Tourism that Empowers?

Abstract

Turismo comunitario is a type of community-based tourism that focuses on achieving certain key objectives, such as ensuring that communities have control over tourist activity. This article analyses whether or not this mode of tourism really does strengthen and empower communities. Market, commodification, objectification and appropriation are the key concepts in the analysis. The communities of Tunibamba and Agua Blanca in Ecuador provide the ethnographic context for our reflections. This article looks at the way in which communities create their tourism products, how they are linked to these products and how they market them, how these processes fit in with everyday community life and the extent to which they transform it. Observations about the agency of communities in the tourism business and the dual process of appropriation-commodification of their products — through the objectification of culture and environment — reveal that turismo comunitario could potentially empower and strengthen communities, while at the same time helping to deepen our understanding of tourism in indigenous contexts.