When Is Community-Based Tourism Truly Community-Based?

Regenera Thailand works where tourism, nature, community and measurable impact meet. Our view is that sustainability should not rest only on good intentions, compelling stories or recognition. It should also be supported by evidence, transparent governance and outcomes that others can understand and test.

This discussion did not start with an investigation into a community, or with any attempt to challenge an individual, organisation or award. It started with published academic research.

In 2025, researchers published a study of Community-Based Tourism in Bang Rong, Phuket. The study reports four months of ethnographic fieldwork, 17 semi-structured interviews, observation of social media covering 2023–2025, and analysis of organisational materials such as rosters, ledgers, receipts and LINE group threads. When research of this kind enters the public domain and raises questions about authority, participation, governance and transparency in a model described as CBT, the findings deserve professional consideration.

The question this article explores is simple to state and harder to answer: what evidence should support the claim that tourism is genuinely community-based?

Local employment, local purchasing, traditional activities, conservation work and local income can all be valuable. On their own, however, they do not answer a different question: who governs the tourism model?

Useful questions include: Who participates in decisions? Who sets prices and chooses partners? Who controls organisational resources? How are benefits distributed? How can community members take part in, or challenge, important decisions? And how is the organisation accountable to the wider community?

It helps to distinguish three things that are often blended together: tourism that takes place in a community; tourism that involves community members; and tourism that is governed by, and accountable to, a community. All three can be worthwhile. Only the third fully matches what the term “community-based” promises.

The study does not portray Bang Rong simply as a failure. It documents an evolving CBT initiative with community participation, professionalisation, market development and adaptation over time. The researchers describe increasing standardisation of the offer and stronger market channels.

The study also discusses how reliance on family stewardship can concentrate authority, how transparency is described as uneven, and how some strategic functions are reported to gravitate toward a relatively limited broker network. Its central focus is how everyday organisational tools — financial processes, administration, communication channels and external representation — shape who holds practical authority.

The limits of the study matter as much as its findings. It is a qualitative governance and gender study, not a forensic financial audit. It does not prove financial misconduct. It does not show that the community receives no benefit. And it does not determine whether Bang Rong is or is not legitimate CBT.

The broader question it raises is useful for the whole sector: as CBT becomes more professional, how can professionalisation strengthen community governance rather than replace it?

Online booking, programme design, tour-operator partnerships, premium markets, trained guides, standard operating procedures and commercially viable products are not inherently problematic. Strong leaders and families often contribute significant entrepreneurship, continuity and work that make community tourism possible at all.

The more useful question is whether governance and accountability grow as commercial value grows. Strong leadership and community governance can coexist. Professional management and equitable benefit-sharing can coexist. Family contribution and community accountability can coexist. Transparency is what strengthens each of these relationships.

A rubber-tapping demonstration, a cooking workshop or an interpretation of local agriculture can be carefully curated for visitors without becoming inauthentic. Professional product design is not inherently at odds with CBT.

The key test is whether these experiences stay connected to real local knowledge, livelihoods, cultural context and people — and whether those people have meaningful agency over how they and their knowledge are represented.

Bang Rong's website states principles of community ownership, participation and equitable benefit-sharing, and pledges that 10% of every baht spent through its tourism activities is reinvested into the community. The website cites social support, healthcare, youth, mangrove conservation and crab-bank initiatives among the areas supported.

Commitments like this are a good starting point. Any benefit-sharing commitment — in Bang Rong or elsewhere — becomes easier to evaluate when the system behind it is clear: What revenue base is the percentage calculated from? How is the allocation governed, and who takes part in those decisions? How many households and community actors participate economically? How are benefits distributed among activity providers, suppliers, guides and community initiatives? How are results communicated over time?

Transparency does not require publishing individual household incomes. It means making the system understandable enough that a benefit-sharing claim can be reasonably evaluated.

The study proposes practical safeguards: more regular financial summaries; a shared contract register; rotation of responsibility for important communication and administrative tools; clear handovers; wider access to organisational processes; and safeguards against authority becoming overly concentrated.

These suggestions are potentially useful far beyond Bang Rong. As tourism professionalises, governance should professionalise too.

Community tourism in Thailand is receiving growing national and international attention. Thailand Good Travel, the national sustainable tourism platform, currently lists Bangrong-Paklok. A March 2026 Department of Tourism release named BANGRONG-PAKLOK among 30 Thai destinations and operators selected to represent Thailand in international storytelling competitions, including the Green Destinations Top 100 Stories and Good Travel Stories.

Green Destinations states that 2026 Top 100 stories are evaluated for clarity, credibility and impact, and that submitted stories describe a challenge, a solution, results and evidence of impact. Top 100 storytelling recognition is distinct from Green Destinations certification, which follows a separate assessment and audit process. This article makes no claim about the outcome of any 2026 selection.

Green Destinations also states publicly that it protects credibility, impartiality and public trust through an Integrity & Reputational Risk Safeguard. The constructive point is this: as sustainability recognition becomes more visible, credible evidence becomes more valuable — for communities, for destinations and for the programmes that recognise them.

If Regenera Thailand claims community benefit, regenerative impact, biodiversity outcomes or measurable sustainability change, those claims should be open to the same evidence and scrutiny. We should be prepared to explain what changed, who benefited, how decisions were made, how impact was measured, and what evidence supports the claim.

That is why our PLACE Method includes Local Voices & Legitimacy as a working step, and why we label results by evidence status — Planned, Observed, Measured or Independently Verified — rather than promoting a result beyond what the evidence supports. Regenerative tourism should not become another label. It should ask whether tourism is actually improving the ecological and social systems it depends on.

Communities are organised in many different ways, and that diversity should be respected. Not every resident needs to decide everything. Entrepreneurship, professional leadership and commercial success are all compatible with CBT.

The core question is: is the community only part of the tourism product — or does the community retain meaningful agency over the tourism system itself? “Community-based” should mean more than geography. It should imply meaningful participation, accountability and benefit.

One study should not become a permanent label. New evidence can clarify earlier findings, governance can change, systems can improve, and people can reasonably disagree with an interpretation.

The best response to difficult findings is better evidence, clearer governance and an open professional conversation.

Regenera Thailand's purpose in raising this discussion is to strengthen Community-Based Tourism, not weaken it. Good stories can inspire change. Evidence, accountability and measurable impact are what make that change credible.

That is why we publish this discussion — and why the words “Community-Based Tourism” are worth protecting.

Research cited: Liu, Siyuan & Pangsapa, Piya (2025). “Island Community-Based Tourism and Gendered Power: How Respectability and Paperwork Organize Women's Everyday Authority in Phuket, Thailand.” Tourism and Hospitality, 6(5), 281. DOI: 10.3390/tourhosp6050281. The study reports four months of ethnographic fieldwork, 17 semi-structured interviews, social-media observation covering 2023–2025, and analysis of rosters, ledgers, receipts and LINE threads. Research participants are anonymised in the study; this article does not identify or speculate about them.

Disclosure: Regenera Thailand was not involved in the research. This article is a professional reflection on publicly available research and information. It is not an audit, an investigation or an allegation of misconduct.