An Evaluation on Community Based Tourism: The Case of Lavender Scented Village

Abstract

Community-based tourism is a local development model aiming at both common participation of all local people in the tourism activities carried out in a destination and to ensure that everyone benefits equally. The increasing interest in community-based tourism has also raised the number of projects undertaken in this regard. Lavender Scented Village project is one of the projects carried out within this scope in Kuyucak Village of Isparta province. It is aimed to trigger the potential employment and entrepreneurship in the region by providing product diversity of lavender produced in Kuyucak Village with Lavender Scented village project. Thus, tourism in a rural area will be recreated and local economy will be invigorated with the new tourism developments. In this study, it is aimed to analysis the current situation of the Lavender Scented village project, to make some inferences regarding the project and to guide the decision makers and other prospective projects in the next steps of processes of the project. The data was obtained by face-to-face interviews with 13 local residents using the snowball sampling method in Kuyucak Village and evaluated by SWOT analysis technique. Results indicate that the community-based in Kuyucak Village is still at the beginning level. This is an important issue since the threats and opportunities are shedding light on the period of maturity and guiding managerial sense.