2.2 Empowerment of stakeholders

Tourism can bring income and jobs to a destination but may have both negative and positive impacts. The empowerment of local stakeholders, through activities such as education, training and capacity building, will help to enable them to take a stronger role in the planning, development, management, monitoring and evaluation of tourism development. This is crucial to the creation of a more sustainable approach to tourism. Accepting that tourism operations need to be profitable if they are going to be sustainable, there is a strong case for intervention at local levels in tourism destination areas to:

· enable local communities to have access to the tourism markets when they arrive;

· develop local industries to support tourism development;

· retain more revenue locally - therefore minimising leakage and maximising linkages;

· control the negative social and cultural impacts of the tourist whilst strengthen positive effects;

· ensure the maintenance of natural and cultural assets;

· control the rate of growth of a tourism development.