THE SOCIAL RESEARCHER VIS-À-VIS COMMUNITYBASED TOURISM PLANNING: AN ASSESSMENT FROM THE ACADEMIC LITERATURE

Abstract

Communities represent the backbone of academic literature on tourism planning and management, the result of over five decades of studies that demonstrate the possible and necessary role of the community in tourism activity participation and management. Nevertheless, the role of the researcher in community planning in the framework of wideranging case studies, models and research proposals has been minimally analyzed. Through an extensive literature review of both English and Spanish languages, the aim of this paper is to approach community tourism planning from the motivations and purposes of the researchers involved. After considering the community as a territorial unit, as a social homogeneity and as a set of different actors, three analysis approaches are taken into account, business, ethnographic, and integrative. The importance of recognizing these approaches for new research projects is one conclusion, pointing to the “integrative approach” as a critical planning path for tourism in the current climate and health crisis context.