Empowering Communities through Tourism

Hi. My name is Micah Lund. I’m an MBA student at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, and I just finished serving in the Peace Corps for 3 years in the country of Azerbaijan.

My home in the Peace Corps was in a quiet community high up in the Caucasus Mountains of northern Azerbaijan named Gusar. I lived and worked with a group of people called the Lezgis. The Lezgis have lived in their mountain communities for thousands of years and share a unique language, culture, and traditions found nowhere else outside the Caucasus.

In the time that I lived in Gusar, the government of Azerbaijan broke ground on a new ski resort right in the heart of the Lezgi homeland. The resort was estimated to be a $4b project that would attract thousands of tourists from all over the world. Unfortunately, the construction displaced entire villages and had untold effects on the natural environment. Home and food prices in Gusar rose considerably, pasture lands for grazing sheep disappeared and dozens of local residents were strongly persuaded to sell their homes and leave. The construction is still in progress and when the resort is finished, it’s estimated that over 90% of profits will leave that community and go to wealthy business owners in the capital of Baku. Thus, the ‘new’ Gusar will bear the negative affects of big tourism, while reaping little reward from it.

After doing some research, I found that what happened to the Lezgis is a common story in emerging nations all over the world – and it’s a trend that is likely to continue. The United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) estimates that for the first time ever, over 1 billion tourists will travel abroad on vacation in 2012. And by 2030, that number should rise to 1.8 billion. By far, the biggest amount of all this growth will be seen in emerging nations.

In light of these facts, my friend Mason and I (both Peace Corps Volunteers at the time) created a tourism company from the ground up called Community Based Tourism Azerbaijan. Our vision was to empower locals to benefit from the emerging tourism industry in Azerbaijan. We started by recruiting homestay families in two different regions of the country, and after a year and a half we had grown into a national network of local tourism service providers, spanning 10 different communities. Our new team included: 20 homestay owners, 8 managers, and dozens of local taxi drivers, bus drivers, craft makers, tour guides, and horse owners. We hosted over 150 guests in our first season and generated over $7000 in revenue, 80% of which stayed with our local service providers. Community Based Tourism Azerbaijan has proven that tourism can be a useful tool for rural community development, rather than a means of community destruction.

The most rewarding part of this project has been watching our providers use their new income to improve their homes, educate their children, and raise their standard of living. Now, we seek to replicate this business model in other emerging nations along the historical Silk Road through a non-profit called Community Based Tourism International.

Why the Silk Road? Countries and destinations along the historic Silk Road contain some of the richest cultures, traditions, ethnic foods, and natural landscapes on the planet. Yet, these locations also provide some of the greatest challenges to tourists, who often find difficulty navigating these regions due to a number of factors, including: language barriers, poor tourism infrastructure, corruption, hidden fees, and visa regulations. (View a map of the historical Silk Road countries.) By bringing our community tourism model to countries along the Silk Road, we want to give travelers easy access to these amazing places, while providing sustainable income and development to local communities. Eventually, we hope that a traveler staying within our network will be able to easily travel by land from Europe to China by staying with our local families and utilizing our local transportation networks all along the way. We see this as being quite a rewarding experience for both guest and hosts.

Approximately 85% of all revenue we make will stay in the local communities we serve, while the remaining 15% of revenues will help fund our daily operations. We will rely upon public funds and donations in our formative years to expand the network to a point in which we reach sustainability.Time to STARTMonterey START funds will be used to get Community Based Tourism Internationaloff the ground. We seek to register our organization, develop our marketing platform, recruit additional team members and secure our seed funding to begin operations abroad.

How We’ll Do It We have designed a franchising model, so that both country and community branches of Community Based Tourism International are both owned and administered by the people who live there. These franchises will benefit from our organizational standards, training programs, international marketing efforts and more in order to attract guests and grow their network. As a team of returned Peace Corps Volunteers, we will also seek to cooperate with Peace Corps’ extensive network of volunteers in countries where they are available. Peace Corps currently has over 9,000 volunteers serving in 76 countries worldwide. Most of these volunteers can easily identify quality homestays and managers on the ground, while providing local knowledge and language assistance, and even training assistance for our programs.