The intellectual foundation of the framework is the tourism area life cycle model developed by R. W. Butler in 1980, which tracks how destinations evolve through six stages based on visitor numbers, from exploration to rejuvenation. Butler’s model cemented the idea that tourism development is a process rather than a single event. Yet the review identifies critical limitations: the life cycle model begins only when tourists start arriving, measures progress along a single dimension, and offers no context-specific detail about what happens before or during development. Ndebele’s framework deliberately starts earlier, before any tourist has set foot in a village, and considers the different factors and role players at every stage.

The methodology followed the PRISMA framework for systematic reviews, ensuring that the search and analysis process was transparent and reproducible. An initial keyword search of the Web of Science database yielded more than 11,000 articles, which were filtered by publication year, article type, and country down to 156 candidates. After manual abstract review and the exclusion of four studies focused on urban tourism, 31 articles remained for document analysis. Each was read and summarised, then grouped according to the three stages of the development process, producing a model grounded in community-based tourism principles and stakeholder theory.

The planning stage, which the framework labels pre-development, emerges as the foundation on which everything else rests. Before development begins, destinations must undergo feasibility analysis to assess whether their natural and cultural resources can realistically attract visitors, and whether supporting infrastructure such as accommodation and basic services like water and electricity can sustain tourism over time. The reviewed literature stresses that this analysis must extend beyond the core attraction to the entire supporting ecosystem, and that seasonality must be considered so that rural economies can diversify into activities that remain viable year-round.

Community consultation during planning is not presented as a courtesy but as a determinant of success. The review cites the case of Xau! Lodge in the Kgalagadi, where initial community exclusion produced poor results, and a subsequent co-ownership agreement with the surrounding Khomani San and Mier communities gave local people a genuine seat in decision-making on their own land. Researchers also highlight that rural resources often carry cultural and spiritual significance, as with certain water bodies, and that developers must understand local beliefs and myths before repurposing these assets. Communities may harbour fears about rising crime or eroding moral values, yet studies show they are generally positive about heritage tourism when they understand their role as custodians and see government and public-private partnerships facilitating skills development.

The implementation stage is where plans meet reality, and where the framework demands collaboration among communities, government, and the private sector. Because many rural economies remain anchored in farming and fishing, the review argues that tourism should supplement rather than replace traditional livelihoods. In the coastal town of Paternoster, for example, the local fishing community can supply restaurants with seafood, embedding residents directly in the tourism value chain. The review also calls for regulations such as fishing permits and quotas to be revisited during diversification so they favour local entrepreneurship rather than hindering it. Skills shortages are rife in rural areas, and initiatives like the Airbnb Entrepreneurship Academy demonstrate how private organisations can equip locals to launch their own tourism businesses.

Infrastructure and funding dominate the implementation discussion. Poor roads and deteriorating sites make attractions unattractive to potential tourists, and constant maintenance of both basic and tourism-specific infrastructure is deemed essential for long-term community livelihoods. Formal tourism institutions play a significant role by providing funding, information, and skills development, acting as a bridge between community-based tourism businesses and the wider economy. The review warns that strategies and policies without proper implementation are futile, and that each stakeholder must play a clearly defined role to ensure mutual benefit.

The management stage addresses longevity and sustainability, and here the framework’s most striking finding emerges: communities must be involved beyond mere employment. Part ownership, participation in real decision-making, and inclusion in the value chain as suppliers translate into genuine economic power, while engagement with government and private businesses secures the skills and funding needed for long-term survival. The review points to co-management programmes elsewhere in southern Africa, such as Zimbabwe’s CAMPFIRE, Zambia’s ADMADE, and Namibia’s Communal Conservancy Program, as models for shared governance. It also cautions that long-term leases with private stakeholders can delay community benefits for years, as private entities recoup their investments before transferring ownership, making transparency in agreements paramount.

Environmental sustainability threads through the entire framework. Research from Limpopo province documents damage caused by debarking and burning trees for fuel, tourist waste dumping, and vandalism at heritage sites such as the Big Tree, where visitors continue to scribble on the ancient specimen despite warnings. The review recommends regulatory compliance, registration of establishments with relevant authorities, and educational materials for tourists, alongside community-led conservation using traditional methods reinforced by expert knowledge. Uneven distribution of tourism benefits is flagged as a source of social tension, misaligned with stakeholder theory’s insistence that development should serve all parties fairly.

Perhaps the framework’s most distinctive feature is its integration of feedback loops, which carry lessons, performance outcomes, and stakeholder experiences from the implementation and management stages back into planning. This reframes rural tourism development as a dynamic, adaptive system rather than a linear checklist, allowing strategies to shift in real time as environmental, social, governance, and economic conditions change. The review acknowledges its own limitations, including the absence of empirical data to test the model and its focus on the development process rather than administrative background work such as policy formulation. Still, its central message is unambiguous: communities are the custodians of the natural and cultural resources on which rural tourism depends, and when they are sidelined from decision-making, underfunded, and denied tangible benefits, the entire enterprise risks failure. Treating development as a flowing, feedback-driven process, the study concludes, offers the best chance of building rural tourism initiatives that endure.

Subject of Research: A conceptual framework for the rural tourism development process in South Africa based on a systematic literature review

Article Title: Towards a conceptual framework for the rural tourism development process in South Africa: a literature review

Article References: Ndebele, P. (2026). Towards a conceptual framework for the rural tourism development process in South Africa: a literature review. SN Social Sciences, 6(9), Article 396. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43545-026-01656-6

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43545-026-01656-6

Keywords: rural tourism, South Africa, community-based tourism, stakeholder theory, tourism area life cycle, planning, implementation, management, PRISMA, sustainable development, community participation, tourism policy

The research, conducted by Jinsheng Jason Zhu of Guilin Tourism University and City University of Macau and Aranya Siriphon of Chiang Mai University, set out to test whether a generative AI system could be configured to represent the perspectives of six distinct stakeholder groups within a community-based tourism ecosystem. Rather than treating artificial intelligence as a single, neutral assistant, the researchers explored what they call identity-based chatbot interactions, in which the AI is prompted to adopt and respond from specific stakeholder identities. The premise is deceptively simple: if a chatbot can convincingly embody the concerns of a marginalized resident or the risk calculus of an investor, it might serve as a rehearsal space for the negotiations that determine whether tourism enriches or erodes a community.

The platform at the center of the experiment was Kimi.ai, a generative AI assistant developed by the Chinese company Moonshot AI. The choice is notable in itself. Much of the public conversation about generative AI in tourism and hospitality has centered on Western models, yet community-based tourism in Asia often unfolds in linguistic and cultural contexts that such models handle unevenly. By working with a platform trained with strong Chinese-language capabilities, the researchers positioned their experiment closer to the environments where many of the world’s community tourism projects actually operate, from the karst landscapes of Guangxi to the highland villages of northern Thailand.

The experimental design was carefully bounded. Thirty-six undergraduate students, aged 18 to 22 and drawn from six tourism-related majors, each took on one of six simulated stakeholder roles: government officials, tourism investors, returning entrepreneurs, local business owners, marginalized residents, and inbound tourists. The authors are explicit that these simulated roles did not correspond to the participants’ actual occupations or social identities; the students were role-playing within a controlled research setting. Recruitment, written informed consent, and data collection all took place in December 2024, after the study protocol received prospective ethical approval from the University Research Ethics Review Board at Guilin Tourism University in May of that year, and the research was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

Once the simulations were underway, participants interacted with the generative AI chatbot while assuming their assigned stakeholder identities, and the resulting interaction logs became the raw material for analysis. The researchers applied two complementary techniques: thematic analysis, which identifies recurring patterns and concerns across the conversations, and sentiment analysis, which tracks the emotional tone of the exchanges. This combination allowed the team to ask not only what the AI-mediated stakeholders talked about, but also how the conversations felt from different positional vantage points. Did the marginalized residents’ concerns register with the same weight as the investors’? Did the tone of negotiation shift when the AI was addressing a government official rather than a tourist?

The findings, as reported in the paper, suggest that identity-based chatbot interactions can effectively address stakeholder-specific needs. The AI was able to tailor its responses to the identity it was engaging, supporting conversations about cultural preservation and encouraging economic inclusivity across the simulated ecosystem. In practical terms, this means the system could discuss heritage protection with a resident concerned about commodification while simultaneously helping an entrepreneur think through a business plan, without flattening those perspectives into a single generic voice. The authors argue that this capacity positions generative AI as a tool for enhancing stakeholder engagement, resource coordination, and problem-solving within community-based tourism ecosystems.

Why does this matter for the broader field? Community-based tourism has always struggled with a participation gap. The stakeholders with the most time, literacy, and confidence, typically administrators and investors, dominate planning meetings, while marginalized residents, whose lives are most directly affected by tourism’s arrival, often lack the channels or the standing to make their concerns count. Traditional participatory planning methods, from town halls to focus groups, try to correct this imbalance but are expensive, slow, and dependent on skilled facilitators. A generative AI system that can simulate stakeholder perspectives offers a low-cost laboratory in which planning scenarios can be tested before they meet reality, potentially surfacing conflicts and inequities while they are still cheap to fix.

The study’s authors are careful to frame their work as an experimental approach rather than a finished solution. The participants were students simulating roles, not actual community members navigating real tourism decisions, and the gap between a rehearsed negotiation and a contested village meeting is substantial. Sentiment and thematic analyses of chatbot logs can reveal patterns, but they cannot fully capture the embodied, historical, and sometimes fraught relationships that define real communities. Still, the methodological promise is considerable: the same simulation framework could, in principle, be deployed with real stakeholders, allowing a village to converse with an AI that has been primed to understand its specific cultural and economic context, or allowing planners to stress-test policy proposals against multiple simulated perspectives at once.

The implications extend to policymakers and practitioners as well. The authors present their results as offering practical insights for those designing tourism governance, highlighting generative AI’s potential role in advancing equitable and sustainable tourism. For a local government weighing whether to license a new wave of homestays, for instance, an AI-simulated stakeholder consultation could quickly map how investors, business owners, and residents might each respond, flagging points of friction before public money is committed. For NGOs and development agencies working in destinations with limited technical capacity, such tools could democratize access to the kind of scenario analysis that has traditionally required expensive consultants.

The research also arrives at a moment when the tourism sector is scrambling to understand what generative AI means for its future. Most attention so far has gone to consumer-facing applications, such as itinerary generation, translation, and personalized recommendations. This study points in a different direction, toward AI as infrastructure for governance and deliberation rather than merely for marketing. That reframing carries its own risks, including the possibility that simulated voices could be mistaken for genuine ones, or that AI-mediated consultation could become a substitute for, rather than a supplement to, real community participation. The authors do not claim to have resolved these tensions, but their experiment makes them concrete and testable.

Looking forward, the researchers encourage future work on emerging technologies to further strengthen decision-making and operational effectiveness in community-based tourism development. The collaboration itself, spanning Guilin Tourism University in China and Chiang Mai University in Thailand and partially funded by Chiang Mai University’s International Research Fellowship program, reflects the cross-border character of the challenge, since community tourism in Southeast Asia and southern China increasingly serves the same mobile pool of visitors while navigating distinct political and cultural systems. Whether identity-based AI simulation matures into a standard planning tool or remains a provocative experiment, the study marks an early attempt to bring the deliberative core of community-based tourism, the messy, essential conversation among unequal stakeholders, into conversation with the most consequential new technology of the decade. If it works, the beneficiaries would be the people community tourism was always supposed to serve: the residents whose homes, heritage, and livelihoods are on the line.

Subject of Research: Generative AI simulation of stakeholder interactions for inclusivity and sustainability in community-based tourism

Article Title: Advancing generative AI for stakeholder empowerment in community-based tourism: an experimental approach to inclusivity and sustainability

Article References: Zhu, J. J., & Siriphon, A. (2026). Advancing generative AI for stakeholder empowerment in community-based tourism: an experimental approach to inclusivity and sustainability. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-09374-3

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1057/s41599-026-09374-3

Keywords: generative AI, community-based tourism, stakeholder engagement, Kimi.ai, Moonshot AI, sentiment analysis, thematic analysis, cultural preservation, economic inclusivity, sustainable tourism, chatbot simulation, tourism governance

The study, published in Discover Global Society, rests on a deliberately conditional argument. Local knowledge, the authors contend, does not inherently become tourism value; a tourism activity is not inherently a social innovation; and social innovation does not necessarily produce inclusive development. Each step requires something extra. Knowledge must be translated with community authorization, translation must reorganize relationships and capabilities to count as innovation, and innovation must be institutionalized under community control before its benefits can be called inclusive. In Kampung Yoboi, the researchers found strong evidence for the first two steps and only partial evidence for the third.

The raw material is distinctive. Sago, the starchy staple of Papuan communities, functions simultaneously as food, livelihood, ecological system, cultural identity, and intergenerational knowledge. In Kampung Yoboi it has been reinterpreted as a tourism experience through guided sago-forest tracking, traditional food preparation, storytelling, and the sago grub festival. A tourism manager told the researchers that sago is not merely food but the community’s identity, a medium through which visitors can learn about the culture, environment, and way of life around Lake Sentani. The floating settlement itself, with its colorful docks and painted houses, has been reframed as the destination rather than a backdrop to separately constructed attractions.

Methodologically, the study is an interpretive qualitative case study. The team used purposive, criterion-based sampling to assemble informants across seven categories: one community leader, four members of the Tourism Awareness Group known as Pokdarwis, one tourism manager, five residents involved in tourism, four local knowledge holders, five visitors, and four village-level institutional actors. Semi-structured interviews lasting forty-five to sixty minutes were audio-recorded with consent, transcribed, and analyzed thematically in NVivo 12, combining deductive codes drawn from social innovation theory with inductive codes that surfaced unanticipated issues such as dependence on individuals and damaged facilities. Triangulation across participant groups, field observations, and documentary sources strengthened the analysis, and an audit trail preserved interpretive decisions.

The findings show that tourism value in Kampung Yoboi is co-created rather than manufactured. A community leader explained that the village becomes attractive because what visitors see comes from local life itself, from the lake, the houses on water, and the way people live with sago and nature. Ordinary infrastructure doubles as tourism infrastructure: bridges are both daily pathways and visitor routes, and household practices such as craft production and food preparation become small-scale income opportunities. This supports value co-creation theory, in which tourism value emerges from interactions among residents, knowledge holders, visitors, and the material environment rather than from managers alone.

Yet the translation process remains fragile. Much of the community’s knowledge about sago, customs, and lake life is transmitted orally and resides with individual elders. One local knowledge holder noted that many stories still need to be written down and introduced more clearly to visitors and younger generations. Without community-controlled documentation, the researchers warn, tourism development could fragment or erode the very knowledge it celebrates. The study treats documentation not as a technical fix but as a political question: who decides what is recorded, who is authorized to share it, and how customary authority is preserved when cultural content circulates to outsiders.

The social innovation dimension emerges through what the authors call relational recombination. Elders contribute cultural interpretation; households supply food, crafts, and hospitality; Pokdarwis members and the tourism manager coordinate activities; visitors provide feedback and recognition; and village institutions shape legitimacy and resources. Training sessions and community forums allow residents to discuss visitor suggestions and improve management skills. A Pokdarwis member described how villagers support tourism in different ways, some making crafts, some preparing food, and others beautifying the village. Innovation here is not technological novelty but the reorganization of roles, relationships, and collective capabilities in response to locally defined needs.

However, the researchers draw a sharp line between emergent and institutionalized innovation. Kampung Yoboi’s creativity is relationally rich but institutionally weak. Roles and responsibilities have not been fully formalized, tourism is not consistently integrated into village planning and budgeting, and activities depend on a small group of motivated individuals. A tourism manager observed that the ideas already exist but must be managed collectively so tourism does not depend on a few people and instead becomes a shared responsibility of the whole village. Youth involvement in digital promotion and oral history documentation is promising but remains peripheral to formal decision-making.

Inclusion, the study’s most demanding criterion, is emerging but incomplete. Recognitional inclusion is the strongest dimension: tourism visibly affirms sago culture, floating settlement identity, and lake-based livelihoods, and the village’s national recognition, including a place among the top fifty villages in the 2021 Anugerah Desa Wisata Indonesia and finalist status in the 2025 Wonderful Indonesia Award, has reinforced community pride. Economic opportunities exist through food, crafts, and hospitality, but they remain small-scale and unevenly accessible. Procedural and distributive inclusion lag behind, because evidence on who controls priorities, who receives the largest benefits, and how women, youth, and less-connected households participate is limited. Visibility of Indigenous culture, the authors stress, is not the same as inclusion when communities lack authority over representation and development priorities.

Material constraints compound the governance gap. Limited village funding restricts the maintenance of bridges, toilets, sanitation systems, and public spaces, and poor sanitation threatens both visitor comfort and the environmental quality of Lake Sentani. Human resource limitations affect guiding, interpretation, digital promotion, and safety management, while existing training is too occasional to build a continuous capacity system. These constraints reinforce one another: weak institutional recognition limits funding, inadequate facilities reduce visitor satisfaction, limited skills weaken service quality, and reliance on a few individuals threatens continuity. The central problem, the researchers conclude, is not a shortage of creativity but the absence of stable governance, financing, maintenance, and capacity-building arrangements.

The study’s theoretical contribution is a conditional pathway with clear policy implications. Local knowledge contributes to inclusive community-based tourism through community-authorized translation, relational recombination, and community-controlled institutionalization. The authors recommend integrating tourism into village planning and accountable budgeting, treating bridges, sanitation, and public facilities as shared community and visitor infrastructure, establishing representative coordination among village governments, customary leaders, Pokdarwis, knowledge holders, households, women, and youth, and making benefit distribution transparent. Institutionalization, they caution, should not mean imposing external bureaucratic models that displace Indigenous institutions, but rather formalizing rules and roles while the community retains cultural authority.

The limitations are acknowledged candidly. A single-case, interpretive design with twenty-four informants cannot establish statistical representativeness or causal effects, demographic data were too incomplete for subgroup analysis, and the absence of longitudinal data prevents assessment of whether current initiatives endure. Visitor statistics are also patchy; available records indicate roughly 1,852 visitors during 2021 to 2022, but comprehensive seasonal series do not exist. Future research, the team suggests, should compare Indigenous lake-based tourism cases, track governance and benefit distribution over time, and test whether the proposed pathway holds under different customary, ecological, and institutional conditions.

For a village of floating houses on a Papuan lake, the stakes extend well beyond tourism. Kampung Yoboi demonstrates that communities can convert inherited ecological knowledge into experiences that visitors genuinely value, and that this conversion can strengthen identity, pride, and learning. But the research also delivers a caution to policymakers and destination marketers everywhere: participation is not empowerment, visibility is not inclusion, and creativity without institutional foundations risks evaporating when its few champions step away. The pathway from knowledge to inclusive development, the study shows, must be built deliberately, governed locally, and maintained continuously, one bridge, one budget, and one documented story at a time.

Subject of Research: Local knowledge and social innovation in inclusive community-based tourism in an Indigenous lake settlement in Papua, Indonesia

Article Title: Local knowledge and social innovation for inclusive community based tourism in Kampung Yoboi, Papua, Indonesia

Article References: Risamasu, F., Srem, A. I. A., Wabe, T. G., Manaqib, I. W., Amandaria, R., Azkar, R., Darma, R., & Ardiansyah, M. F. P. (2026). Local knowledge and social innovation for inclusive community based tourism in Kampung Yoboi, Papua, Indonesia. Discover Global Society, 4(1), Article 265. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44282-026-00627-9

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44282-026-00627-9

Keywords: community-based tourism, Indigenous tourism, social innovation, local knowledge, sago, Lake Sentani, Papua, inclusive development, value co-creation, participatory governance, cultural sustainability, Indonesia