Participatory development of peri-urban and rural poor communities in tourism in the Garden Route area of Southern Cape, South Africa

Participatory development approach facilitates implementation of principles of sustainable tourism development by creating better opportunities for local people to gain larger and more balanced benefits from tourism development taking place in their localities. The main objective of this study was to examine nature of community participation in tourism development in order to ensure their participation in the benefits of tourism in the Garden Route area in South Africa. A conceptual framework was developed by examining typologies of community participation. Under the guidance of this conceptual framework, a field research was designed and applied where ninety (90) different stakeholders in the tourism industry across the different sub-sectors were sampled. This Chi-Squared test was done to test the statistical significance on the differences of the responses from the respondents in the different group sectors (accommodation, government department, travel/tour operators, transport and other). It was found that community members expect to be involved in three different stages of the process of tourism development which are decision-making, actual development and marketing as well as the management of operating tourism projects in their areas.