Community Corporate Joint Ventures: An Alternative Model for Pro-Poor Tourism Development

Abstract

Particularly in light of the 2000 United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), governments, multilateral aid agencies, non-government organizations (NGOs) and local communities are increasingly “harnessing” tourism for poverty alleviation in lesser development countries (LDCs). In the case of the Yucatan Peninsula, rural Maya communities have had little opportunity for participation in the tourism industry beyond low wage labour in the Mexican Caribbean tourist poles. Yet, tourist demand for “authentic” experiences is strong enough to suggest that community-based rural tourism among the Maya could potentially achieve the pro-poor tourism (PPT) objective of channelling tourism earnings to low-wealth villages. The purpose of this article is to present a conceptual framework for a community corporate joint venture to achieve this PPT objective. In this article we discuss the conventional model for tourism development and present an alternative model for community-based rural tourism enterprises. This model, created from a broader rural development program that was successfully pilot tested by the authors, is applied in the case of collectively owned Mexican ejido lands in the Yucatan Peninsula but also has applicability for alternative tourism ventures in other collective land tenure contexts.

Acknowledgements

We wish to acknowledge the generous research support provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Geography and Spatial Sciences Program (Award #0547725), The University of Texas at Austin Harrington Faculty Fellows Program and East Carolina University (ECU) Division of Research and Graduate Studies.

Notes

Ejidos are communal landholdings shared by individuals with usufruct rights. In 1992 these lands were opened to privatization through modification of Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution.

To protect the privacy of the actual community, a pseudonym is being used.

Assuming an average of two people per room per day, this is an assumed 75% occupancy rate—somewhat less than the average rate achieved by most large hotels in Cancun and the Costa Maya. With demand demonstrated to be extremely high, occupancy in excess of 90% should be attainable.