Beyond Rural Contexts: Community-Based Tourism for A Better Life in The City

Community-based tourism (CBT) is most commonly practiced in rural contexts. We focus on CBT in urban areas and argue that it can be practised in poor urban settings such as slums, favelas and townships. In terms of methodology, this paper is conceptual in nature and its aim is to unpack the framing of CBT in urban settings. Literature on CBT in urban contexts is scarce and negligible. CBT which favours disadvantaged contexts has the potential to improve the quality of life of people and enhance community development. Inequality in urban contexts is growing both between and within countries in both developing and developed economies. Against this backdrop, we explore CBT in urban areas (with a nomenclature community-based urban tourism – CBUT), and is specifically meant for poor, disadvantaged, marginalised urban contexts. We suggest that in CBUT, matters of ‘proximity’; infrastructure; and geography are important enablers of tourism development. We argue that universities have an important role to play through skills development for CBUT. Given the scarcity of literature on CBT in urban areas, we contribute to the notion of community in a CBUT context and to the success factors of a CBUT venture.