Inclusive Tourism, a Cultural Paradigm Shift in Approaching Tourism Development

In this paper, the purpose is to highlight another concept of inclusive tourism than what is usually understood as “inclusiveness.” Despite its very specific meaning: tourism is accessible to everybody by taking away the barriers that prevent a person from enjoying tourism, inclusiveness is much broader than only focussing on the demand side. The supply side of inclusive tourism stresses the underprivileged providers of tourism in the Base/Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) areas. The paper is rather conceptual and describes the relevance of the BOP frameworks with respect to tourism. Research has shown that the most inspiring cases can be found where the two criteria of entrepreneurship and co-inventor meet. However, not many cases in the tourism sector can be found here. This approach of tourism is important because entrepreneurs are appreciated due to their capabilities. They develop tourism models from their perspective, in contradiction to models that focus on applying western business perspectives. The local community is involved because their skills and motivation for participation are central. Local people become a change agent and a developer for a greater understanding of their local culture which leads to positive contributions such as the conservation of the natural and cultural heritage. This approach of inclusive tourism is illustrated by the Hiriwaduna Village Tour in Sri Lanka. Despite the importance of this model, cases in the tourism sector are rare. This underlines the fact that the tourism sector is still too much seen from the demand side of the tourists and does not include enough input on how local people would like to develop their community into a flourishing and self-reliant one.