Power relations and community-based tourism planning

Recent research on community tourism has adapted organizational theories to tourism contexts. This paper contributes to these efforts by identifying how power relations affect attempts at community-based tourism planning. The proposed conceptual framework focuses on power relations within three policy arenas. A citizen-based tourism planning process in Squamish, Canada, is discussed to illustrate how the framework might be applied. It is concluded that power relations are endemic features of emergent tourism settings. As such, it is unlikely that independent agencies can be identified to convene differences in power across stakeholder groups. Therefore, research should focus on explaining the impacts of power relations on community-based tourism rather than identifying mechanisms to disperse power. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.