Community development through marine tourism

Exploring the facets

Abstract

The role of marine tourism towards community development initiatives has gained lesser attention in the extant literature in comparison to the studies highlighting the prospects and diverse effects of marine and coastal tourism. Accordingly, this qualitative study envisages exploring whether marine tourism is contributing to the development of community in general. Taking Kuakata, Bangladesh, as a single-holistic case, we applied a semi-structured interview method as a means of data collection. In total, 19 interviews were conducted covering the key (marine) tourism stakeholders. The collected data underwent thematic and content analysis to derive the implicit meaning and pattern to relate the objective of this research. Overall, findings confirm what have been reported in numerous literatures, that marine tourism generates economic, socio-cultural, and environmental benefits, which in turn promote individual as well as community capacity to control resources. However, a direct and planned effort to develop a destination community via marine tourism is largely missing. This study comes up with some specific policy implications for tourism practitioners and provides a benchmark for future study in the given context.