Intrinsic barriers to and opportunities for community empowerment in community-based tourism development in Thai Nguyen province, Vietnam

Abstract

Even though community empowerment is a crucial component of sustainable tourism, true community empowerment is in fact hard to achieve and still eludes many countries. Few studies have looked at factors that may inhibit or encourage empowerment processes for local people. In response to this gap, this article explores intrinsic barriers to and opportunities for community empowerment in community-based tourism development in Thai Nguyen province, Vietnam. Drawing on empirical data, results show that intrinsic barriers to community empowerment derived from their dependence on government, especially in top-down political systems such as in Vietnam, and the framing of knowledge associated with formal education. Findings also reveal opportunities to enhance community empowerment if community power were acknowledged, and locals were able to exercise that power. Such recognition has the potential to transform experiences of/about local people, to empower them by shifting the focus to a paradigm that starts from within local people themselves, and their community, to using their inner strength - a significant power that they could use to enable them to achieve what they desire in tourism, and to make real change occur. The paper concludes with the implications of this analysis for community empowerment and sustainable tourism development.

Keywords:

• CBT
• local people’s power
• sustainable tourism development
• global south
• tea tourism

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the Vietnam Ministry of Education and Training, and complemented with funds from the University of Waikato, New Zealand. Our sincere thanks to all the participants: local people, management officials, and other key informants from Thai Nguyen province, Vietnam for their time and engagement in this research. This study would not have been possible without their contributions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 According to him, the best water to make a pot of tea is from the mountain, but it must be filtered by limestone, unspoiled, and untouched. The right water, right tea brand and the correct way of making tea will create a great cup of tea.

2 Some of the local recipes are steamed chicken with tealeaves, tealeaves with sticky rice, spiced fish with tea-leaves, and salad with tea buds.

3 One of the first trees planted in Thai Nguyen in 1921.

4 The biggest holiday in Vietnam.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dung Thi Ngoc Nguyen

Dung Thi Ngoc Nguyen is a Research Associate at the UNWTO INSTO Research Unit, the University of Waikato Management School, New Zealand, and a Lecturer in Faculty of Business Administration, Thai Nguyen University of Economics and Business Administration, Vietnam. She obtained her Ph.D in Tourism Development from the University of Waikato, New Zealand in 2019. Her research interests are in sustainable tourism development, community-based tourism, community participation and empowerment, and impacts of tourism.

Anne-Marie d'Hauteserre

Anne-Marie d'Hauteserre is a Research Associate in Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, the University of Waikato, New Zealand. She has written over forty articles and book chapters on issues raised by tourism development in Indigenous areas (Connecticut, USA and French Pacific) and in the Paris Basin following the incursion of the Walt Disney Company.

Silvia Serrao-Neumann

Silvia Serrao-Neumann is an Associate Professor and Environmental Planning Programme Convenor, the University of Waikato, New Zealand. Her research focuses on community planning for disaster recovery and resilience, scenario planning, and action/intervention research applied to planning for climate change adaptation. She has published widely on topics related to water resource management, climate change adaptation, and urban and regional planning.