Understanding the host community's experiences of creating small autochthonous tourism enterprises in Lombok, Indonesia

Abstract

Tourism is seen as a panacea for many developing destinations. However, development within these destinations is fraught with challenges and external influence that may impede host communities’ support for tourism. Scheyvens (2002a) argues that in developing countries host communities need to be encouraged to actively engage in tourism development. ‘Ethnodevelopment builds on the positive qualities of Indigenous culture and societies to promote local employment and growth’ (Van Nieuwkoop and Uquillas 2000: 1). One way to directly involve host communities in ethnodevelopment is through tourism entrepreneurship (Kamsma and Bras 2000; Timothy 1999), for example by providing opportunities for the host communities to start their own small tourist enterprises (Hampton 2005; Scheyvens 2002b). However, the emergence of local small tourism enterprises is reliant on the willingness of the host communities to proceed and transform the local resources into products and services to meet the tourist’s needs.