A Comfortable Idea We Rarely Question
Community-Based Cultural Tourism has become one of the most celebrated concepts in Sustainable Cultural Tourism. It sounds ethical. It feels fair. And that may be exactly why we rarely question it.
The idea reassures policymakers, donors, and destination managers that tourism can be “done right” simply by involving local communities. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: good intentions do not equal good outcomes.
Across cultural destinations worldwide, community-based models are frequently praised in reports and presentations, while on the ground they quietly fail to protect Living Cultural Heritage, empower residents, or build long-term resilience. Instead, many initiatives reproduce the very inequalities they were meant to solve just wrapped in more inclusive language.
If cultural tourism is serious about sustainability, it is time to stop defending a broken model and start rethinking it. This is where Regenerative Cultural Tourism enters the conversation not as a buzzword, but as a necessary strategic reset.
The Untouchable Narrative Around Community Participation
Community-based approaches are often treated as beyond criticism. Questioning them can feel almost unethical, as if critique equals opposition to community rights.
Yet in practice, Community-Based Cultural Tourism is frequently reduced to:
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Consultation without power
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Participation without decision-making
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Benefits without fairness
The dominant narrative assumes that “community involvement” automatically leads to empowerment. Reality tells a different story one where structural control remains external, and communities are expected to adapt to tourism rather than shape it.
This gap between theory and practice is no longer academic. It has real cultural, social, and economic consequences.
What Is Going Wrong with Community-Based Cultural Tourism?
Token Participation Disguised as Inclusion
One of the most common challenges of community-based cultural tourism is symbolic participation. Communities are invited to workshops, consulted in planning phases, or showcased in promotional narratives yet strategic decisions remain centralized elsewhere.
This creates a false sense of inclusion while reinforcing existing power hierarchies.
Unequal Distribution of Benefits
Tourism revenue often concentrates in the hands of intermediaries, operators, or institutions. Meanwhile, community members receive:
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Short-term income
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Informal or seasonal employment
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Limited bargaining power
Without transparent governance and fair benefit-sharing mechanisms, community-based tourism risks becoming extractive under a sustainable label.
Cultural Commodification and Narrative Loss
When culture becomes a product, control over storytelling becomes critical.
In many destinations, cultural expressions are simplified, staged, or frozen to meet visitor expectations. Over time, this leads to:
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Loss of cultural meaning
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Weakening intergenerational transmission
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Erosion of cultural agency
Instead of safeguarding Living Cultural Heritage, tourism unintentionally reshapes it.
Over-Tourism Rebranded as “Authenticity”
Small-scale cultural experiences are often promoted as low-impact alternatives. But without visitor limits or cultural impact assessment, these experiences multiply rapidly.
The result is over-tourism disguised as intimacy placing intense pressure on communities that were never meant to host constant visitation.
Recurring Global Patterns in Cultural Tourism Practice
Across historic environments and living cultural landscapes, similar patterns appear again and again:
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Communities positioned as service providers rather than rights-holders
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Heritage treated as a static asset instead of a living system
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Success measured by visitor numbers rather than cultural wellbeing
These patterns are increasingly recognized across academic research, policy debates, and destination-level evaluations worldwide. They reveal a deeper issue: Community-Based Cultural Tourism often focuses on access, not agency.
Why “Sustainable” Is No Longer Enough
For decades, Sustainable Cultural Tourism focused on minimizing harm reducing negative impacts, managing visitor pressure, and preserving resources.
While necessary, this approach remains fundamentally defensive. It asks: How can tourism do less damage?
Today’s challenges climate instability, cultural homogenization, and social inequality require a different question:
How can tourism actively regenerate cultural systems rather than slowly exhausting them?
From Sustainability to Regeneration
Regenerative Cultural Tourism moves beyond impact reduction toward value creation. It views destinations as living systems where culture, community, environment, and economy are deeply interconnected.
Instead of asking communities to fit tourism models, regeneration asks tourism to serve community-defined futures.
Key principles include:
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Systems thinking rather than isolated projects
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Long-term resilience over short-term gains
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Cultural continuity over market trends
This shift is not cosmetic it is structural.
What a Regenerative Cultural Tourism Model Looks Like
Community-Led Governance
Communities hold real decision-making authority over tourism direction, limits, and narratives.
Fair and Transparent Benefit-Sharing
Tourism revenue supports cultural education, heritage transmission, and community infrastructure.
Ownership of Cultural Narratives
Communities define how their culture is represented, shared, and allowed to evolve.
Capacity Building for Long-Term Resilience
Investment in local skills, institutional knowledge, and youth engagement strengthens community empowerment beyond individual projects.
Measuring What Actually Matters
Success is evaluated through social cohesion, cultural vitality, and community wellbeing not arrivals alone.
Why This Shift Matters Now
Cultural destinations face mounting pressure from climate-related disruptions, rising visitor expectations, and accelerating cultural erosion. At the same time, research and policy discussions increasingly question growth-driven tourism models.
Regenerative tourism models for cultural destinations respond to this complexity by treating culture not as a commodity to manage, but as a living process to nurture.
Conclusion: A Call for Braver Thinking
Community-Based Cultural Tourism, as commonly practiced, is no longer enough.
Taking communities seriously means moving beyond participation theater toward shared power, and beyond sustainability rhetoric toward regenerative action.
The conversation around these challenges and the solutions offered by Regenerative Cultural Tourism will be central at the upcoming Cultural Sustainable Tourism (CST) – 8th Edition Conference, taking place from 08–10 September 2026 at the Polytechnic University of Turin, Italy, in collaboration with the University of Maia. Researchers, practitioners, and policymakers will gather to explore how sustainable and regenerative practices can redefine cultural tourism for the 21st century.
If regeneration is the future of cultural tourism, the real question is not whether change will happen but who is ready to help communities lead it