disappear. These trends are now visible in cities such as Barcelona, Lisbon and Venice, as well as in Mexico City.
Gentrification is not caused solely by tourism. It is driven by wider real estate dynamics, investment strategies and, increasingly, the arrival of wealthier residents, including international remote workers. Nevertheless, tourism can accelerate these processes by making tourist accommodation more profitable than residential housing or by increasing the attractiveness of neighbourhoods without corresponding public policies to protect existing communities.

Discussions within the working group also highlighted the importance of distinguishing between several closely related but distinct phenomena: visitor flows, tourism-driven urban transformation (touristification) and residential gentrification. Although interconnected, these processes do not always follow the same dynamics.

Mexico: a laboratory for tourism gentrification

Mexico provides a particularly revealing illustration of these challenges.

In Mexico City, historic neighbourhoods such as Roma, Condesa, Coyoacán and Polanco have experienced growing real estate pressure over recent years. The expansion of short-term rentals, the arrival of international remote workers and increasing private investment have significantly altered their social and economic dynamics. Housing costs continue to rise, businesses increasingly cater to international consumers, and many long-standing residents struggle to remain in neighbourhoods where their families have lived for generations.

These transformations extend well beyond the capital. Destinations such as Puerto Escondido, Mérida and several towns across Yucatán and Quintana Roo are facing similar pressures resulting from international tourism, real estate speculation and the rapid growth of digital accommodation platforms.

Beyond housing, participants also highlighted another significant concern: the folklorisation of local cultures. When traditions are reshaped primarily to satisfy tourism markets, they risk losing their original meaning and becoming commercial products. Intangible heritage, local gastronomy, traditional crafts and cultural celebrations may gradually be reduced to stereotypes, diminishing their richness and diversity.

The right to the city in the age of mass tourism

The discussions made it clear that gentrification extends far beyond tourism alone. At its core lies a fundamental question: the right of local communities to remain in their neighbourhoods, access affordable housing, sustain their economic activities and safeguard their cultural heritage. Tourism becomes problematic when it makes this continuity impossible. Conversely, it can become a positive force when it strengthens the economic, social and political capacity of local communities.

Several participants emphasised that community-based tourism should not be viewed simply as a niche tourism product, but rather as a broader territorial development strategy that places residents at the centre of tourism planning.

Can community-based tourism help resist tourism gentrification?

The discussions also recognised that community-based tourism cannot, by itself, halt the structural drivers of gentrification. Land speculation, urban planning policies, global property markets and changing patterns of work all contribute to these processes. However, community-based tourism can strengthen the resilience of local communities. When residents organise tourism themselves, establish local cooperatives, promote traditional knowledge or develop locally rooted value chains, they also reinforce their collective ability to defend their interests.

Members of the working group shared examples demonstrating how such initiatives can strengthen local governance, protect communal land use and give communities a stronger voice in dialogue with public authorities. In this sense, tourism becomes one tool among many that can support locally led territorial development.

Public policy remains essential

One of the strongest conclusions of the session was that no community initiative can replace effective public policy.
Participants stressed the importance of acting simultaneously on several fronts: regulating short-term holiday rentals, protecting affordable housing, supporting local businesses, safeguarding natural ecosystems from speculative development and strengthening community cooperatives.

Mexico offers encouraging examples of successful civic mobilisation. Local communities have managed to halt several development projects threatening sensitive ecosystems, particularly mangrove areas in Quintana Roo. Other initiatives encourage visitors to discover lesser-known neighbourhoods through itineraries designed with local residents, highlighting traditional markets, independent businesses, local producers and ancestral agricultural systems such as the chinampas of Xochimilco. These experiences also demonstrate that simply dispersing visitors across new neighbourhoods is not enough. Without housing regulation and land-use policies, tourism dispersal risks merely shifting the geography of gentrification.

Protecting cultural heritage, without turning it into a commodity

Another important theme concerned the growing tension between cultural promotion and cultural commodification. Participants emphasised that community-based tourism should not consist of staging local traditions as performances for visitors. Instead, it should create genuine encounters in which communities retain control over how they present their own heritage.

Such an approach values living heritage—including gastronomy, craftsmanship, agriculture, languages, festivals and everyday practices—without reducing it to a commercial product. It also recognises local people not only as economic actors but as rights holders and custodians of their own cultural heritage.

Towards socially sustainable tourism that protects local communities

The discussions within the ISTO Working Group suggest that the answer to tourism gentrification is not to reject tourism itself, but to reshape it. Sustainable tourism cannot truly be considered sustainable if it contributes to displacing residents from their own neighbourhoods. Community-based tourism offers an alternative by making tourism development a tool that serves local people, strengthens community governance, protects cultural heritage and improves quality of life.

While this approach cannot replace the public policies needed to regulate short-term rentals, curb real estate speculation or safeguard the right to the city, it can strengthen communities' capacity to participate in decisions affecting their own territories. This is precisely the vision promoted by ISTO through the ongoing work of its international Working Group: a form of tourism that is judged not only by its attractiveness or economic performance, but by its ability to remain fair, inclusive and genuinely beneficial for the people who call tourist destinations home.