Impacts and Potentials of Ecotourism and Community-Based Tourism for Conservation and Development

Steve Borchardt

Master Thesis

Supervised by Dr. Robert Steiger & Univ.-Prof. Dr. Bruno Abegg

University of Innsbruck

Institute of Geography

Faculty of Geo- and Atmospheric Sciences

June 2018

Abstract

CBT and ecotourism can be useful instruments for making valuable contributions to both, nature conservation and community development. While tourism in general, can be a business incubator and economic catalysator as well, CBT and ecotourism expand on these impacts and specifically focus on participatory aspects and empowerment of the community in their development scope. Furthermore, ecotourism utilises the touristic potential of natural resources to contribute to its conservation, while CBT also strives to preserve intact landscapes in accordance with the sustainable tourism principles. Understanding the impacts of these tourism forms on the community and the environment, is essential to identify enabling and hampering factors for a further improvement of the concepts’ contributions to conservation and development.

Following up on this, the present thesis puts its focal point on the impacts and the potentials of CBT and ecotourism for nature conservation and community development in Kyrgyzstan. Therefore, the tourism development during the Soviet Era and after gaining independence has to be understood respectively in order to grasp current tourism development trends and to understand the power structures and relationships between the government, the private sector and external assistance organisations as these may indicate possible future perspectives and major obstacles for further development. Semi-structured expert interviews have been conducted to obtain necessary data about these aspects in the field.

The results showed that the development of CBT and ecotourism is still at an initial stage in Kyrgyzstan. The Soviet heritage with mass tourism structures being located at the north shore of lake Issyk-Kul, lead to a neglection of small-scale tourism forms for local development by the government and thus, a lack of support and capacities. Anyways, CBT and ecotourism activities – whose development has usually been greatly supported by external assistance organisations - do contribute to community development in many areas, basically by providing jobs with additional or partially even alternative incomes for local community members and by supporting economic growth in the community due to the multiplier effect. Despite of that, participatory aspects are largely ignored, and the established CBT structures do not strive for an involvement of all community members and are hence, just another tourism competitor in the growing tourism market in the study area. As current tourist numbers are still on a low level, environmental strains are rather insignificant which is why the contribution to conservation is hard to estimate and beside some cleaning activities along the most popular mountain treks in some poorly managed National Parks, supplemented by environmental awareness-raising due to educational programmes that are usually sponsored by external assistance organisations, nothing much is done.

Concluding from that, the present thesis contributes to a further understanding of the impacts of ecotourism and CBT on the community development as well as on nature conservation and furthermore, to the determination of hampering and supporting factors for enhancing the development and conservation potential of these tourism forms.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank everybody, who contributed in any way to the completion of the present thesis.

First of all, I would like to express my great appreciation for the support that was provided by the Mountain Societies Research Institute (MSRI) of the University of Central Asia in Bishkek. Especially Dr. Marc Foggin, current director of the institute, you have been such a great help and always offered your valuable support in all matters. Besides, I also thank the rest of the staff of the MSRI for their numerous advises, helpful connections and for their essential support in translations.

To my supervisors at the university of Innsbruck, Dr. Robert Steiger and Prof. Dr. Bruno Abegg, thank you for supervising my thesis, for guiding me through the process of developing, conducting and analysing my research and for supporting me with your experience and expertise whenever it was necessary.

Furthermore, I would like to thank Dr. Yash Veer Bhatnagar for giving me the opportunity to work for the “Global Snow Leopard and Ecosystem Protection Program”, which also provided me with additional insights in the study area and supported the establishment of further connections for the field work. In this context, I would also like to thank Pakiza Shirinova for her support in establishing further connections.

To my Kyrgyz host family in Bishkek, Meerim, Kamchybek, Ymyt, Gulnura, Adilet and the rest of this lovely, hospitable family, thank you for everything you did for me, for introducing me to the Kyrgyz culture, the Kyrgyz language and the delicious Kyrgyz cuisine. Especially to Meerim, you were such a valuable support as a translator in the field and as a friend in general, thank you very much.

To all of my interviewees, who sacrificed their time for the me, thank you for being so opened, welcoming and supportive to me and my research. It was such a pleasure to conduct this fieldwork in such a convenient atmosphere with such friendly people.

To my girlfriend, for being so supportive in the whole process of completing this thesis. I also like to thank all of my friends and my family for being such a great company all the time and for providing so many valuable advices whenever it was needed.

Last but not least, I would like to thank the University of Innsbruck for granting me the KWA scholarship, I would not have been able to conduct my research in Kyrgyzstan without this great support.

Table of Contents

Abstract ...... I Acknowledgements ...... II Table of Contents ...... III Annex ...... V List of Acronyms and Abbreviations ...... VI List of Tables ...... VIII List of Figures ...... IX 1. Introduction ...... 1 1.1. Objectives and research question ...... 2 1.2. Thesis structure ...... 3 2. Theory ...... 5 2.1. From Conventional Mass Tourism towards Alternative Tourism forms...... 5 2.2. The concept of sustainability as basis for sustainable tourism ...... 9 2.3. The emergence of sustainable tourism ...... 12 2.3.1. Nature-based tourism and nature tourism ...... 12 2.3.2. Ecotourism ...... 13 2.3.4. Excursus to soft tourism ...... 18 2.3.5. Sustainable tourism ...... 19 2.3.6. Responsible Tourism ...... 30 2.4. Community-Based Tourism ...... 33 2.4.1. The concept of community ...... 35 2.4.2. The concept of participation ...... 35 2.4.3. Critique of the concept ...... 38 2.4.4. Current research trends in the field of CBT ...... 39 2.5. The synergy of ecotourism and CBT ...... 39 3. Methods ...... 43 3.1. Qualitative research approach and applied methods ...... 43 3.2. Secondary data ...... 44 3.3. Field observation ...... 45 3.4. Interview – design and practice ...... 46 3.4.1. Semi-structured interviews ...... 46 3.4.2. Expert interviews ...... 48 3.4.3. Purposive Sampling ...... 49 3.4.4. Qualitative Content Analysis ...... 51 3.5. Language and Translation ...... 53 3.6. Positionality ...... 54

III

3.7. Ethical considerations ...... 55 3.8. Compromises and limitations during fieldwork ...... 55 4. Study Area ...... 57 4.1. Kyrgyzstan in general ...... 58 4.2. Tourism during Soviet Era ...... 61 4.3. Tourism in Kyrgyzstan since the independence ...... 63 4.4. Tourism forms in Kyrgyzstan ...... 66 4.5. Role of external assistance ...... 69 4.6. Nature Conservation in the Study Area ...... 69 4.7. Summarising key aspects ...... 71 5. Results ...... 73 5.1. Tourism Development in Kyrgyzstan ...... 74 5.2. Intersectoral Synergies ...... 77 5.3. Role of the Government ...... 78 5.4. Role of External Assistance...... 81 5.5. Cooperation and Partnerships ...... 84 5.6. Conceptual Issues ...... 85 5.7. Impacts of CBT and ecotourism activities ...... 87 5.7.1. Ecological impacts of CBT and ecotourism activities ...... 87 5.7.2. Socioeconomic Impacts of CBT and ecotourism activities ...... 89 5.7.3. Cultural impacts of CBT and ecotourism activities ...... 92 5.8. Future Perspectives and Suggestions for Improvements ...... 95 5.9. Main Obstacles ...... 101 5.10. Discussion of the Results...... 104 6. Conclusion and implications for research and practice ...... 110 6.1. Implications for Practice...... 111 6.2. Implications for further Research ...... 112 6.3. Concluding Remark ...... 113 Bibliography ...... 114 Annex ...... 125

Annex

Annex 1: Interview Schedule...... 125

List of Acronyms and Abbreviations

AGOCA ALLIANCE OF CENTRAL ASIAN MOUNTAIN COMMUNITIES AKDN AGA KHAN DEVELOPMENT NETWORK AKF AGA KHAN FOUNDATION APEC ASIA-PACIFIC ECONOMIC COOPERATION BCN BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION NETWORK BGI BUSINESS GROWTH INITIATIVE CBD CONVENTION ON BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY CBET COMMUNITY-BASED ECOTOURISM CBT COMMUNITY-BASED TOURISM CIPRA THE COMMISSION INTERNATIONALE POUR LA PROTECTION DES RÉGIONS ALPINES CIS COMMONWELATH OF IDEPENDENT STATES CSR CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY DMO DESTINATION MANAGEMENT ORGANISATION ECOSOC UNITED NATIONS ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COUNCIL ECTWT ECUMENICAL CHURCH OF THIRD WOLRD TOURISM FOD FEDERATION OF ORGANIC DEVELOPMENT GDP GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT GIZ DEUTSCHE GESELLSCHAFT FÜR INTERNATIONALE ZUSAMMENARBEIT GSLEP GLOBAL SNOW LEOPARD AND ECOSYSTEM PROTECTION PROGRAM GTZ DEUTSCHE GESELLSCHAFT FÜR TECHNISCHE ZUSAMMENARBEIT IKBR ISSYK-KUL BIOSPHERE RESERVE IMF INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND IYE INTERNATIONAL YEAR OF ECOTOURISM JICA JAPAN INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION AGENCY KATO KYRGYZ ASSOCIATION OF TOUR OPERATORS KMGA KYRGYZ MOUNTAIN GUIDE ASSOCIATION KGB KOMITET GOSUDARSTVENNOY BEZOPASNOSTI (COMMITTEE OF STATE SECURITY) MDG MILLENIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS MSDSP MOUNTAIN SOCIETIES DEVELOPMENT SUPPORT PROGRAMME MSRI MOUNTAIN SOCIETIES RESEARCH INSTITUTE NGO NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANISATION OECD THE ORGANISATION FOR ECONOMIC COOPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT SDC SWISS AGENCY FOR DEVELOPMENT AND COOPERATION SDG SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS SSR SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLIC TACIS TECHNICAL ASSITANCE OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF INDEPENDENT STATES TUI TOURISTIC UNION INTERNATIONAL UN UNITED NATIONS UNCCD UNITED NATIONS CONVENTION TO COMBAT DESERTIFICATION UNDP UNITED NATIONS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME UNEP UNITED NATIONS ENVIRONMENTAL PROGRAMME UNFCCC UNITED NATIONS FRAMEWORK CONVENTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE

UNWTO UNITED NATIONS WORLD TOURISM ORGANISATION USAID UNITED STATES AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT USSR UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS WES WORLD ECOTOURISM SUMMIT WTO WORLD TRADE ORGANISATION WTTC WORLD TRAVEL & TOURISM COUNCIL WWF WORLD WILDLIFE FUND

VII

List of Tables

Table 1: Selected definitions of ecotourism...... 15 Table 2: Important Commitments for the debate on Sustainable Tourism...... 21 Table 3: Premises of Sustainable Tourism ...... 24 Table 4: Central CBT elements. Derived from a survey ...... 34 Table 5: Central Elements of the interview schedule...... 47 Table 6: Interview Partners...... 51 Table 7: Encoded categories for the interview partners...... 73

VIII

List of Figures

Figure 1: Main Research Objectives and Research Question...... 3 Figure 2: Sustainability Triangle...... 12 Figure 3: Central Aspects of Sustainable Tourism ...... 23 Figure 4: Pentagon Pyramid of Sustainable Tourism ...... 24 Figure 5: Focus Areas for Responsible Tourism from the Cape Town Declaration ...... 32 Figure 6: Participation Pyramid ...... 36 Figure 7: The Continuum of tourism concepts relevant for the thesis ...... 43 Figure 8: Classification of qualitative interviews according to FLICK ...... 47 Figure 9: Different Sampling Strategies ...... 50 Figure 10: Process of a qualitative content analysis ...... 53 Figure 11: Study Area...... 57 Figure 12: Topographical Boundary of Southern and Northern Kyrgyzstan ...... 59 Figure 13: Issyk-Kul Biosphere Reserve...... 70 Figure 14: Hampering factors for further tourism development in Kyrgyzstan...... 103

1. Introduction

Countries all over the world are harnessing tourism as a tool for different objectives, mainly for development and conservation (regardless whether nature or culture conservation) purposes. Tourism is perceived as a motor for development and substantially contributes to many countries’ economies which is why tourism activities increase year by year and the industry is meant to be one of the fastest growing industries in the world (UNWTO 2012). In times of globalisation and worldwide interlacing, economic processes are expanding and thus, the use of natural resources is increasing as well, further straining the planet’s capacities (MEADOWS 1972). These excessive practices and its associated negative impacts called for a change of the development direction, a change of people’s mentality and a holistic change of the system. This call was answered in the form of the sustainable development concept that attempted to foster a development where ecological, economic and social aspects are considered equally in order to ensure that present needs are met without limiting the possibilities for future generations to meet theirs (BRUNDTLAND 1987). The extensive resource-consuming patterns are also revealed in the tourism sector and they are most notably observable in the field of conventional mass tourism. Concomitant with the sustainable development movement, the concept of sustainable tourism emerged as a further stage of alternative tourism, enunciating a counter-expression to the negative impacts caused by mass tourism (FISCHER 2014). Within the spectrum of sustainable tourism, ecotourism and Community-Based tourism (CBT) can be situated as two forms that were designed to target specific objectives – nature conservation and community development (KISS 2004).

During the past two or three decades, several projects and initiatives that can be related to these concepts have been implemented, often in structurally weak rural areas and with the support of non-governmental organisations and international development agencies. The success of these projects varies enormously and depends on different factors which is why the sustainability of the initiatives is often uncertain (GOODWIN & SANTILLI 2009). Research has already contributed a lot to the understanding of the concepts, even though all the numerous contributions on conceptual aspects have also caused confusion about the exact definition of the terms, especially in the case of ecotourism (FIGGIS 1995). Other academic literature has also focussed on the benefits and the impacts of ecotourism on the environment (especially for marine species and ecosystems) or on the contribution of CBT to community development. Additionally, research on ecotourism also analysed the concept’s ability to utilise the potential of nature conservation units for tourism development. Regarding CBT, academic deliberations mostly tackled the concept’s impact on community empowerment and participation. At this point, the sheer amount of literature raises the question why the present thesis should deal with these concepts as well then?

Despite the rather new concept of community-based ecotourism where the two previous concepts are linked together, relatively few academic literature has paid attention to the linkages of those concepts, to their impacts on the community level and for nature conservation and to their potential for both, development and conservation.

While some researchers only examined single aspects of these issues, a holistic approach to the impacts and potentials of these tourism forms has not been made yet. This thesis does also not claim to deliver such a holistic perspective, but rather attempts to identify linkages between different impacts and possibilities for further development of the two concepts, determining hampering as well as supporting factors for the development and putting the impacts on the three dimensions of sustainability in context to each other. Furthermore, Kyrgyzstan, like other post-Soviet countries poses an interesting research case due to the transitional processes that befell the country after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Soviet heritage that is still coining today’s structures in the country, create a special situation in Kyrgyzstan combined with this transition (PALMER 2009). As small-scale tourism is a relatively young phenomenon in Kyrgyzstan and the country has also not received much attention within the academic literature, the present thesis does not only provide additional insights for the concepts of ecotourism and CBT, but also contributes to a further understanding of the development processes in a post-Soviet country.

1.1. Objectives and research question

In order to grasp the current situation of tourism in Kyrgyzstan, it is essential to understand the tourism development in the country, especially by considering the Soviet heritage and the impact of the economic transition. From the analysis of the country’s tourism development, supporting as well as hampering factors can be derived which can then further provide the basis for evaluating future perspectives and potentials for the tourism development and for understanding current mentalities and associated activities as well as their impacts. Other important aspects that have to be analysed are the role of the government and the role of external assistance organisations for the tourism development. Power structures, conflicts of interests and other relevant stakeholder constellations largely determine the economic, social, environmental and political situations on all levels. Especially in low-income countries like Kyrgyzstan, external assistance organisations may play a major role in supporting and influencing the tourism development. Furthermore, the conceptual understanding of the terms ecotourism and CBT among Kyrgyz tourism stakeholders needs to be clarified to detect knowledge gaps and to find a consensus on the central aspects of the concepts. This conceptual understanding is also essential for properly interpreting the statements on ecological, socio-economic and cultural impacts of CBT and ecotourism. While the analysis of ecological impacts will allow conclusions for nature conservation, the socio-economic and cultural impacts will rather indicate implications for the community development.

In order to evaluate the future perspectives for a further development of ecotourism and CBT, it is important to identify major obstacles as well as supporting factors that are not only derived from the analysis of the past tourism development but also from the analysis of the impacts of CBT and ecotourism. Eventually, this future perspective will also contribute to the final interpretation of the concepts’ potentials.

All these aspects need to be analysed respectively in order to eventually answer the following research question: What are the impacts and potentials of ecotourism and CBT activities for nature conservation and community development? Realising conservation and development at the same time already alludes to an alleged contradiction which makes it inevitable to analyse the conflict potential in this research question as well. The following figure summarises the most important objectives for answering the research question.

Figure 1: Main Research Objectives and Research Question. Own depiction.

1.2. Thesis structure

Following up on the present introductory chapter, the next chapter will provide the necessary theoretical background, including all tourism concepts relevant to the research subject. In order to navigate through this conceptual jungle, the concepts are presented according to a chronological timeline, starting with mass tourism and the emergence of alternative tourism as a counterdraft to the negative impacts of conventional mass tourism, before the development path of sustainable tourism will be depicted by subdividing the path into all its relevant intermediate steps, beginning with nature-based tourism, ecotourism and an excursus to soft tourism and ending with the concept of sustainable tourism and an addendum to responsible tourism.

As a next step, the concept of Community-Based tourism is introduced as a special form that evolved from the sustainable tourism streaming and this form will eventually be linked to the concept of ecotourism as a final product of the theoretical funnel. Chapter three will then introduce the methods that have been utilised in the field to obtain the necessary data for the research topic.

Beside the supplementary data that has been used for the research, the methodological background of semi-structured expert interviews and the main features of field observations will be delineated, before the methods for the sampling and for the data analysis will be explained in detail. The final sections in this chapter address aspects of language and translation, ethical considerations, researcher’s positionality and limitations and compromises that arose during the field work.

After the theoretical background and the methodological approach have been comprehensively elucidated, chapter four will give an overview about Kyrgyzstan in general and the study area specifically, even though political, economic, social, cultural and environmental aspects will be basically reviewed through the lens of tourism. Subsequent to this spatial introduction of the study area, the analysed results will be presented alongside with their interpretation in chapter five, before a final position for answering the posed research question is taken up. Last but not least, the conclusion will give a concise summary of the findings, followed by implications for practice and research and a concluding remark as a final statement for the thesis.

2. Theory

Soft, green, eco-, alternative, sustainable, pro-poor-, responsible, ethical, community-based-, adventure, nature-based, integrated tourism and dozens of other types and terms of tourism exist, deluging the market, causing confusion and disagreement on substantial definitions which make it nearly impossible to clearly distinguish between different tourism forms. Nonetheless, the following chapters attempt to find a way through the definitional and conceptual maze to provide an overview about central aspects of the tourism forms relevant to the research topic.

2.1. From Conventional Mass Tourism towards Alternative Tourism forms

Tourism has become one of the most important global economic sectors of modern times. It started to be a mass phenomenon only in the 1960s and since then, it grew fast and constantly regarding the number of tourist arrivals and the income it generates and by 1992, the tourism industry had already become one of the largest employers and biggest economic sectors in the world (THEOBALD 2005). In 2010 the sector already accounted for more than 9% of the global GDP, in 60 countries it had become the most important export good and according to the UNWTO, tourism created one in 12 jobs by that time (FISCHER 2014).

Nowadays, leisure und vacation have become essential parts of people’s life. Since the middle of the 19th century, life expectancy constantly improved, while at the same time the working lifetime got limited, leading to an increase in leisure time. As the real income in the western countries increased since the second world war for a broad share of the population, the opportunities for consumerism and consequently for a self-reliantly designed vacation increased as well. As people in Middle and Northern Europe could suddenly afford to buy cars, the individual mobility of the population rapidly developed and thus, made it possible for them to reach a greater range of destinations. Improvements and further developments in air traffic made it even possible to visit destinations all around the globe (KREISEL 2007). A booming economy combined with cheap flights and the increasing car mobility initiated the boom in the tourism industry in the 1960s – also referred to as “the democratisation of travel” (KOLLAND 2006). By that time, and even before, the society in the western countries experienced a process of change from a “pure working society” towards a “work-, consumerism-, leisure- and multi- optional society” (MUNDT 1998).

As environmental impacts of tourism remained insignificant until the 1950s due to the low number of tourists, the impacts started to get critical with the beginning of a booming mass tourism. The quantitative extent of tourism activities is hard to catch hold of. According to the UNWTO, there were approximately 1,235b international tourist arrivals in 2016 and the estimated numbers for the next years are expected to grow even further (UNWTO 2016).

This ongoing increase of touristic activities combined with a growing number of short-term holidays to more distant destinations and more diversified spare time activities did not only lead to the desired positive economic effects, but also to severe negative impacts on the environment. Especially nature- based tourism activities are often undertaken in ecologically sensitive landscapes. Land consumption, urban sprawl, impairment of several environments as well as transport emissions are general causes of the strain (JOB & VOGT 2007).

The environmental impacts of leisure and tourism can be divided into three different segments – impacts of touristic traffic, impacts caused by infrastructural development and impacts evolving from touristic utilisations. HEINZE & KILL (1997) already illustrated that more than 50% of individual transport is accounted for leisure and holiday. As technological advancements led to more powerful and faster transportation vehicles, not only traffic itself grew but also the travelled distances. Furthermore, the increase of the traffic volume is also caused by an increase in the number of undertaken travels combined with a trend towards a shorter duration of stay (HEINZE & KILL 1997).

The extent of the environmental impacts of touristic traffic are strongly connected with the choice of means of transport, travel behaviour, travelled distance and the occupancy rate of the means of transport, as these variables affect exhaust emissions, noise and air pollution as well as resource consumption. Another impact on the environment is reflected in the development and the operation of touristic infrastructure, which has led to massive ecological strains. Since mass tourism is booming, the need for space in ever growing numbers of destinations is enormously rising. Several infrastructures need to be created within the destinations, ranging from areas for accommodation, supplying and disposal infrastructures to transport infrastructure and touristic attractions. This process of infrastructure provision, area zonation and housing sprawl creates an alteration and rearrangement of the soil, sealing of soils, pollutant input and chop-off-effects of habitats (HERZOG et al. 1994).

Krippendorf already drew attention to the extreme need for space of tourism with his book “Die Landschaftsfresser” and levelled criticism against mass tourism and its impacts (KRIPPENDORF 1975).

Finally, the tourist activities themselves might also negatively affect the environment, depending on the intensity of use, the capacity of the concerned area, the type of activities and the behaviour of the tourist. It should be pointed out, that the ecological impacts of tourist activities are usually very difficult to conceive and generalised statements about the impacts of “soft” (e.g. hiking) and “hard” tourist activities (e.g. heli skiing) are only hard to make (JOB & VOGT 2007).

On the other hand, there are not only environmental concerns, but also social problems associated with mass tourism. The economy of mass tourism is often accompanied by a vigorous dominance of foreign enterprises and markets, causing the degradation of local community members to servants with lousy wages. In fact, the wage levels of workers in the tourism sector are significantly lower than in other sectors. Additionally, child labour is also an issue in the tourism sector and estimations range from 13 6

to 19 million people under the age of 18 who work in tourism. Despite that, tourism replaces traditional jobs in the communities (for instance fishing and agriculture). Fully externally driven tourism activities furthermore marginalize indigenous communities and prevent the people to actively influence the further development trends of their homeland (FISCHER 2014).

This excursus to the ecological and social impacts of tourism shall elucidate the potential consequences, which might arise from tourism activities that occur on a mass scale and without a sustainable framework. This is also the reason, why harsh critique against tourism arose in the late 1960s and the early 1970s. First concerns about tourism were publicly addressed in 1969 at the World Council of Churches in Canterbury (MACLEOD 2005). Even in 1963, Christaller already wrote about the transformational impact of large tourist numbers and accompanied developments on peripheral tourism destinations. SMITH (1974) stated that many anthropologists and sociologists were also seriously concerned about the impacts of tourism development on behaviour, traditions and human values in the considered destinations. Consequently, the cry for an alternative became louder and louder, even though these concerns faced two major problems: firstly, there is the economic importance of mass tourism and secondly, it is a matter of fact, that many people favour being a mass tourist with all the associated comfortable benefits (e.g. no organisational efforts, often all-inclusive offer, convenient availability of all relevant services etc.). Drawing this conclusion, BUTLER (1990) brought up the question why anyone should want to promote alternative tourism then? The answer probably lies in the above- mentioned critique and the assumption that alternative tourism forms do have fewer negative impacts on tourism destinations and their local population (BUTLER 1990). Despite of that, alternative tourism has also grown in popularity as tourists seek for different experiences with fewer impacts on the environment (FISCHER 2014).

But how is alternative tourism defined and what are central aspects of the concept? As the name might already implicate, the concept of alternative tourism is astonishingly broad and there is not a single, most widely accepted definition (THEOBALD 2005). Butler already compared this issue with the debate surrounding the concept of sustainable development and therefore inferred that “alternative tourism can mean almost anything to anyone” (BUTLER 1990, p. 40).

Nonetheless, several authors attempted to find definitions for the concept of alternative tourism. COHEN (1987) suggested that alternative tourism can be described by two different principles. On the one hand, it can be seen as a reaction to mass tourism and modern consumerism in general in the form of a counter-cultural response, focussing on tourist characters like the adventurer, drifter or traveller, who seek for spontaneity and lost paradises. On the other hand, it can also be seen as a concerned reaction to the ruthless exploitation in the developing countries and therefore targeting a more equitable and just form of tourism (COHEN 1987).

The latter principal was also a central aspect for the Ecumenical Coalition of Third World Tourism (ECTWT), which started to address tourism issues as a church-based network in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1984, the ECTWT defined alternative tourism as a process, which fosters a just form of travel between people of different communities (HOLDEN 1984).

Even though the above-mentioned principles do have their right to exist, COHEN (1987) already discovered a quandary accompanying alternative tourism, pointing out that mass tourism cannot be transformed and alternative tourism occurs on too small scales to offer a realistic alternative to mass tourism. Additionally, he claims that criticism on mass tourism is too generalized as tourism is an extremely diversified and multifaceted phenomenon. He draws the conclusion that the objectives of alternative tourism are too ambitious and ultimately unrealistic, which is why he suggests to rather focus on reforming the most harmful structures and developments in mass tourism (COHEN 1987).

DERNOI (1981) took another direction and defined alternative tourism by the type of provided accommodation. In case of alternative tourism this meant that the host accommodates the tourists directly in his home where he eventually might also offer other additional services and facilities (THEOBALD 2005).

PEARCE (1992) evaluated the goal of finding one single definition for alternative tourism illusive, leading nowhere. For that reason, he systematically reviewed the existing literature on tourism typologies and alternative tourism itself to develop a basis for distinguishing between different types of tourism by identifying relevant dimensions and variables. He states that it is essential to classify different forms of tourism, because there is not one single dominating form of tourism with one single alternative to it. However, his analysis showed that many authors who tried to define alternative tourism, put a focus on the relationship between the tourists and the host, mainly aiming for mutual understanding, solidarity and equality. Several projects and policies came up in the 1970s and early 1980s, fostering “new” forms of tourism in developing countries. Most of these presented case studies in the literature were small scale projects, which included a high degree of participation and involvement of the indigenous population, leading to locally owned or operated tourism businesses with traditional accommodation units. As one of the most popular projects, the example of the Lower Casamance area in Senegal thoroughly reflects these principles, as the program realized the construction of nine villages with traditional Diola dwellings, all of them traditional accommodation units which were locally owned and managed (PEARCE 1992).

An antithesis brought up by CAZES (1989) vividly summarizes the problems accompanying the debate on defining alternative tourism. He concluded that the phenomenon of mass tourism is not fully conceived yet and therefore an alternative to something which is not well understood can eventually not be completely valid. However, he points out that some central aspects from the various concepts of several writers remain, namely the desire for equality, solidarity, environmental awareness, individuality and the contact and communication between the indigenous population and the tourists (CAZES 1989).

Furthermore, most of the authors think about alternative tourism as a counter draft to what is perceived as mass tourism and its associated negative impacts, trying to mitigate these impacts and striving towards a more sustainable form of tourism. The emergence of sustainable tourism can be seen as a further step in the field of alternative tourism and its development is strongly linked to the sustainable development debate which firstly gained global relevance in the 1980s and 1990s (FISCHER 2014).

For that reason, the following chapter attempts to depict central aspects of the concept of sustainability and sustainable development by illustrating the term’s path into the global debates and the associated conceptualisations and academic discussions which were raised.

2.2. The concept of sustainability as basis for sustainable tourism

Before examining the concept of sustainable tourism, it is essential to understand the term sustainability itself as well as its offspring, emergence and its entrance into global agendas and political debates. The idea of sustainability could be traced back by etymologists to the year 1144 in the forest regulations of the monastery Mauermünster in the Alsace region (BAUMGARTNER 2008). In the beginning of the 18th century it was applied as a guiding principle of the then introduced controlled forestry by Hans Carl von Carlowitz as a counter response to the short-term- and profit-oriented overexploitation of the forests, which caused wood scarcity and thus, threatened the economy. The new approach strived to chop off only as many trees as could also regrow through seeding and planting activities in the same time to ensure satisfying wood yields over the long term without harming the soil and the location in general (BAUMGARTNER 2008). The next milestone was made with a publication by the Club of Rome in 1972 with the title “Limits of Growth” (MEADOWS 1972). As the title already implicates, the publication dealt with systemic limits which may be exceeded when global trends of an increasing population, industrialisation, environmental pollution, food production and resource exploitation will rigorously continue. Furthermore, the authors point out that local individual actions can have global impacts which do not align with the time scale and the space of actions of the single individuals. The report also showed that all the different global trends are connected with each other and also affect one another. This inference was also revisited at the United Nations Conference on Human Environment in Stockholm in the same year. This event can be assessed as an expression of the newly emerged political subject called environmental policy. At the conference, it became apparent that the problems of humankind cannot be solved with a single focus on ecology, where social and economic aspects are blanked out. The term of ecodevelopment got introduced, aiming for environmentally friendly strategies which foster socio-economic development. In the following debate, the term got substituted by the term sustainable development and for the first time, the perspective changed in a way that the industrialised countries were not perceived as developed countries which dictate the benchmarks for developing countries, but as “overdeveloped” countries (BAUMGARTNER 2008).

In 1987, the World Commission on Environment and Development, deployed by the UN, published the report “Our common future” also referred to as the Brundtland report. For the first time in history, this report applied the concept of sustainability as a basis for a global strategy, where economic as well as social and ecological goals should be brought down to a common ground. The report stated that a permanent development is a “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (BRUNDTLAND 1987, p. 16). This strategy was further encouraged during the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992 – also referred to as the Rio Earth Summit. The participants agreed that this strategy has to be interpreted as a global, intergenerational and intersocietal concept including ecological as well as social and economic parameters (BAUMGARTNER 2008). The biggest outcomes of the conference were the noncommittal Agenda 21 and the mandatory Convention on Biodiversity. Great hope was set on those two achievements but ten years after the Rio Conference at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg it became obvious that those expectations were disappointed as the tangible implementations lagged far behind the visions. Nonetheless, the concept of sustainable development got further established and top-down principles of the Agenda 21 combined with bottom-up approaches of the local Agenda processes were implemented in various national sustainability strategies (BAUMGARTNER 2008). At the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit in New York in 2015, all of the 193 member states consentaneously passed the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). These goals were designed in relation to the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) that were formulated in 2000 by a workgroup consisting of representatives of the UN, Worldbank, IMF and a special development committee of the OECD. While the MDGs still distinguished between developing and developed countries the SDGs referred to all countries without differentiations. The SDGs cover a wide range of economic and social development issues as well as environmental aspects and even though all goals focus on specific individual targets they are all interrelated with each other and overarched by the great goal of realising a sustainable development (UNITED NATIONS 2015). The section above surely depicted the path of sustainability into the global political discussions and decision processes, but some uncertainties about the definition and especially about the operationalisation of the concept remain. This might be due to the fact that the term describes a highly complex subject where social, economic and natural systems interlock into each other and make it hence, hard to find an exact definition that can be operationalised. On the other hand, the goals and challenges surrounding sustainability and sustainable development are clearly stated (BAUMGARTNER 2008).

Moreover, it has to be distinguished between different manifestations of sustainability, like the differentiation between strong and weak sustainability or the distinction between an efficiency, sufficiency and a consistency strategy. While weak sustainability assumes that natural capital can always be substituted by real capital as long as the average benefit and welfare permanently retains, strong sustainability concludes that natural capital cannot be substituted (complementary theory) and therefore, 10

has to be constantly preserved over the time. The idea of weak sustainability thus, becomes slightly problematic when it comes to calculating a monetary value for nature, e.g. in case of environmental destructions or loss of biodiversity. Besides, the approach assumes that unfavourably affected people can get financially compensated, for instance if an infrastructural project negatively affects the local population but the general benefits exceed the costs. This can ultimately lead to an unfair distribution of benefits and costs, which is why the basic principles of the approach are controversially discussed between representatives of environmental ethics and economy. In contrary to that, strong sustainability asks for the reasonable extent to which natural resources can be utilised by the economic system, stating that the economy depends on the availability of natural resources on the one hand and on the capacities of natural sinks on the other hand (BAUMGARTNER 2008).

In relation to the intergenerational commitments, as well as the complementary theory and the diagnosis of a pattern of natural resource scarcity, it has to be inferred that the remaining stock of natural capital needs to be preserved (DOERING & OTT 2001). The distinction between the three different sustainability strategies (efficiency, sufficiency, consistency) is based on the ecological dimension. While the efficiency strategy seeks for a reduction of the resource and energy consumption per unit of produced commodities (increasing productivity) mainly accomplished by the introduction of technological advancements and innovations, the sufficiency strategy aims for a reduction of produced commodities which would also lead to a reduction in the material prosperity, whereas the consistency strategy attempts to increase the compatibility of anthropogenic and natural material flows (e.g. resource cycles, recycling). In order to appropriately define the concept of sustainability it is essential to choose between these different strategies and approaches, as the choice of the manifestation will eventually determine the central aspects of the concept (FISCHER 2014).

A widespread and generally accepted model to illustrate sustainability is the three-pillar-model which vividly encompasses the central aspects brought up by the first definition in the Brundtland-report. It is also largely favoured in the political context and distinguishes between the pillars environment, society and economy, all three of them considered to be equivalent to each other. In addition to that, the pillars need to be grasped as an inseparable unit, where social, economic and ecological development have to take place in harmony and cadence. This central aspect leads to the assumption that sustainability has to be regarded to as an integrative concept (JÖRISSEN et al. 1999). Some authors who dealt with the conceptualisation of sustainability even added a fourth pillar – either an institutional dimension, a knowledge dimension or a cultural dimension (DOERING & OTT 2001). For the depiction of the concept, the sustainability triangle is one of the most popular versions. It is an equilateral triangle and the three pillars are located in the corners to outline that every pillar is interrelated with the others (see figure below).

Figure 2: Sustainability Triangle. Own depiction.

However, numerous varieties of different illustrations and different models of sustainability exist and the discussion on the conceptualisation is often characterised by different lines of arguments where their contribution to sustainable development is sometimes questionable as several discrepancies between the respective goals can be identified (LAHIRI-DUTT 2000).

This circumstance also reveals that sustainable development is hard to substantiate and operationalise and even though the concept is globally established on the political level and experiences broad affirmation by all social classes, it faces fundamentally diverse opinions when it comes to a conceptual ascertainment in different policy fields regarding the specific goals, strategies and priorities of actions. The great number of publications combined with all the different approaches in defining the concept of sustainability and sustainable development, created an academic jungle where the same term can mean different things to different people causing an inflationary usage of the term (DOERING & OTT 2001). Nonetheless, general agreement exists at least on the basic principles of sustainability and these aspects gained relevance in the debate on alternative tourism as well, contributing to further directions of development and initiating the emergence of a new form of tourism – sustainable tourism.

2.3. The emergence of sustainable tourism

2.3.1. Nature-based tourism and nature tourism

As with the emergence of sustainability and sustainable development there were also several steps undertaken before sustainable tourism was brought up as a concept. Nature-based tourism can be seen as a first step, even though this form did not seek for any ecological conservation specifically. Organisations like the Alpine Clubs, Nature Friends or the Sierra Club in the USA already promoted nature-loving tourism at the end of the 19th century and some of these approaches can actually be interpreted as precursor of modern ecotourism (REIN & STRASDAS 2015).

However, nature-based tourism expresses a high degree of naturalness and comprises consumptive as well as non-consumptive activities, making it consequently a very comprehensive category. People flying to the Caribbean Sea to enjoy white sand beaches and a swim in the ocean are obviously going to these places in order to appreciate the nature. Such trips are highly consumptive and can surely be assigned to nature-based tourism. Whitewater rafting or other adventurous activities in the European Alpes are also associated with nature-based tourism as all of these activities make use of the nature in one way or another. Nature tourism instead might be classified as a subset of nature-based tourism describing rather non- or less consumptive activities which take place in the nature. Nature tourism puts a stronger focus on landscapes and wilderness, including natural elements like waterfalls, mountains, lakes or other beautiful sceneries. The tourists prioritise watching over touching and engage in activities like exploring, hiking or photography (FISCHER 2014).

LAARMAN & DURST (1987) defined nature tourism as a combination of recreation, education and a particular proportion of adventure (LAARMANN & DURST 1987). LUCAS (1984) claims that nature tourism focuses on enjoying and observing natural areas with a low environmental impact, being labour intensive and contributing economically and socially to the nation (LUCAS 1984). In the literature, the definitional frameworks start to become blurry at this point as some authors used the terms ecotourism and nature tourism synonymously which is why both concepts feature a range of similarities and overlapping content (VALENTINE 1992). However, ecotourism can also be construed as a further development of nature tourism and nature-based tourism in general and thus, marking the next step towards the concept of sustainable tourism.

2.3.2. Ecotourism

Nowadays, there exists a vast number of definitions on ecotourism. FIGGIS (1995) even wrote about the emergence of a sport discipline on defining ecotourism. Ecologically oriented thoughts were firstly integrated in tourism in 1965 and the consequential originating of ecotourism initially encompassed a form of environmentally and socially amicable travelling (BAUMGARTNER 2008).

The concept of ecotourism emerged as a response to the ongoing worldwide loss of biodiversity, which got especially revealed in the tropical regions. The Rio Earth Summit in 1992 has been heavily dominated by the topic of global nature conservation.

The adopted UNFCCC (The United Nation’s Framework Convention on Climate Change) and the UNCCD (United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification) experienced little attention in the first place, both in the public awareness and in political prioritisations. Anyways, the tropical rainforest became the iconic figure in the environmental discussions of the 1990s. Initially, the concept of ecotourism was mainly designed by international nature conservation organisations like the WWF (World Wildlife Fund). In this context, the International Ecotourism Society emerged in 1991 in the

USA, rapidly becoming one of the leading organisations in this segment. But already before, people from the supply side of the tourism industry started to recognise that environmental quality also means product quality in most cases, so holidaymakers consequently seek for clean beaches, clear water and intact landscapes. TUI (Touristic Union International) was the first touristic enterprise to employ an environmental officer, filling whole halls with respective events at the International Tourism Faire in Berlin. In Europe, several research projects developed concepts which tried to harmonise tourism and landscape planning. Hotels introduced environmental management systems, supported by several competitions and environmental certifications. Such pragmatic implementations of ideas, that already evolved during the 1980s led to an improvement of the environmental balance, at least in some European tourist regions (REIN & STRASDAS 2015).

In the German speaking literature, the term ecotourism attracted attention since 1990, though in the beginning, it was rather construed as a type of tourism which is limited to travelling to protected areas only before the definition was later expanded to close-to-nature areas and tried to integrate the particular interests of the local population (BAUMGARTNER 2008). However, it has to be noted that there is a special form of ecotourism called conservation tourism, that strictly focuses on protected areas only and allows them to profit from tourism either directly through entrance fees or indirectly through changing values, raising awareness raising and by reaching a higher acceptance among the local population due to the touristic activities. BUCKLEY (2010) defined conservation tourism as tourism which serves as a “conservation tool”, making it thus, a helpful measure especially in developing countries, as protected areas in these places are often lousy financed and poorly accepted by local people (FISCHER 2014).

This fact also vividly indicates the basic idea behind ecotourism as a sustainable tourism concept: it assumes that the need for finances in the developing countries for nature conservation can be provided by international tourists who spend huge amounts of money to experience the nature on site, consequently, this economic potential can be utilised in order to enhance nature conservation and create alternative income sources for the local population at the same time. The ecological compatibility of tourism is preconditioned. Many authors state that the concept specifically focuses on developing countries and their associated difficulties, indicating a stronger orientation on development than on restrictive aspects like promoted in the concept of soft tourism which will be discussed in the section below (REIN & STRASDAS 2015). The following table shows a selection of the most cited and popular definitions and even though the basic goals of ecotourism seem obvious, the table illustrates the range of different opinions and priorities within the definitions.

SELECTED DEFINITIONS OF ECOTOURISM CEBALLOS-LASCURAIN, H. “Tourism that consists of travelling to relatively undisturbed or (1987): The Future of Ecotourism. In: uncontaminated natural areas with the specific objective of studying, Mexico Journal. pp. 13 – 14. admiring and enjoying the scenery and its wild plants and animals, as well as any existing cultural manifestations.” BOO, E. (1990): Ecotourism: The “Ecotourism is environmentally responsible travel and visitation to Potentials and Pitfals. Volume 1. relatively undisturbed areas, in order to enjoy and appreciate nature World Wildlife Fund. Washington (and any accompanying cultural features- both past and present) that D.C. promotes conservation, has low negative visitor impact, and provides for beneficially active socio-economic involvement of local population” THE INTERNATIONAL “Ecotourism is responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the ECOTOURISM SOCIETY (1991) environment and sustains the well-being of local people.” CATER, E. (1992): Profits from “Any form of tourism which is based on the natural ecological Paradise. In: Geographical Magazine. attraction of a country, ranging from snorkelling off coral reefs to Vol. 64. pp. 16 – 21 game viewing in savanna grassfields” VALENTINE, P. (1993): Ecotourism “That kind of tourism which is: (a) based on relatively undisturbed and Nature Conservation. Tourism natural areas, (b) non-damaging, non-degrading, (c) a direct Management. Vol. 14 (2). pp. 107 – contributor to the continued protection and management of natural 115. areas used, (d) subject to an adequate and appropriate management regime.” BLAMEY, R.K. (1997): Ecotourism: “Where an individual travels to what he or she considers to be a The Search for an Operational relatively undisturbed natural area that is more than 40km from home. Definition. In: Journal of Sustainable The primary intention being of study, admire or appreciate the scenery Tourism. Vol. 5 (2). pp. 109 – 130. and its wild plants and animals, as well as any existing cultural manifestations (both past and present) found in these areas.” FENELL, D. (1999): Ecotourism. “A sustainable form of natural resource-based tourism that focuses Routledge. primarily on experiencing and learning about nature, and which is ethically managed to be low impact, non-consumptive, and locally orientated (control, benefits, and scale). It typically occurs in natural areas and should contribute to conservation and preservation of such areas.” THE INTERNATIONAL "Responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environqment, ECOTOURISM SOCIETY (2015) sustains the well-being of the local people, and involves interpretation and education.” Table 1: Selected definitions of ecotourism. A few aspects all definitions commonly share can be identified. Nature is the central aspect in every definition. Further definitional properties that are frequently included are local culture, minimising damage to ecosystems and socio-cultural environments, nature conservation as well as contribution to local economies and environmental education.

FISCHER (2014) attempted to comprise all these aspects in one single definition, stating that ecotourism has low impacts on the environment and is drawing its inspiration from the natural heritage in the first, and the cultural heritage in the second place and intends to diminish negative cultural, social and environmental impacts down to a minimum, while also contributing to the environmental protection of areas on the long run, by generating revenues which can be directed to the local management of the respective areas and furthermore, to the local communities, where ecotourism is also offering educational opportunities (FISCHER 2014).

Derived from the above-mentioned definitions, the ”ideal” ecotourist seeks for undisturbed, untouched and pristine or original places in the nature, that are most likely to be found in protected or very remote areas, even though historically grown cultural landscapes may also be in the scope of ecotourists. Ecotourists may have a relatively small ecological footprint at the destination and their support for nature conservation and local economies can be astonishingly strong. Visiting a place where no one else has set his foot in before is apparently a very illusive perception and expressions like pristine or untouched appear to be rather mystical and far away from actual touristic practices. However, the ecotourist’s expectations of their destination can only be met when the destination gives at least the impression of being untouched and undisturbed. This intended impression also indicates why such destinations will never be capable of receiving larger groups of people as the first wave of too many ecotourists would deprive ecotourism of its own basis (FISCHER 2014).

BERLE (1990) already alluded to this quandary when he stated that we are allegedly loving nature to death sometimes. Consequently, this type of tourism can only be applied to smaller groups of tourists and thus, ecotourism will always be a niche product that will not be able to act as a counterbalance to the negative impacts of dominating mass tourism (FISCHER 2014).

Nonetheless, ecotourism with its environmental focus was especially valued due to its pragmatism and applicability. Instead of demanding radical solutions for nature conservation in developing countries and the ambivalence of third-world-tourism, ecotourism simply accepts the fundamental contradictions and rather fosters a sustainable control of tourism within its systemic logic. This circumstance has also caused repetitive critique from tourism-critical organisations because of the neoliberal societal image that is promoted. Nonetheless, ecotourism experienced a broad acceptance and implementation in numerous developing countries and the concept is firmly established within the field of international development assistance and within nature conservation projects which seek for a sustainable use of nature and landscape. Making up a distinct balance of ecotourism is complicated because the term has been frequently misused, and the problem of sustainably funding nature conservation could not be solved sufficiently. On the other hand, the concept can claim undeniable efforts in practice, like in many Latin-American, East- and South-African countries, where ecotourism effectively contributed to the funding of protected areas without causing serious damages and became a substantial source of income for local communities (REIN & STRASDAS 2015).

Moreover, the relevance of the concept and its connection with sustainable development has also been highlighted by various global events that have been organised during the International Year of Ecotourism which has been declared by the United Nations in 2002 in order to cooperatively contribute to a further understanding of ecotourism and its potential for sustainable development, especially in developing countries. Several international conferences took place, like the World Ecotourism Summit in Quebec, supplemented by numerous national conferences in more than 50 countries. The UNEP mentioned three main insights of the IYE. Firstly, ecotourism has been established as a politically acknowledged concept. Secondly, the term ecotourism is often abused for things like ecolabelling and greenwashing. Last but not least, tourism is now acknowledged as global economic driving force, especially for developing countries and small island nations. However, the insights neglect the lack of neither a mandatory definition of ecotourism, nor a transparent and verifiable strategy development and subsequently, proper guidelines for the monitoring of sustainability as well. At the official closure conference in October 2002 in Cairns, the “Charta for Partnership in Ecotourism” and an applicable action plan were presented. The vision statements involve all stakeholders in the touristic development and the action plan demands an extension of sustainability efforts in the whole tourism sector. However, even those responsible realised after one year that the implementation of the results from the IYE can only succeed with a declaration of commitment on the adherence of sustainability criteria in tourism (BAUMGARTNER 2008).

The depicted examples for political and practical implementations truly proved the importance of ecotourism in the tourism sector and its relevance as a valuable contributor for the debate on sustainable development. Several of the selected definitions included aspects of ecological and socio-cultural compatibility, participation of local population as well as funding of local economic cycles and protected areas. Unfortunately, this may mistakenly lead to the assumption that ecotourism and sustainable tourism can be used synonymously, but the interpretability of the concepts, its central aspects and criteria still remains a difficult task and as the pure ecological relation of ecotourism is actually not compatible with the holistic objectives of a sustainable development, ecotourism can rather be seen as a pre-stage of sustainable tourism (BAUMGARTNER 2008).

Current research trends in the field of ecotourism

In contrast to the previously mentioned alternative tourism forms, ecotourism is still a relevant concept in practice and also focal point of recent research. Many academic articles still deal with ecotourism’s impacts on conservation and on the potential for the protection of flagship species specifically (CISNEROS-MONTEMAYOR et al. 2013).

Another area that is still in the scope of some researchers refers to the environmental behaviour and the understanding of behavioural changes as well as determining factors for influencing this behaviour (CHIU et al. 2014). 17

Furthermore, the identification of enabling factors which contribute to the success of ecotourism projects, has also been repetitively investigated by several authors, alongside with the analysis of the dynamics between the three major stakeholders in ecotourism projects – the community, the resources and the tourists (DAS & CHATTERJEE 2015).

The current research trends show that theoretical issues are rather neglected and research that provides valuable results for practical implications specifically, is fostered and even though the emergence of the concept of ecotourism dates back to the 1990s, its implementation in practice obviously continues to attract the attention of academic research.

2.3.4. Excursus to soft tourism

As already mentioned earlier, the concept of soft tourism is another pre-stage in the sustainable tourism debate which gained especially relevance in the German-speaking literature where its impact in the discussions has actually been greater in some cases than ecotourism’s influence (BAUMGARTNER 2008)

In 1980, the term “soft tourism” was brought up in the context of the search for tangible alternatives towards mass tourism by the future researcher Robert Jungk in a German magazine, where he presented “soft travelling” as an opposite pole towards “hard travelling” with all its associated negative impacts. In the 1980s, soft tourism became the paragon of a tourism-political alternative towards mass tourism in the German-speaking literature. The concept initially emerged in the Alpine countries as the impacts of touristic developments became dramatically apparent in these areas. The term was also quickly adopted by several travel agencies and tourism regions, even though the meaning of the term was characterised by various ambiguities and the individual motivations partially diverged greatly (REIN & STRASDAS 2015).

The Commission Internationale pour la Protection des Régions Alpines (CIPRA) formulated a general definition for soft tourism in the Chur declaration from 1984: “By soft tourism, CIPRA denotes a form of tourism which leads to mutual understanding between the local population and their guests, which does not endanger the cultural identity of the host region and which endeavours to take care of the environment as best as possible. “Soft tourists” give priority to using infrastructure destined for the local population and do not accept substantial tourist facilities harmful to the environment” (SMITH & EADINGTON 1992, p. 18).

Despite ongoing theoretical debates surrounding the conceptualisation and definition, numerous attempts were made in order to practically implement the concept. The gained experiences showed that two diverging courses of action can be differentiated. The first option intended to reduce, change or restructure conflict-laden consecutive symptoms and impacts caused by tourism development with restrictive measures of regional policies and even implement these measures in anticipation of upcoming 18

tourism development projects. Consequently, this option aimed for the strongholds of mass tourism and the reparation of resulted damages. Examples of these potential measures are traffic abatement, designation of protected areas or capacity limitations in the accommodation sector. The second course of action has rather been interpreted as an approach for the development of a structurally alternative touristic offer. This approach included special forms of environmentally and socially acceptable designed vacations, based on the usage of a region’s or a location’s natural, historical, cultural and economic potential. In this context soft tourism has to be apprehended as niche tourism, especially utilised by peripheral rural areas which tried to create a lucrative source of income (PEARCE 1992).

In the course of time the central aspect of soft tourism, namely being a form of tourism, which strives to be environmentally and socially acceptable, shifted towards environmentally and socially friendly tourism and got additionally extended by the aspects of a new culture of travel and an independent regional development. The extensions and modifications were made in order to strengthen social communication and intercultural exchange as well as to develop economic potentials and mitigate economic risks by regional consolidation and networking processes. Eventually, by the end of the 1980s, the interest in soft tourism gradually yielded and thus, gave way for the concept of sustainable tourism (BAUMGARTNER 2008).

2.3.5. Sustainable tourism

Already in the 1990s and especially with the turn of the millennium and an ongoing globalisation, special emphasis has been put progressively on social and economic problems, thereby, displacing the environmental question as a top priority in politics and the public awareness. Several studies showed that the comparably high environmental awareness in countries like Germany was not reflected in their touristic activities and factors like expectations on the experience, quality of service, convenience and the price performance ratio were rather prioritized in travel decisions. In addition to that, with the boom of budget airlines environmental awareness did not seem to be an issue anymore, at least in the transport sector. Realising that the touristic demand did not directly acknowledge a special commitment in the field of environmental protection and sustainability, led to a renunciation of these guiding principles by most of the touristic enterprises and environmental officers like mentioned earlier could only be found in the PR departments of the companies where they performed a rather decorative function (BAUMGARTNER2008).

Initiatives for environmentally friendly tourism in the beginning of the 2000s, which basically marked further developments of initiatives from the 1990s, could only achieve meagre success, even though the majority of society was supporting the initiatives (BAUMGARTNER 2008). As state regulation was no politically implementable option in times of dominating neoliberal economic and societal models, the sector continued relying on voluntary commitment and purchase decisions of enlightened consumers.

The learned lessons revealed the difficulty in directly demanding environmentally compatible travel behaviour. Instead, the focus was put on creating a connection between environmental protection and additional benefits for the supply as well as for the demand side. Tourism companies and destination management organisations (DMO) are principally willing to implement the ecological part of sustainability when costs can be minimised, operating procedures optimised, and the quality of the touristic offer enhanced, for instance due to measures like landscape protection, wastewater treatment or traffic regulation. Thereby, the DMOs indicate a higher affinity for sustainability as they highly depend on the long-term intactness of their destination because they cannot simply leave their region. Consequently, they have to ensure that the needs of different stakeholders are satisfied. On the other hand, the tour operators and travel businesses are characterised by a greater flexibility and if required, they can shift to other less polluted destinations. For the demand side, sustainability should be connected with primary travel motives, including aspects like nature experience, health, regional cuisine and family orientation. With the help of a skilful management and an adjusted marketing these factors can be effectively connected with sustainability. The example of cycling tourism illustrates how aspects like health and nature experience are comprised in a type of travel which is additionally environmentally friendly as well (BAUMGARTNER 2008).

In addition to that, sociocultural and economic impacts caused by an ongoing globalisation and a worldwide growing international tourism industry increasingly attracted attention within the scope of sustainable tourism strategies, especially in developing countries where the national economies heavily depend on tourism as a source of income. Socially and culturally adapted behaviour experiences a broad acceptance and requires less sacrifices in comparison to environmentally relevant behaviour. Furthermore, numerous economically relevant scandals where international companies have been involved, showed the high image-risk in this segment so consequently, an authentic demonstration of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is getting more and more important, also within the field of tourism. The ongoing social orientation in the sustainability debate led to a loss of importance of ecotourism in the new millennium. Even though the concept explicitly contains socioeconomic aspects as well, new forms of tourism like Community-Based Tourism or Pro-Poor Tourism incrementally suppressed the concept of ecotourism (BAUMGARTNER 2008).

In terms of the conceptualisation, sustainable tourism may be referred to as the adoption of the sustainable development idea in the field of tourism. Sustainable tourism principally strives to minimise the negative and maximise the positive impacts of tourism. Consequently, it can be assumed that sustainable tourism might be one possible form of sustainable development or an accelerating vehicle for it. This might also lead to the assumption that there is a direct relationship between the two terms, which nevertheless, does not appear to be the case, at least with regard to the political milestones in the debate on sustainable development. Even though tourism has already been a mass phenomenon with numerous concerning impacts by the mid-1980s, the Brundtland report did not make any reference of this subject in the document. This neglection became evident again during the Rio Earth Summit and 20

the thereby developed Agenda 21 strategy document which only incidentally included tourism aspects (WEAVER 2006).

Discussions where the term sustainable tourism was explicitly used did rather take place in the academic circles and among those who were aware of the tourism sector’s immense potential to create valuable benefits as well as serious costs (see for instance PILGRAM 1990, DEARDEN 1991, INSKEEP 1991, LANE 1991, MANNING 1991, BULL 1992, EBER 1992, ZURICK 1992).

In addition to these deliberations, the Journal of Sustainable Tourism was also launched in 1993, indicating the growing relevance of the concept among academic circles. Even though tourism has been partially neglected in the first place, the debate on sustainable tourism started to get politically and practically fostered in the following years, leading to several important declarations, guidelines and agreements (see table below) that smoothed the way for the concept and emphasized the necessity of mutual goals and measures in the fields of ecology, economy, and social/culture (VON HAUFF & KUHNKE 2017.

MOST IMPORTANT OFFICIAL COMMITMENTS AND MILESTONES FOR SUSTAINABLE TOURISM 1995 Lanzarote Declaration (WTO/WTTC) 1997 Malé Declaration of the Asia-Pacific Ministers Conference on Tourism and Environment 1998 Berlin Declaration on Transforming Tourism 1999 Declaration of the 7th session of the Commission on Sustainable Development 1999 Global Code of Ethics for Tourism by the WTO (later UNWTO) 2003 STEP (Sustainable Tourism – Eliminating Poverty) Initiative (WTO/OMT/UNCTAD) 2004 Guidelines on Biodiversity and Tourism (Convention on Biological Diversity) 2005 Muscat Declaration on Tourism and Culture: Fostering Sustainable Development (WTO/UNESCO) 2008 Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria (UN/UNWTO) 2011 Official Launch of Global Partnership for Sustainable Tourism (GPST). 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development 2014 Official Launch of the 10YFP Sustainable Tourism Programme 2017 International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development Table 2: Important Commitments for the debate on Sustainable Tourism. Based on: VON HAUFF & KUHNKE 2017. Several international organisations and institutions like the United Nations, Conservation International, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), the WTO or the Pacific Asia Travel Association started to engage in sustainable tourism by coordinating international actions (WEAVER 2006).

From an economic perspective, tourism is a very fragmented and multifaceted branch. It contains an aggregate of independent activities, which are at the same time connected with each other and characterised by great seasonal fluctuations. Since the times of soft tourism, the objectives have changed and deviated from a pure ecological perspective. The concept of soft tourism lacked a temporal foresight, the consideration of spatial linkages and a stringent cross-linked perspective of the three dimensions (ecological, economic, socio-cultural) – all of them central aspects that are addressed in the debate on sustainability with its endeavour for intra- and intergenerational justice (BAUMGARTNER 2008).

Even though all these deliberations, commitments, actions and discussions on sustainable tourism indicate a mutual understanding with regard to the concept’s main objectives and scopes, there are still diverging conceptual approaches and perspectives which eventually impose the question: how can sustainable tourism be defined? The WTO acted as a key player in the emergence on sustainable tourism and already in 1993, one year after the Rio Earth Summit, the WTO attempted to transfer the concept of sustainable development into tourism by drafting the following definition: “Sustainable tourism is defined as a model form of economic development that is designed to

 Improve the quality of life of the host community  Provide a high quality of experience for the visitor, and  Maintain the quality of the environment on which both the host community and the visitor depend” (BAUMGARTNER 2008, p. 51)

As this definition did rather put emphasis on economic development, the WTO modified the definition in 1998, stating that sustainable tourism “meets the needs of present tourists and host regions while protecting and enhancing opportunities for the future. It is envisaged as leading to management of all resources in such a way that economic, social and aesthetic needs can be fulfilled while maintaining cultural integrity, essential ecological processes, biological diversity and life support systems” (WTO 1998, p. 18).

In 2005, this definition was then finally refined by the later arisen UNWTO: "Tourism that takes full account of its current and future economic, social and environmental impacts, addressing the needs of visitors, the industry, the environment and host communities." (UNEP & UNWTO 2005, p. 12)

Concluding from that, socio-cultural, economic as well as environmental aspects of tourism development need to be properly balanced in order to ensure a long-term sustainability of the tourism sector (UNEP & UNWTO 2005). The following figure depicts central aspects of these three dimensions:

Ensure viable, long-term economic operations and provide socio- economic benefits to all stakeholders •Stable employment, income-earning opportunities and social services for host communities •Contribute to poverty alleviation

Respect the socio-cultural authenticity of host communities •Conserve their built and living cultural heritage and traditional values •Contribute to inter-cultural understanding and tolerance

Make optimal use of environmental resources •maintaining essential ecological processes •helping to conserve natural heritage and biodiversity

Figure 3: Central Aspects of Sustainable Tourism. Based on: UNEP & UNWTO 2005. From the UNWTO’s perspective, sustainable tourism and its development guidelines and management practices can be principally implemented in the whole tourism industry, including mass tourism as well as niche tourism segments with all its various types of destinations (UNWTO 2013).

PROSSER (1994) approached the concept from a different perspective and identified four driving forces that induced a social change for sustainability in tourism: a growing cultural sensitivity and environmental awareness, changing values and attitudes of tour operators and developers, dissatisfaction with existing tourism products and a growing awareness among the destinations of their vulnerability in terms of their valuable resources (PROSSER 1994).

On the contrary, CATER (1993) determined three main objectives for sustainable tourism: meeting the needs of an increasing number of tourists, satisfying the needs of the host population (improving living standards) over the short as well as the long run and preserving the natural environment in order to ensure the implementation of the first two objectives. FARRELL (1999) coined the term “sustainability trinity” which encompasses a transparent and smooth integration of environment, economy and society. This triangular relationship has also been utilised earlier by LANE (1994), when he stated that touristic activities within destinations are perceived as a triangular relationship between holidaymakers, host areas (including their habitats and people) and the tourism industry. In the setting of mass tourism, the latter is dominating the triangle. Sustainable tourism instead, seeks to arbitrate between the three parameters in the triangle in order to create an equilibrium over the long term (WEAVER 2006).

Like suggested earlier, a sustainable tourism development attempts to transfer all spheres of the concept of sustainable development (ecology, economy, social, culture) to tourism. As a consequence, a unilaterally oriented tourism policy cannot claim to be sustainable. According to MÜLLER (1999), sustainability in tourism can be depicted in a pentagon pyramid (see figure below). 23

Figure 4: Pentagon Pyramid of Sustainable Tourism. Based on MUELLER 1999. If this pentagon pyramid gets extended by an institutional dimension with interconnections between tourist sending areas and destinations as well as by responsibility of overarching political systems, seven premises can be derived (see table 3) which will be explained more profoundly in the following section. Dimension Premises for Sustainable Tourism Ecological Intact nature, living environments and environment management systems are a prerequisite for future tourism both in rural peripheral areas and in intensely used touristic destination areas Economic Tourism is an integrated component of a sustainable, regionally networked economy Cultural The destination image is characterised by a self-determined cultural dynamic Social Fair labour conditions and satisfaction of the local population create quality in tourism Integrative Thoughtful tourism destinations consider the needs of specific guest groups Intergenerational the whole population does have access to all information and is equally integrated in decision processes Institutional The tourist sending areas of the agglomerations as well as overarching political systems take co-responsibility for the touristic effects in the destinations Table 3: Premises of Sustainable Tourism. Based on: BAUMGARTNER 2008.

Within the ecological dimension, nature conservation measures are not meant to be prevention strategies but rather image-creating and future-oriented approaches, that can also lead to economic savings. Legislative and voluntary incentives and control measures support regional goals. A future tourism policy has to address ecological and social problems caused by mass tourism. Instead of abandoning

affected destinations, legislative measures as well as controlling and adjustment instruments have to be implemented in order to restructure and reorient the destination. Infrastructural facilities and ecological measures have to be reassessed with regard to their usability and potential benefits for the local population. The economic dimension points out that sustainable tourism takes the preservation of economic foundations into account, involving all relevant regional economic sectors to catalyse regional economic cycles and prevent touristic mono cultures in order to strengthen economic resilience. The imparting and experiencing of “real” culture as well as the aiming for a thoughtful integration and reintegration of tourism in the local and regional culture are central aspects for the cultural dimension. Despite the imitated rites, the local population needs to get the chance to live and practice their familial culture and rites without foreign spectators. For the social dimension it is essential to assure the quality of service as this also determines the quality of tourism. Consequently, an improvement of the educational level of the employees in tourism is essential, including the consideration of tourism critical contents, the improvement of social hedge for the employees as well as the imparting of knowledge in terms of building up economic mainstays (BAUMGARTNER 2008).

Specific legislative and voluntary actions need to counteract the high seasonal unemployment and the high rate of adolescents and women. Especially in developing countries qualification and promotion of domestic manpower has to be aspired. The group of 50+ is becoming an increasingly important touristic target group and their specific needs have to be addressed respectively. Non-smokers, families with children, handicapped people, single travellers etc. – they all raise specific claims for accommodation, service and the destination in general, which makes an integrative perspective inalienable. Within the intergenerational dimension, the planning and implementation of tourism relevant measures occurs commonly with all relevant stakeholders, including representatives of tourism and leisure policy, travel agencies, associations, consumers and affected people. Through cooperative development of projects entrepreneurial innovations and identification are created, leading to cooperation between economic branches. The interested population has access to all information and is equitably integrated in decision processes. Last but not least, the institutional dimension is comprised of regional assistance for disadvantaged regions, especially in rural areas and development assistance for potential tourism destinations in developing countries. Therefore, specific requirements and characteristics of the individual regions have to be considered, because economic development concepts, which were designed for agglomerations cannot simply be transferred to structurally weak and economically underdeveloped regions in the countryside and appropriate concepts for European regions cannot be applied to developing countries. Furthermore, it is important that the institutional dimension provides a proper political and legislative framework on all levels in order to enable the regions to make their own decisions for their tourism development (BAUMGARTNER 2008).

The conceptual definition of sustainable tourism, like with alternative tourism and ecotourism, revealed diverging views on and approaches to the concept, but the transferring of the spheres of sustainable development into sustainable tourism, as well as the pentagon pyramid model and the therefrom 25

derivated premises gave an impression of a mutual understanding in terms of main objectives, scopes and principles.

The concept of carrying capacities

The above-mentioned premises may assist in imparting relevant substantial aspects, but nevertheless, there remain conceptual discrepancies. One concept which has its origin in ecology is especially important when it comes to a fundamental question for ecological aspects in sustainable tourism: How many tourists are compatible for a particular place without causing any harm to it?

The concept of carrying capacities can be adopted in order to provide an answer to this question. The term carrying capacities delineates a state of a species’ population within a particular territory where its number of individuals has reached a maximum level that marks the threshold of the territory’s ability to nourish the species with the given natural resources. If mortality and birth rates are balanced in equality this state is consequently stable (FISCHER 2014).

However, humankind managed to expand the carrying capacities by making new resources available, leading to a further increase in the population number. In the field of tourism and with a special regard to conservation, the concept of carrying capacities can be utilised for determining the number of visitors for national parks or other protected areas. National parks usually experience different development stages – in the beginning, the number of visitors is low, but as soon as the park gets further promoted and the image consolidates, more people get attracted and numbers begin to rise. At a certain visitor level, the tourists might start to become a burden for the national park’s ecosystem which can ultimately result in a declining attractiveness and thereby, declining visitor numbers. The moment at which the carrying capacity is exceeded does highly depend on the ecosystem’s vulnerability. Furthermore, the carrying capacity of the national park can be expanded by measures like an improved visitor management where people are systematically directed to less vulnerable park areas or even to hotspots that were particularly built for the tourists. If visitor numbers irrespectively continue to exceed the ecosystem’s carrying capacity, the number of tourists has to be actively reduced by implementing various instruments, for instance a limitation of entrance tickets or campsite facilities as well as a lift in entrance fees (FISCHER 2014).

In conclusion, it can be assumed that limitations for visitor numbers are the best measures in order to protect national parks against human impacts, but from a long-term perspective, a moderate number of tourists who contribute to the park’s protection and its promotion appears to be essential, as taking the opportunity for people to visit the park will jeopardise any further contributions. Tools and measures which aim for a reduction of visitor numbers can also be encompassed in the recently coined term demarketing (DIAMANTIS 2011).

Another important issue is to find appropriate indicators that signify the critical threshold of an ecosystem. The observation of so-called “flagship species” are one way for the determination of such 26

thresholds, as these species, which are usually the top predators as well, depend on all other species in the food chain, because the prey needs to be able to satisfy its needs as well as the prey’s prey and so on and so on. As long as the population of these flagship species is not affected by the tourists, the tourism carrying capacity is not reached yet (FISCHER 2014).

For the implementation of the concept it is fundamental to divide the overall capacity into different separate components and measure and quantify these subsets. For the ecological capacity it is important to quantify the type and extent of disturbances by visitors within the ecosystem, for instance like mentioned above with regard to the population size of flagship species (GELDENHUYS 2011).

The facility capacity can be quantified by the maximum number of passengers that can be transported into the area as well as by the number of accommodation facilities for the visitors. If a tourist starts to perceive his experience as unsatisfying due to disturbances that are caused by the number of other visitors, this circumstance affects the physical capacity and can therefore, be chosen as an indicator. Last but not least, the number of tourists beyond which inacceptable changes within the local cultural system are caused is an indicator for the social capacity. Especially the physical capacity appears to be rather difficult to quantify, as it is a complete subjective perception which numbers are disturbing single individuals. Inacceptable changes also imply a difficulty for the operationalisation, because there is no definition for what might be inacceptable for the specific cultural system. Examples from practice show that the calculation of carrying capacities can influence the development of a tourism destination, even though some practical experiences also proved how these calculations are being suppressed by economically driven processes. CARILLO already did calculations on the carrying capacity of Tenerife in 1999, estimating that the carrying capacity for the island is 40.700. However, the touristic potential has been unscrupulously further exploited because economic interests were dominating. A positive example can be found with the Grand Canyon National Park, were visitor numbers are admittedly high, but an efficient visitor management with a zoning strategy, where accessible and prohibited areas are strictly divided, ensures that the national park is not getting over-used. The concept offers an interesting approach for the determination of threshold numbers for tourists in national parks and other protected areas, but there are also several challenges when it comes to the operationalisation and the implementation of the concept since some aspects and indicators are basically impossible to quantify (FISCHER 2014).

Conceptual issues

Both terms, sustainable tourism and sustainable development are characterised by a considerable semantic flexibility, which exposes the terms to inflationary appropriation. In addition to that, this circumstance also facilitates the emergence of weak and strong sustainability approaches that mutually cover the entire range of tourism forms and products. Another issue in the sustainability debate is the question whether the status quo should be maintained or enhanced and intragenerational as well as 27

intergenerational equity should be encouraged. The fuzzy boundaries of tourism systems as well as the relevance of induced and indirect effects might be perceived as another issue as they indicate the complexity of the tourism phenomenon. Another element of this systemic complexity is the relationship between unpredictable causes and effects which may hamper and complicate an engagement in sustainable tourism. Two ideal sustainable tourism types can be derived from the depicted issues. The first one is minimalist sustainability and consists of rather restricted parameters of engagement. It can be temporary appropriate as an entry level for the sustainability arena. The second model is more desirable with a holistic approach that focuses on inter- as well as intragenerational equity and an overall enhancement of sustainability. It also draws attention to the induced and indirect effects that evolve within an extended time/space continuum. However, weak and strong sustainability approaches can be adopted to both models depending on the destination or product features. As the pursuit of sociocultural and environmental sustainability would be greatly irrelevant without financial sustainability, this premise is also a component of both models (WEAVER 2006).

The selection, implementation, measurement and monitoring of appropriate indicators that enable the operationalisation and evaluation of sustainability is an additional major issue in sustainable tourism. Key aspects which have to be considered for evaluation processes are indicator prioritisation, the time scale and the identification of thresholds and benchmarks. The WTO has played a significant role in developing and determining such indicators and conducted several local pilot projects to find and test core and site-specific indicators in the field. In addition to that, the adoption of the Bellagio Principles supports and enhances such efforts of identifying appropriate indicators and implementing sustainable tourism strategies in general. All in all, pursuing such a sustainable tourism strategy is rationalised due to the concept’s focus for debate, the growing support, the unacceptable alternative of a “do-nothing” attitude, the quick progress which has already been made in a short time, the possibility of a minimalist entry point and the imprecise nature of indicators (WEAVER 2006).

Critique

Several authors who addressed these issues expressed their concerns and even levelled criticism against the application of sustainable tourism. PIGRAM (1990) already alluded to the fact that there exists a huge gap between the policy implementation and the policy endorsement of sustainable tourism, even though the concept is broadly accepted as a desirable alternative towards the more ruthless development models. Discrepancies and conflicts between tourist developers, communities and management agencies are the reason for these failures in the implementation process. Without bridging the gap by developing effective means which realise the translation of ideas into actions, the concept of sustainable tourism may remain an irrelevant approach that cannot be utilised as a viable policy strategy for the tourism development’s reality. Furthermore, several case studies revealed that a clear understanding of the sustainable tourism term is lacking within the local tourism sectors, causing confusion on what is

sustainable and what is not. Definitional aspects might follow a logic in theory but are usually complicated to apply in practice. These uncertainties and misunderstandings may aggravate the suspicion of the private sector towards the government as private operators start to assume that the government is only acting on its own interests without consulting the private sector and integrating their interests and opinions (BERRY & LADKIN 1997).

LIU (2003) drew a similar conclusion after a literature review of several case studies, pointing out that the application of sustainable principles in practice is often realised by small-scale projects and are therefore providing only a micro solution for a macro problem. Additionally, he evaluated the debate to be disjointed, deficient and patchy with little contributions that had actually advanced beyond discussing and formulating different assumptions and principles and that would go more into depth in terms of the implications and meaning of sustainable tourism development (LIU 2003).

Current research trends in the field of sustainable tourism

As the name might already indicate, the Journal of Sustainable Tourism encompassed most of the academic deliberations on sustainable tourism. LU & NEPAL (2009) provided a summary of the main topics that have been covered in the journal since its launch until 2007. Discussion on the concept of sustainable tourism were primarily targeted in the beginning, followed by an increasing number of publications that dealt with the application of new ideas and models in combination with empirical assessments to evaluate them. The conducted survey by LU & NEPAL (2009) also revealed a shift from sustainable tourism as niche tourism towards mass tourism as the research started to put a stronger focus on examining sustainable tourism aspects for tourism in general. Furthermore, the authors identified five key areas of interest among the publications: planning, development, visitor attitudes and behaviour, sustainability assessment and tourism impacts (LU & NEPAL 2009).

Especially in the field of sustainability assessment a lot of contributions were made for finding appropriate indicators and benchmarking systems (BIANCAS et al. 2018). Climate change and sustainable tourism emerged as another important issue within the spectrum of the journal, with an increasing number of articles related to the topic being published between 2007 and 2016 (BRAMWELL et al. 2016). Like with recent discussions in the field of ecotourism on behavioural patterns, the understanding of altering behaviour, attitude and individual choices and the analysis of changes in socio- technical structures and social relations are also recently gaining increasing relevance in the sphere of sustainable tourism (SHOVE 2014, HALL 2016, WILLIAMS 2013). In relation to such behavioural changes, more researchers start to analysis the potential of governance regimes and systems to push tourism activities towards sustainability (HARTMAN 2016, WRAY 2015).

All in all, the current research trends show a shift towards the potential for implementing sustainability in mass tourism settings, as well as towards the impacts of tourism activities on the interconnections between natural and human systems as well as within societal systems (LEYSHON 2014, LOWE; PHILLIPSON & WILKINSON 2013).

Summarising aspects

The preceding chapter revealed that a universally applicable and general recipe for the development of an ecologically, economically and socio-culturally friendly and balanced tourism does not exist. However, there is a mutual agreement on the necessity for a penetration of the growth-helix, as tourism will otherwise destroy its own fundaments – namely its natural environment, regional characteristics and the intact social structures. Solutions will eventually have to be different, depending on the structures, problems and specific requirements of the particular regions. A holistic perspective is essential, meaning that all sectors and economic branches have to be considered and that the pertained population is integrated in development-, discussion- and implementation-processes for new measures and purposes (BAUMGARTNER 2008).

Despite the participation of all affected stakeholders, sustainable tourism development also requires strong political leadership in order to ensure and support consensus building and participation. Sustainable tourism development has to be grasped as a continuous process, which implies an accurate monitoring of its impacts and the implementation of corrective or preventive measures whenever it becomes necessary. Furthermore, the sustainable education has to be fostered, by maintaining tourist satisfaction and assuring a substantial tourist experience, as this will finally lead to an increasing awareness about sustainability issues and a further promotion of sustainable tourism practices among the tourists (UNWTO 2005).

As the concept of responsible tourism features numerous similarities with the concept of sustainable tourism, the next section will give a brief overview about this concept as well.

2.3.6. Responsible Tourism

Responsible tourism underpins the same premises as sustainable tourism – namely to minimise the negative impacts of tourism, regardless its type and form, while enhancing the positive ones at the same time. SMITH (1990) stated that responsible tourism respects the environments (cultural and natural) of the host as well as the interest of all concerned parties. The South African Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (1996) even implemented the concept of responsible tourism in their national policies and defined it as ‘tourism that promotes responsibility for the environment through its sustainable use, responsibility to involve local

communities in the tourism industry, responsibility for the safety of visitors and responsible government, employees, employers, unions and local communities’ (DEAT 1996).

The idea and concept of responsible tourism can be seen as a continuation of Jost Krippendorf’s legacy, who already stated in his essential work “The Holiday Makers”, that each tourist either destroys or builds up human values during his travels. Further conceived, this means that tourism has to take responsibility as it is constituted by what we make out of it. Consequently, responsible tourism needs to engage the tourist as a consumer in order to create a better experience, whereas the host community needs to get the chance to develop tourism on their terms. Krippendorf was among the first authors to thematise the ethic of responsibility in the tourism sector. His motivation grounded on the negative cultural and environmental impacts that became evident in the 1950s and 1960s in his home country Switzerland during the boom in tourism after the second World War. In 1982, he promoted the prioritisation of ecological aspects before the economy, as this would ultimately also benefit the economy itself and everybody involved in it. This statement already alluded to the importance of the obligation for businesses to take responsibility in tourism to make it more sustainable.

This progress in sustainability is strongly questioned in the current tourism discourse. Due to the low application and implementation of sustainability practices in the tourism industry, some authors assessed the goal to achieve sustainability to be elusive, as the industry still remains perilously unsustainable (HIGGINS-DESBIOLLES 2010).

Nevertheless, as a first political step for the implementation of the responsible tourism concept, the Manila Conference on World Tourism in 1980 was convened in order to draw attention to the state’s responsibility to develop and enhance tourism by calling for a spirit of respect for the individual’s dignity and identity as well as for the moral heritage and the culture’s originality. In 2002, the first international conference on responsible tourism took place in Cape Town, including delegates from 20 countries and international organisations like the WTO or the UNEP. For the development of the conceptual principles of responsible tourism, the concepts of respect and responsibility played a major role. Figure 5 on the next page shows the seven focus areas that have been formulated in the Cape Town Declaration (GOODWIN 2011).

Minimise negative economic, environmental and social impacts and to maximise positive ones. Generate greater economic benefits and enhance the well-being of host communities, improve working conditions and access to the industry Engage local people, alongside other stakeholders, in decisions that affect their lives and life chances Ensure that tourism, the industry and the consumers, makes positive contributions to the conservation of natural and cultural heritage and to the maintenance of the world’s diversity Provide more enjoyable, authentic experiences for tourists through more meaningful connections with local people and ensure that they gain a greater understanding of local cultural, social and environmental issues Provide access for people with disabilities and the disadvantaged

Ensure that tourism is culturally sensitive, mutually rewarding , engenders respect between tourists and hosts, and builds local pride and confidence

Figure 5: Focus Areas for Responsible Tourism from the Cape Town Declaration. Based On: GOODWIN 2011. As already mentioned earlier, the topic of sustainability is complex and wide-ranging, the concepts of sustainable development, sustainability and sustainable tourism seem to be rather abstract and overwhelming to people who often have difficulties to understand the meaning and are therefore, not really driven to action. This is where the concept of responsible tourism draws on, as this stream of tourism seeks to motivate and encourage people to make tourism more sustainable by taking respective responsibility, regardless of whether organised in groups or individuals alone. Thereby, the destination is a central aspect, because this is the place where tourism needs to be managed, where tourists meet with the local population and where eventually responsibility needs to be taken and practiced. The issues, however, may vary, depending on the specific destinations. Despite of that, the measurement of the industry’s sustainability outcomes remains an overarching imperative for all destinations and associated challenges (GOODWIN 2011).

GOODWIN (2011) defines responsibility as a process that leads to sustainability objectives as desired outcomes. Thus, producers and consumers need to spot sustainability issues, so that responsibility can be taken, and outcomes demonstrated. Responsible tourism encourages everyone who is involved to take responsibility in order to make tourism more sustainable. At this point, critics can level their criticism with Hardin’s argumentation about the “Tragedy of the Commons”, as something that lays in everybody’s range of responsibilities, might end up being neglected because nobody specifically feels responsible. Additionally, no conceptual clarity is made by this exhortation to everybody, causing a weakening of the concept (CHETTIPARAMB & KOKKRANIKAL 2012)

Another critical perspective is given by WHEELER (1991), who uses the same line of arguments like in the debate on ecotourism, claiming that responsible tourism does not offer an appropriate solution for the problems of tourism. An increasing global tourism volume will eventually also lead to an increase of the negative impacts, so consequently, the reduction of the scale and volume of tourism can be the only effective mean for a responsible tourism development (WHEELER 1991). 32

Conceptual critics state that responsible tourism and responsibility can almost mean anything and that the concept is therefore, not effectively contributing to a further conceptual understanding of tourism. According to the existing literature the understanding of responsible tourism may vary with regard to the examined subject (for instance theory, concept or practice) and will consequently involve different goals and stakeholders (MIHALIC 2016).

Responsible tourism is, however, no independent form of tourism, nor is its application limited to specific types of tourism. Furthermore, it is no niche market, but a concept that can be adopted by all tourism forms, because it seeks to make travel and tourism in general more responsible (GOODWIN 2011). Nonetheless, it has to be noted that the concept significantly overlaps in its objectives and central aspects with other tourism concepts like sustainable tourism, pro-poor tourism, integrated tourism, ethical tourism or green tourism – making it thus, impossible to clearly distinguish the concept from the others (CHETTIPARAMB & KOKKRANIKAL 2012).

Responsible tourism is not a new alternative, nor is it a synonym for sustainable tourism or a new form of doing sustainable tourism. In fact, it takes sustainability policies and strategies as a basis and adds respective behaviour in the form of sustainable actions and reactions (MIHALIC 2016).

Summing up, responsible tourism identifies relevant issues and addresses them. Addressing in this context, means that everybody who has the chance and the capacity to enhance tourism, has to make a response and take responsibility by doing what they can and encouraging other people. Responsible tourism seeks to raise awareness for the specific issues in the respective destinations by demonstrating which actions can be taken in order to engage people to respond and act as well to finally make a difference (GOODWIN 2011).

The previous sections depicted the emergence of sustainable tourism with all its associated pre-stages, interdisciplinary concepts and theoretically related tourism forms and types. However, it has to be mentioned that plenty of other tourism forms, that are partly substantially connected with sustainable tourism as well, exist. As the description of every single of these forms does not lie within this thesis’ scope, the following section will only delineate one specific tourism form that is especially relevant to the topic of this thesis – Community-Based Tourism.

2.4. Community-Based Tourism

In the academic literature, Community-Based Tourism (CBT) initially gained relevance as a concept for the development of primarily rural communities in developing countries which were also characterised by a considerable degree of poverty. Accordingly, it has often been considered as an attractive counterdraft towards mass tourism, because this tourism form does usually not bring the desired benefits to the communities. Like with Ecotourism, CBT is an instrument for development practices. This implies that there cannot be an exact definition of the term, because it is rather an overarching principle which 33

can include various forms of tourism and therefore, it must be flexibly utilisable, as several components have to be considered in different ways depending on the area of application. Furthermore, CBT puts a focal point on the participation within touristic projects (PALM 2000). When discussing tourism development strategies which seek to include community participation, other terms like “community tourism”, “community-responsive tourism”, “community-oriented tourism” or “community participation in tourism” are often used synonymously with community-based tourism (TOSUN 1999). This blurry understanding and utilisation of the concept has also been addressed by GOODWIN & SANTILLI (2009), when they conducted a survey on practitioners and experts to find and create a substantial definition for CBT, but finally failed as no common consensus could be found among the surveyed sample. Nevertheless, the following table illustrates some conceptual elements which were included in initiatives that were mentioned in the survey (see table).

CENTRAL ASPECTS OF COMMUNITY-BASED TOURISM

Individual/Household benefits

Collective benefits (affecting the whole community)

Equal distribution of community benefits

Conservation initiatives

Enterprises owned & managed by the community

Private enterprises that generate benefits for the community

Table 4: Central CBT elements. Derived from a survey. Based on: GOODWIN & SANTILLI 2009.

Furthermore, GOODWIN & SANTILLI (2009) made a rather broad definition of CBT stating that the communities are managing or owning the tourism business by themselves and that wider benefits for the community should be additionally delivered. HÄUSLER & STRASDAS (2002) defined CBT a little bit more specifically as a type of tourism which is controlled by a significant number of local people and a substantial proportion of local people need to be involved in the management and in the further development of the tourism activities. While some authors think about CBT as a special form of tourism, other authors rather see CBT as an encompassing concept which can include several tourism forms like ecotourism, agritourism, rural tourism, ethnic tourism or cultural tourism, because these forms may be developed and practiced with a substantial degree of community-based management, control and ownership of tourism projects (STRASDAS & HÄUSLER 2002).

Since the 1990s, the implementation of CBT projects within the sector of development assistance got increasingly popular. Like with the concepts discussed before, the term has also been used inflationary for numerous projects, leading to blurring contours of the CBT concept (RICHARDS & HALL 2000).

If developed and implemented properly, CBT can serve as an effective tool to contribute to a region’s development and a sustainable management of its natural resources. Economic and socio-cultural structures within the community can be strengthened and further developed. However, it has to be considered that the positive impacts arising from CBT projects might be limited and a respective risk has to be taken into account as not every community is suitable for CBT practices and fair distribution methods for the revenues are often hard to find. Already before planning a CBT project, it has to be assessed whether the implementation of such a project and its desired purposes and outcomes is even feasible (HÄUSLER & STRASDAS 2002).

For this reason, the following section will deal with the requirements for CBT projects in order to subsequently reveal possibilities for implementation. To grasp the concept of CBT, it is unavoidable to discuss two additional conceptual aspects that play a minor role within CBT – the concept of community and the concept of participation.

2.4.1. The concept of community

When speaking about CBT or other types of community involvement, there is often only a vague understanding of what community actually means and how it is defined. According to RICHARDS & HALL (2000), community is characterised by a local population within their residing local area, which has a specific set of common social goals and characteristics. However, this set of common social features may vary from geographical, social, ideological or psychological points of view. In times of information technology and digitalisation, the geographic connection for the concept becomes more and more questionable due to the emergence of virtual communities (RICHARDS & HALL 2000).

Nonetheless, in the field of development assistance a community is principally considered as a geographically located entity, normally in the form of rural communities. Despite the fact that communities are generally heterogenous objects, they are usually treated and perceived as homogenous entities within planning processes of multilateral organisations’ and NGOs’ development practices, as they do not account for the communities’ complex social structures. Different characters, ethnic groups, religions as well as hierarchical structures and individual demands of the community members are very important and may differ enormously from community to community. Consequently, homogeneity is only pretended when a community is treated as a cohered entity. Following that, for the definition of a community the specific context on which the common set of values and characteristics is build, has to be considered and this context is defined by the community itself (NEUDORFER 2007).

2.4.2. The concept of participation

As the definition of and the distinction between communities has been clarified at this point, it now comes to the part where this community has to be involved and integrated in the tourism planning and 35

development process. Participation is a key concept, not only for CBT practices, but also for development assistance practices in general. As a cross-sectoral tool, participation can be utilised in order to achieve various goals, for instance in the fields of good governance, gender equality or poverty reduction. Simultaneously, it expresses a normative aspiration to provide underprivileged classes of population with an opportunity to articulate and implement their specific interests and needs (BEYER 2003).

The CBT concept is based on a participation process where local community members who are affected by the tourism development are integrated in the whole tourism development process and do therefore, benefit from the tourism development. Following the bottom-up principle, affected community members shall independently decide whether and how the touristic development will take place. Developmental institutions generally understand participation as a process where members of a group or an organisation participate in their own target definition and target realisation. Furthermore, it is a process where various stakeholders distribute, manage and negotiate the control over development initiatives and the accompanied decisions and resources (NEUDORFER 2007).

This approach shall also support the repeal of a subject-object mentality between the third world and the foreign experts. Their role as technical action-man and decision maker need to change towards the role of a participating consultant (BEYER 2003). Participatory processes are often tedious and do therefore, contrast with the fast-paced dynamics in tourism. This implicates that the extent of participation is determined by the competences of the residing population and the possibilities for participation in general (STECK et al. 1999). ARNSTEIN (1969) developed a model to classify different stages of participation due to their degree of involvement (see figure below).

Degrees of citizen CITIZEN power CONTROL DELEGATED POWER

PARTNERSHIP Degrees of Tokenism PLACATION

Non- CONSULTATION participation INFORMING

THERAPY

MANIPULATION

Figure 6: Participation Pyramid. Based on: ARNSTEIN 1969.

The two latter stages, “MANIPULATION” and “THERAPY”, describe levels of non-participation. The real goal is not to enable people to participate in planning or decision processes, but to provide the powerholders with an opportunity to influence the participants in a way that they get “educated” or even “cured”. In the rungs “CONSULTATION” and “INFORMING” the participants get the chance to hear and speak. When powerholders sell these stages as the full participatory extent, then the participants will likely make use of these participatory rights. However, there is no assurance that the participants’ articulations will also be totally apprehended to initiate a change of the status quo. “PLACATION” is just another form of tokenism where participants are allowed to advise, but the decision power still remains in the hands of the power holders. The higher rungs in the ladder describe increasing degrees of citizen power, meaning that the influence for decision processes is increasing with higher levels. “PARTNERSHIPS” allow negotiations and engagements with the traditional powerholders to agree on trade-offs. Whereas the seventh stage (“DELEGATED POWER”) describes a level where the participants do have the majority in decision processes, the highest rung (“CITIZEN CONTROL”) is characterised by a full shift of the managerial power towards the citizens. Arnstein also alluded to limitation issues of her typology, pointing out that the limits of participation in relation to the number of involved citizens is not acknowledged in this model and that the reality cannot be as simply and strictly structured with eight rungs as in the model (ARNSTEIN 1969).

It is obvious that these eight rungs are merely a simplification, but the model assists in depicting the great range and the different manifestations participation can have and even though this ladder model has been postulated many decades ago, it is still up to date and can be applied in many fields nowadays. Anyways, problems with an equitable participation for the local population arise when the target group is very heterogeneously structured. Especially in areas with ethnic conflicts this problem occurs, making it thus, very complicated to find a common consensus (NEUDORFER 2007).

Local elites usually have a substantial influence on the micro level in many developing countries. What happens within the communities is often driven by a few, better situated community members. This circumstance also carries a risk when it comes to participation, because the specific target group of the community might lose the control when the elites make use of their higher education, their knowledge of foreign languages and of their consequent power potential. As the role of women in developing countries is strongly different than in developed countries in the majority of cases, gender equality in the participation process is also threatened due to these societal structures. In order to make efforts in gender and social equality, there needs to be a proper monitoring process for the project by the project coordinators. For the economic viability of such projects it is furthermore, essential that the participants do have the necessary knowledge for the respective activities. This knowledge acquisition can sometimes be a protracted process that has to be supported by external experts. All in all, decisions regarding the degree of participation and integration of local communities for development projects in general and tourism projects in particular, have to be pondered for every individual case. In the field of

development assistance, the highest level of participation cannot always be equalled with the highest developmental benefits (STECK et al. 1999).

A comparable conclusion has also been made by SALAZAR (2012) in his study where he infers that it is not always practical, possible or preferable to achieve real local control or to find true consensus. In addition to that, the reality of CBT projects reveals a different picture of community participation as local communities are often not in control of their tourism development and management and hence, their participation stays limited to degrees of tokenism rather than stages of citizen power, even though the local community might be the central aspect of the tourism project (SALAZAR 2012; DOLEZAL & BURNS 2014; TOSUN 1999).

2.4.3. Critique of the concept

Even though the theoretical construct behind the CBT concept and its objective seem to be solid, critical voices have been raised against the practical application and implementation of the concept. A few critical aspects of the CBT concept itself have already been insinuated in the previous section – namely the vague concept of community with its fuzziness and its homogenous treatment among practitioners and the practical application of participation models due to issues dealing with the measurement of participation. JAMAL & GETZ (1995) already called attention for the variety of community members’ perceptions on impacts and benefits that may arise from tourism development. Especially the traditional socio-political structures (local elites, power distribution, hierarchies) within communities make it difficult to treat communities as homogenous entities (JAMAL & GETZ 1995).

To achieve community participation, it is essential to acknowledge existing social and power structures in order to avoid exclusion of certain social or ethnic groups in the community (TIMOTHY 2002). If such issues remain unconsidered, tourism development, also in the form of CBT projects, can even intensify existing inequalities among community members (RICHARDS & HALL 2000). Further criticism has also been levelled against the practical implementation of participation. The given economic and political structures can lead to external limitations of local participation and are often neglected in CBT planning processes. Additionally, the process can be tedious and time-consuming, requiring expertise and information that is frequently missing in the community (TOSUN 2000). CBT projects are often not capable of implementing a proper participation and the therewith connected empowerment which is why external actors usually keep the power of planning and decision processes (DOLEZAL & BURNS 2014).

The authors came furthermore to the conclusion that many of their examined CBT projects failed to sustainably contribute to the community development. Last but not least, SIMPSON (2008) claimed that a high degree of participation and community involvement does not necessarily ensure socio-economic benefits for the community and on the contrary, is not a prerequisite for communities to benefit from 38

the tourism development. He also highlights the fact that local participation should not have a higher priority than the benefits themselves (SIMPSON 2008).

Like with all other tourism concepts mentioned in this theoretical chapter, the concept of CBT displays a solid theoretical framework that is featured by discrepancies that arise when it comes to the practical implementation. There is no blueprint for the implementation as the specific characteristics of a region and especially of a community require a conceptual flexibility that make the concept adaptable for different settings and situations.

2.4.4. Current research trends in the field of CBT

Earlier academic deliberations greatly focussed on the potential of specific areas for CBT development and the associated benefits that may arise from such development especially with regards to its potential for poverty reduction or on the development of respective models for CBT implementation (e.g. MANYARA & JONES 2009, OKAZAKI 2008).

Even though previous articles also paid attention to the identification of factors for a successful CBT development (see for instance HALSTEAD 2003), recent research projects continue with this success factor determination and evaluation (PARK et al. 2017, TAYLOR 2016). Furthermore, researchers engage in the analysis of the impacts of CBT on the community level with a special focus on community empowerment and participatory aspects and on identifying factors that make these aspects tangible (MAYAKA et al. 2017, RAMOS & PRIDEAUX 2013). In addition to that, some researchers put a stronger focus on the concept of community itself (e.g. IORIO & CORSALE 2014), as well as on the role of networks and network structures for the community development (BURGOS & MERTENS 2017). Some other articles contributed to the understanding of the impacts of interactions between tourists and local community members on the culture, traditions and the community structures in general (SIN & MINCA 2014). Though benefits and critical aspects that may evolve from CBT activities for the community have already been investigated repetitively in the past two decades, the full extent has not been grasped yet and is still a relevant topic for present researchers (PAWSON et al. 2016).

2.5. The synergy of ecotourism and CBT

The presented concepts are only a selection of the most important conceptual frameworks for this thesis, leaving out other aspects that might be relevant as well but that would also go beyond the scope of this thesis. All introduced concepts commonly share fuzzy definitional boundaries, topical overlap, conceptual uncertainties and practical implementation issues which make it therefore, complicated to bend the theoretical bow for the research question. Sustainable tourism can be placed as an overarching concept for the theoretical framework, determining the principles on which the existing tourism

structures in the field shall be examined. In order to answer the postulated research question, the concepts of ecotourism and CBT are essential. While the first concept is particularly applied for nature conservation objectives, the latter one rather focuses on the socio-economic development of a community, even though both concepts can be utilised for different, sometimes also overlapping objectives as well. Even when ecotourism is thematically oriented towards nature conservation goals, it can be implemented in a way that does also support the community development and actively involves the local community members. Vice versa, a CBT project can be nature oriented. As the contours start to blur at this point, another concept has been introduced in the academic literature that encompasses both concepts – community-based ecotourism (CBET). CBET is often used as a tool for biodiversity preservation following the principle that biodiversity has to account for itself by generating economic profits which put a value on the conservation and legitimate it (KISS 2004).

Despite that, CBET can also indirectly contribute to nature conservation as the tourism sector can detract labour force from environmentally threatening activities. Numerous projects have brought benefits to the community and thus, changed the awareness and the attitude among local community members towards nature conservation, but the contribution of CBET projects to the local economic development remains limited due to several factors, for instance the relatively small conservation area, a limited number of involved citizens, weak connections between conservation efforts and economic efforts, limited incomes as well as due to the specific nature of the tourism industry and its competitive character. Many projects which have been promoted as best practices, have only brought slight positive changes, regardless of whether for community development or nature conservation and do still depend on external assistance (ADAMS & HULME 2001). Like with most of the previously presented concepts, the meaning of CBET is perceived differently by different people. It can be seen as a form of “Community- Based Natural Resource Management” and as an element of “Integrated Conservation and Development Projects” in the context of conservation theory and practice. The objectives of CBET projects can greatly differ from each other, as is shown by the reported results of conducted projects (KISS 2004).

Depending on the initially set goal, the creation of a few jobs can be reported either as a success or a failure – illustrating the lack of a common understanding of the concept’s main objectives. However, practitioners agree that CBET should be utilised to reduce environmental threats from the local population by maintaining an intact natural landscape in order to generate profits and benefits for local community members, creating an incentive for them to continue the conservation (CHRIST et al. 2003).

With regard to the given ecosystem, the implementation of conservation projects can be comparably easy, for instance in African savannah regions or coral reefs. However, due to a difficult access to the ecosystem, hardly observable species, nature hazards or uncomfortable climate, it can be rather difficult to implement such projects in some ecosystems. Furthermore, tourism is influencing its environment as a “good-looking setting” has to be created for the tourists, which might bring anthropogenic changes for the respective ecosystem. The size of conservation areas is another issue, because the conserved area

does often not reflect the necessary habitat for the species and their accompanied conservation needs. CBET has been especially promoted in developing countries and many development agencies (e.g. USAID) have fostered such projects within their development assistance in order to reduce poverty by combining nature conservation with community development. For an academic success evaluation of the practical application of CBET, reliable data is lacking, as most of the data is provided from subjective perspectives in project reports, workshop summaries etc. and they do not contain monitoring data or standardised success criteria and are thus, not objectively pointing out the real impacts and potentials of CBET practices. Despite of that, it is also questionable whether CBET projects can actually cause substantial land use changes (RUTTEN 2002).

On the other hand, tourism does not always have to be a better form of land use in comparison to extensive pastoral agriculture, but CBET projects can be appropriate conservation means in small conservation areas or migration corridors and can therefore, make a valuable contribution to nature conservation. Some development agencies also implemented CBET projects that aimed for poverty reduction, especially in marginalised rural areas. Like with CBT, CBET is also facing problems with fair benefit distribution among the community members and economic cash benefits often stay among a limited number of local citizens. Instead of these cash benefits, non-income benefits are usually hard to quantify and to evaluate. This might lead to problems regarding the community’s acceptance of the tourism development, because the community members will only support CBET and its associated nature conservation when they see, perceive and benefit from the positive impacts arising from the tourism project. Another issue is the required experience to successfully build up a tourism business, as such lack of experience and expertise might not lead to the desired profits, especially when there is so much competition like in the tourism industry. Using existing knowledge and technologies from the community might be the best strategy to assure the viability of a tourism business. The support from external experts on the basis of mutual trust and a positive relationship between the local population and external project staff can also be very important for a successful project implementation. There is one essential question usually raised in the debate on such nature-conservation-oriented tourism: Is the investment in such tourism projects more valuable and effective than direct payments for nature conservation? This issue also leads over to sustainability aspects of such projects, as they shall be financially independent from external assistance and thus, more sustainable than direct payments for nature conservation. From a conceptual perspective, sustainability in CBET is covered by three segments: a permanent incentive for conservation due to the dependence of income on biodiversity, reinvestment in further conservation measures and in the tourism business to become financially independent, after establishment of the groundwork, the private sector can be attracted for further investments in expansion and development of the project. Nonetheless, all these three segments heavily rely on the financial success which is often hard to achieve (KISS 2004).

SALAFSKY et al. (2001) analysed the financial performance of 37 BCN (Biodiversity Conservation Network) projects (which were not only focussing on ecotourism) and came to the conclusion that only 7 projects could actually produce profits, whereas the rest could either fully or partly cover running costs and some projects did hardly make any revenues at all and were not expected to produce any profits in the future (SALAFSKY et al. 2001).

The involvement and development of joint ventures and private-community partnerships is a very popular and widespread approach within the CBET segment. In these relationships, the private sector is expected to bring the required know-how, customers and financial capital, whereas the community provides the land, employees and local knowledge. In most of the cases, another external donor or even the government is assisting as a third party in capacity building, basic infrastructure provisions or functionating as a mediator. Joint ventures instead, shall support the project by bridging experience, knowledge and management gaps within the communities. Sometimes, it can be difficult to convince the private sector to do investments due to risks arising from uncertain allocations of land, complications with contracts or too long payoff times. Therefore, the public sector has to be supportive in order to realise deals between the community and the private sector (WUNDER 2000).

CBET is a tourism concept that depicts the compromises that have to be made in order to achieve multiple objectives and to meet diverging interests. In terms of nature conservation, effectively implemented CBET can make a proper contribution, even though it has to be considered that direct payments for nature conservation might make a greater contribution. On the other hand, CBET can also contribute to the community development due to job creation and its associated income capacity. But even for this new income source, it is important to consider the limitations and the external support which is necessary for a viable tourism business development. On the long term it might be possible for the businesses to become financially independent, but as shown by other case studies, this is not very likely to happen (KISS 2004).

It is questionable whether the introduction of the CBET concept has been really useful, when there are so many similarities to the concepts of ecotourism and CBT and even overlapping between these two concepts themselves. Nevertheless, this form of tourism best encompasses the main objectives that were analysed in the present thesis – namely nature conservation and community development. However, as there were no examples for CBET concretely observable in the field, the research question eventually put a stronger focus on CBT and ecotourism businesses and projects, because these could be found numerously in the study area. Even though the depicted relevant concepts have been partially vague, the main conceptual aspects, issues and objectives could be clarified, thus, providing an adequate basis for the following deliberations in this thesis.

The figure below, roughly illustrates the emergence of the respective concepts as a final summary, starting from the left with the negative impacts of mass tourism which initiated the development of alternative tourism and its subsequent forms towards a growing sustainability in tourism. Before the thesis will go into depth with the study area and the results, the methodology for answering the research question will be delineated in the next section.

Figure 7: The Continuum of tourism concepts relevant for the thesis. Own depiction.

3. Methods

The fieldwork for this thesis has been conducted in Kyrgyzstan from the beginning of May until the beginning of August 2017. The Mountain Societies Research Institute of the University of Central Asia greatly supported the conduct of the field work. The following chapter will illustrate the preparation, facilitation and the conduct of the fieldwork, explaining the choice of methods, sampling, issues and problems that arose during the data collection, the handling of language barriers and translation as well as challenges and limitations in the field.

3.1. Qualitative research approach and applied methods

For the present thesis and its posed research question, a qualitative approach has found to be the best applicable option in order to obtain satisfying results that contribute substantially to an appropriate answer to this question. First of all, a qualitative approach always involves an exploratory element that can be utilised for the examination of subjects that has not been largely investigated by empirical studies so far. In addition to that, qualitative research can be characterised by an open research design, allowing a little bit more flexibility during the research process to adapt to changing framework conditions, as the

necessary steps for the field work are not already fixated and immutable. In the field of geography, qualitative research seeks to grasp human interactions and their behaviour by considering various potential interviewees and their perspectives, motives, activities and interests. This circumstance also alludes to the fact that qualitative research always includes subjective experiences of both, the interviewees and the researcher himself, while quantitative research generally strives to provide objective results in order to achieve objectivity. These subjective experiences and perspectives are an integral component of the processed results and the associated knowledge that is produced. Consequently, the scope of qualitative research is to explore the broad spectrum of possible interactions and actions of groups or single individuals rather than providing representative results (MEIER KRUKER & RAUH 2005).

The presented elements and aspects that characterise qualitative research combined with the selected research topic and its intended understanding of behaviour and perceptions of local stakeholders, vividly evince the reasons for choosing this qualitative methodological approach and its related methods. Tourism as a phenomenon is predominantly driven by human interactions that are based on different motives and interests, which is why qualitative research can be a good means to make these tourism activities tangible. As the thesis subject is strongly focussing on sustainable tourism forms, that are often conceptually vague featuring a lack of standardised methods for quantifying their degree of sustainability, their impacts and potentials, a quantitative approach might be inconvenient, whereas qualitative research methods with their exploratory features likely better grasp these subjects. Following this, the next section will deal with the applied methods.

3.2. Secondary data

During the collaboration with the Mountain Societies Research Institute (MSRI) of the University of Central Asia, a broad range of secondary data has been provided as a contribution to the research project. This encompassed internal literature reviews that also included reviews of Russian literature that has been translated into English as well as internal project reports and additional statistical material in both, digital and non-digital formats. Furthermore, access has been granted to several literature collections that were related to the research. Besides the great support of the MSRI, other institutions supported the research as well by providing additional information, especially within the study area. The destination management organisation (DMO) Karakol shared results of a survey they had conducted together with other DMOs across the country in 2017 to obtain statistical data on tourist numbers, their countries of residence, expenditures, activities and tourist satisfaction. The survey was carried out in cooperation with several members of the DMO within the study area. Additional secondary data on tourism in Kyrgyzstan has also been provided by the Global Snow Leopard and Ecosystem Protection Program (GSLEP) due to their pioneer project in the Central Tien Shan Landscape, which is partly covered by the study area as well.

For the project, a regional management plan has been drafted, which is why all relevant information for the area has been collected together and structured respectively. As the present master thesis partially overlapped thematically with the objectives of the management plan, collaboration emerged and findings, that were mainly based on the analysis of grey literature and other secondary data, were shared.

3.3. Field observation

Despite the secondary data that contributed to a deeper understanding of the tourism situation in Kyrgyzstan and supplementary supported the preparation and conduct of the field work, the field observation has been another useful means to collect additional information and gain individual perceptions. It can be seen as a central method in geographic research that is almost always applied in the field in order to obtain information that contribute to a more context-related understanding of the research topic to support more structured data collection methods like interviews before, during and after they are conducted (KEARNS 2010).

Several field visits in the study area as well as to other important tourism hotspots in the country and in Bishkek were essential to get an impression of the tourism situation on the ground, but also for the country in general. These visits principally had an observing and exploratory character. Moreover, field observations can raise awareness for cultural, regional or even local peculiarities, traditions and principles that have to be considered and respected when further steps for the research are planned or interviews are conducted. As an example, a first visit to Karakol could be made together with the project supervisor of the GSLEP project, as he had a meeting with the governor of the province. Due to this collaboration I could get an impression of what it means to meet local policy makers and what has to be considered before, during and after these meetings.This helped to prepare for and adjust to the interviews for the present research and their associated atmosphere when dealing with government officials.

Staying in Bishkek with a Kyrgyz host family can also be seen as part of my field observation as it provided me with deep cultural insights and valuable information that constitute a respectful contact in the Kyrgyz society, even though these basic rules and principles were partially only applicable to the ethnic Kyrgyz. However, this part of field observation certainly had a rather participatory character. All these observations helped to gain a better understanding of the touristic situation in Kyrgyzstan with its local dynamics and specific developments and served as a first orientation in the field. All the observations have been appropriately documented in a field diary, usually during the same day the observations were made.

3.4. Interview – design and practice

Since the emergence of qualitative interview research, numerous varieties of qualitative interviews evolved. There is not one single qualitative interview, but a variety of different types, methods and techniques. In the academic literature, this circumstance has already caused confusion, as different forms of interviews are termed synonymously. Despite all these different characteristics, qualitative interviews do also have common features that unite them: every interview is reciprocal communication and furthermore, a process. Every interview means interaction and cooperation. The interview as a completed text is just the product of the interview as mutual process of interaction, commonly created by the interviewee and the interviewer himself. This applies to every type of qualitative interview. Additionally, every interview is influenced, it is just the question how and to what extent. Concluding from that, it is essential to appropriately grasp and design this influence in a controlled, competent and reflective way with regard to the applied interview form and the research subject (HELFFERICH 2005). As a data-gathering method, an interview is characterised by a spoken exchange of information, meaning traditionally a verbal face-to-face communication (even though interviews via telephone or computer- mediated communication are also possible) where the interviewer attempts to educe information on specific knowledge, opinions or beliefs from the interviewee.

3.4.1. Semi-structured interviews

Almost every author who wrote a teaching book about qualitative research provided an individual classification for qualitative interviews. With regard to DUNN (2010), three major forms can be identified in terms of structuralising: unstructured, semi-structured and structured interviews. While unstructured interviews like oral histories are rather informant-focussed and mainly targeting personal perceptions and personal histories, structured interviews are more question-focused, usually sticking to a specific list of standardised and predetermined questions. In between this continuum, semi-structured interviews are meant to be more content-focussed, retaining some flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances and react on the interviewee’s statements during the interview, but also following a pre- designed guideline (DUNN 2010). The latter type of structuralising an interview has also been applied for the field work, because it allowed to address relevant issues for the research question specifically from the perspective of the researcher without losing the necessary flexibility for enlarging upon relevant topics and newly emerging aspects. This also posed a challenge for the interviewee, as he had to intervene when the conversation started to wander off the subject. In addition to that, an interview schedule has been drafted with formulated questions that served as a guideline for the interviews (see table below).

CENTRAL ELEMENTS OF THE INTERVIEW SCHEDULE TOURISM DEVELOPMENT IN KYRGYZSTAN IN THE PAST ROLE OF EXTERNAL ASSISTANCE FOR THE COUNTRY’S TOURISM DEVELOPMENT ROLE OF THE GOVERNMENT FOR THE COUNTRY’S TOURISM DEVELOPMENT CONCEPTUAL UNDERSTANDING OF CBT/ECOTOURISM ECOLOGICAL IMPACTS OF CBT/ECOTOURISM SOCIO-ECONOMIC IMPACT OF CBT/ECOTOURISM CULTURAL IMPACTS OF CBT/ECOTOURISM FUTURE PERSPECTIVES MAIN OBSTACLES CHANGES AND IMPROVEMENTS TO INCREASE CONTRIBUTION OF CBT/ECOTOURISM FOR CONSERVATION AND DEVELOPMENT Table 5: Central Elements of the interview schedule.

This interview schedule was comprised of central questions that have been verbatim deployed in every interview and questions that were respectively drafted for the individual interviewees and their associated activities, projects and backgrounds (see Annex 1 for further information). Further questions that spontaneously addressed issues and aspects during the interview supplemented the interview schedule. Despite the presented typology provided by DUNN (2010), there are also numerous other categorisations for qualitative interviews. FLICK (1995) differentiated between three major groups – narrations, guidelines-interviews and group procedures (see figure 8).

GUIDELINE- GROUP NARRATIONS INTERVIEWS PROCEDURE • Narrative Interviews • Focussed Interviews • Group Interviews • Episodic Interviews • Semi-standardised • Group Discussions Interviews • problem-centred Interviews

Figure 8: Classification of qualitative interviews according to FLICK. Based on: FLICK 1995.

The group of guideline-interviews already indicates the potential difficulty in precisely distinguishing between several forms. Though focussed interviews follow the falsification principle and are therefore, rather close to a quantitative research logic, problem-centred interviews are characterised by a considerable degree of openness. A theoretical concept does exist, and proposed assumptions are confronted, modified and made plausible with the social reality during the interview.Such interviews can contain narrative sequences, guideline sequences as well as short standardised question sequences. At this point the distinction between semi-standardised and problem-centred interviews start to become blurry, which is why DUNN’s systematisation has been favoured for the present thesis, even though it 47

has to be stated that there are numerous other classifications that also contain the usual interview forms like problem-centred, focussed and narrative interviews, but are additionally expanding this spectrum by forms like the receptive, in-depth or the intense interview (REUBER & PFAFFENBACH 2005).

3.4.2. Expert interviews

Despite the semi-structure of the conducted interviews, another aspect has been relevant – namely the expertise of the interviewee him- or herself. Expert interviews are principally not designated as an own interview form according to most classifications. The word expert evokes the image of people who have special knowledge that they share upon request or that they use for solving complex problems. It kindles associations to scientists or specialised politicians who are security experts or social experts etc. Along these lines, experts are perceived as members of a functional elite that possess specific knowledge. However, there are also people who do not work in prominent positions and still have expert knowledge. For instance, when somebody is making an artist or a specific type of music, his or her hobby and gathers all available information about the subject, then he or she is becoming an expert for this specific topic as well. Furthermore, every person boasts a type of specialised knowledge in terms of the individual social context where people are operating and embedded (GLÄSER & LAUDEL 2009).

The depicted examples already hint that the state of being an expert is rather subjectively conferred by the researcher him- or herself, so somebody becomes an expert due to his or her role as interviewee. Nonetheless, such determination is inconvenient, because the researcher is not provided with criteria that allow to distinguish between experts and non-experts. This may ultimately lead to an inflationary usage of the term where eventually everyone becomes an expert. Consequently, a determination of the term has to address peculiarities that differentiates the actions and knowledge of experts from other forms of social actions and knowledge and especially the everyday behaviour. In context of the research, a person is addressed as an expert because the researcher assumes that the person has a knowledge which is not accessible for everyone in the specific field of action. Thus, the expert interview is targeting this head start of knowledge (MEUSER & NAGEL 2009).

While the main objective and central aspects of this interview form could be delineated, it has to be mentioned that there still remains a conceptual vagueness. Expert interviews exemplify that the application of methods is sometimes ahead of its theoretical penetration and reflection. Just within the last one or two decades the debate on expert interviews got intensified, even though this did not lead to any relevant convergence between the various definitions and methodological concepts that exist (BOGNER & MENZ 2009).

But as it is not the objective of this thesis to contribute to this methodological debate, it will not be further expanded upon this subject. Anyways, for the present thesis, expert interviews have been construed as interviews with people who feature specific knowledge about the tourism sector in Kyrgyzstan, either due to their current position or their great experience and personal background within the sphere of tourism. Summing up the methodological approach that has been utilised for this thesis, it can be concluded that semi-structured expert interviews have been conducted in the field for the current thesis. As the type of interview could be determined, another important issue has to be dealt with in the following – the sampling.

3.4.3. Purposive Sampling

It is not the objective of qualitative research to conduct a maximum of interviews in order to make a statement on frequencies of behavioural patterns or respective attitudes and preferences, but rather to grasp the spectrum of possible action patterns and in which context these patterns or opinions occur. Instead of representativity of results, a qualitative approach can only strive for plausibility, which also allows to make a conscious and subjective selection of interview partners in contrast to an allotment on a random basis. For the concrete sampling of interview partners numerous different strategies exist. The decision which to choose highly depends on the topic, the research question, the number of available interview partners, the time budget and whether the spectrum wants to be grasped broadly or a certain depth needs to be obtained. An ideal interview partner is characterised by necessary knowledge and experience, the ability of reflecting and articulating, time to be actually available for an interview and the willingness to engage in the research (REUBER & PFAFFENBACH 2005).

Whereas random sampling obtains its significance and validity from the regularities of statistical probability theory, purposive sampling intentionally selects information-rich cases that transform the alleged weakness of the produced bias into a strength for studying in depth. Such information-rich cases allow the researcher to acquire considerable knowledge about central issues relevant to the subject. As depicted in the figure below, there are also various sampling strategies within the field of purposive sampling, each of them serving a certain purpose (PATTON 2002).

EXTREME OR DEVIANT CASE SAMPLING INTENSITY SAMPLING MAXIMUM VARIATION SAMPLING HOMOGENOUS SAMPLES TYPICAL CASE SAMPLING CRITICAL CASE SAMPLING SNOWBALL OR CHAIN SAMPLING CRITERION SAMPLING THEORY-BASED SAMPLING CONFIRMING AND DISCONFIRMING CASES STRATIFIED PURPOSEFUL SAMPLING OPPORTUNISITC OR EMERGENT SAMPLING PRUPOSEFUL RANDOM SAMPLING SAMPLING POLITICALLY IMPORTANT CASES CONVENIENCE SAMPLING

Figure 9: Different Sampling Strategies. Based On: PATTON 2002.

According to Patton’s classification, theory-based, convenience and snowball sampling have been used for this thesis. Theory-based sampling involves decisions regarding the selection and composition of the empirical material during the processes of data acquisition and analysis. The attribute theory rather refers to the desired outcome – an empirically justified theory emergence that is providing the framework for the sampling. Like the research, the selection is a process that proceeds gradually during the data acquisition. In the beginning of this process – people and groups, that are expected to offer diverging perspectives on the research question, are selected. Following that, further people are selected who are expected to make substantial contributions and bring in new aspects relevant to the topic. Finally, the selection of interview partners is completed when a theoretical saturation sets in and no new findings are expected (REUBER & PFAFFENBACH 2005).

In contrast to this theoretical approach, snowball sampling relies on the knowledge and experience of the interviewees, as they might provide additional information that can lead to new interview partners. By asking numerous people about additional interview partners, new information-rich cases are accumulated and the metaphorical snowball becomes bigger and bigger. Repetitive denominations indicate a pattern of relevance of potential interview partners.

Last but not least, convenience sampling is a rather pragmatic approach, following the mantra of doing what can be done quickly and convenient. Even though this might be one of the least desired strategies for the researcher, it is likely to be among the most common strategies, because costs and convenience in the field are important aspects that have to be considered, even though strategic deliberations should always be placed as top priorities before these factors (PATTON 2002).

Like with the snowball sampling, this strategy has only been applied as a supplement to the theoretical- based sampling strategy for the field work of the present thesis. For the sampling of the conducted field work, four broad groups have been considered: the private sector, the government, external assistance organisations and additional tourism supportive associations and organisations. Due to literature research and conversations with staff from the MSRI, key associations, organisations, development projects and their related international development agencies, as well as key state agencies and important stakeholders from the private sector who operate in the field of community-based tourism, ecotourism, community development or nature conservation, could be identified and depending on the availability, contact connections and other relevant resources, interview appointments were set up. As shown in the table below, 22 interviews have been conducted in total, from which three have been conducted with representatives of the government, three with representatives from external assistance organisations, seven with representatives from the private sector and the remaining eight with people from the tourism- supportive associations. As the people were usually very opened for the research project, there were only a few cancellations due to colliding time schedules, but most of the requests did also lead to interview appointments.

Name Position Category Location Language Recorded Asylbek Rajiev Head of KATO Tourism-Supportive Associations Bishkek EN YES Myrzabek Ozubekov Head of KCBTA Tourism-Supportive Associations Bishkek EN YES Pavel Vorobiev Mountain Guide and Secretary of KMGA Tourism-Supportive Associations Bishkek EN YES Chnara Mamatova Accountant of USAID BGI-Project External Assistance Bishkek EN YES Akylbek Aldashov Director of AGOCA Tourism-Supportive Associations Bishkek EN YES Maksat Damir Project Coordinator GIZ External Assistance Bishkek EN YES Talantbek Batyraliyev Executive Director of MSDSP External Assistance Bishkek EN YES Anvar Yusupov Head of Novinomad Private Sector Bishkek EN YES Azamat Kaparovitsch Tourism Deputy Minister Government Bishkek RU YES Maksat Musaev Assistant of Issyk-Kul Governour, Head ot tourism sector Government StudyArea RU NO Jyldyz Director of DMO South Issyk-Kul Tourism-Supportive Associations StudyArea KYR YES Bakyt Head of Yurt Camp Manjily Private Sector StudyArea KYR YES Azamat Asanov CBT Karakol group coordinator Private Sector StudyArea EN YES Aleksandr Vereshagin Chief Specialist IK BR territory, Supervisor Sarychat Reserve Government StudyArea RU YES Rakhat Dzhamalova Head of DMO Karakol Tourism-Supportive Associations StudyArea EN YES Tynchtyk Zhanadylov Head of DMO Jyrgalan Tourism-Supportive Associations StudyArea EN NO Saltanat Local Group Coordinator of CBT Bakonbaevo Private Sector StudyArea KYR YES Aydar Executive Officer of Ecotrek Private Sector StudyArea EN NO Gulzhan Kozhomkulova Executive Officer of Riverside Guesthouse Private Sector StudyArea GER YES Anatoliy Zhidkov Executive Officer of Turkestan Yurt Private Sector StudyArea RU YES Asan Alymkulov Head of FOD Tourism-Supportive Associations Bishkek EN YES Timur Akbashev Director of Visit Karakol Private Sector StudyArea EN YES Table 6: Interview Partners.

3.4.4. Qualitative Content Analysis

Originally, content analysis emerged as a quantifying method for text analysis. Due to the emergence of mass media, a great amount of similar texts evolved and also engaged the attention of social scientists. To analyse these texts with quantitative methods that dominated by that time, information needed to be extracted and classified, before frequencies and distributions of information could be analysed. The idea of extracting content information from the texts, transforming them into an appropriate format separated from the original text for further processing, is a characteristic commonly featured by all content analysis methods. The quantitative content analysis engendered criticism, because the subsuming of text- elements to a specific category is invariably accompanied by a reduction of the information complexity and this reduction is not always adequate for the object of study. In this context, the question arose,

whether there can be a qualitative content analysis that is oriented on the complexity of information and its comprehension without losing advantage of a content analysis of being theory- and role-controlled. In the German literature, Philipp Mayring introduced his concept of qualitative content analysis in the beginning of the 1980s (REUBER & PFAFFENBACH 2005).

Despite aspects of the quantitative content analysis, he also incorporated aspects of hermeneutic, literature studies and the psychology of text processing. One of the main differences to the quantitative content analysis is that the theoretically derived category system is revised and compared with the obtained material which harnesses the openness of qualitative methods for the development of the category system. Qualitative content analysis treats the analysed text as material in which the data is contained. Conducting a qualitative content analysis means extracting this raw data, before processing and analysing it. The term extracting is applied in order to contrast with the term encoding, because encoding rather refers to an indexing of the text, thus making text and index the objects of analysis, whereas qualitative content analysis is extracting information and analyses this obtained information. As a consequence, an informational basis is created that only presents information relevant to the research question, detached from the original text. This information basis is structured by a search grid that is used for extracting the information. The qualitative content analysis is the only method in qualitative text analysis that precociously separates information from the original text and attempts to systematically reduce the reams of information and to structure it aligned with the study subject. The search grid is constructed on the basis of theoretical preliminary considerations. These considerations are guiding the extractions and thus, structuring the information basis. Extraction means to read the text and decide which of the presented information is relevant for the research question and this information is assigned to the respective categories in the search grid. However, the category system remains open and can be modified during the extraction when information appears, that is relevant for the subject but not fitting the category system. Dimensions of the existing categories can then be changed, or even new categories can be constructed (GLÄSER & LAUDEL 2009).

The characteristic attributes within the category system are loosely and verbally described, which means that the data is nominally-scaled obtained and the scale with the list of characteristics evolves during the process of extraction. Hence, the extraction is adapted to the peculiarities of the theoretical variables – namely the description of complex conditions. Furthermore, the extraction process is already an important interpretation step, as the researcher has to decide which information is relevant and which not. The same applies to the categorisation and the verbal description of the characteristics. Additional interpretation is also required for the processing of the data, when the material is summarised, tested on redundancies and contradictions and finally assorted according to criteria that are relevant for the analysis. The result of the data processing is a structured information basis that condenses the empirical information on the cases that have to be reconstructed. In the ensuing analysis, this information basis is used for reconstructing the cases and analyse them for relevant causal mechanisms (GLÄSER & LAUDEL 2009). 52

Summing up, the following figure outlines the main steps of a qualitative content analysis like it has been applied for this thesis.

Theoretical Final Analysis Preparation of Data Prelimenary Extraction and the Extraction Processing Considerations Interpretation

Figure 10: Process of a qualitative content analysis. Based on: GLÄSER & LAUDEL 2009.

3.5. Language and Translation

Kyrgyzstan’s official languages are Kyrgyz and Russian, even though Russian is the administrative language that is mostly spoken in the working environments and when dealing with government institutions. As the tourism sector, and ecotourism as well as CBT activities specifically, target the international tourism market, its representatives and employers were usually fluent in English, which is why most of the interviews could be conducted without a translator, except for seven interviews that were conducted in either Russian or Kyrgyz with the help of a translator. For the interview with the Kyrgyz tourism deputy minister, I was supported by staff of the MSRI and for the interviews that were conducted in Russian or Kyrgyz within the study area, I got assistance by an English student from my guest family, who also provided me with translated transcriptions of all Kyrgyz and Russian interviews. Furthermore, a Russian translation of the interview guideline was always carried along as a backup for the interviews conducted in English to bridge eventual misunderstandings. The interview partners were highly motivated to speak English in the interview and always felt confident with the language, even though their language skills were not always flawless. In order to accurately process the data, transcriptions of all interviews were necessary. Transcriptions can be seen as selective constructs that reduce the sheer unlimited primary (original conversation) and secondary data (audio record of the conversation) that create a new reality. If the transcription is meant to be accurate, then a largely exact and realistic transcript of what was said without distorting too much, needs to be created.

However, as most of the interviewees have not been interviewed in their mother tongue, an exact phonetic transcription became redundant and a transcription in normal standard English was more convenient, because a specific pronouncement of words cannot be assigned to a specific significance, when the interview partners do not speak Russian or Kyrgyz. In addition to that, the factual content of the interview was rather important for the present research than the exact pronouncement of statements. A transcription in normal standard English usually implies a first interpretation, as dialects, syntax errors and other lingual problems are rectified and the style is getting smoothed. The final results thus, become a product of interpretations (analysis) of interpretations (transcription) of interpretations (opinions and perspectives of interviewees). This circumstance gets even more intensified when an interview is conducted in a language different than the thesis language, because the translation of the transcription accounts for an additional interpretation, as statements cannot always be exactly transferred into another language, but rather analogously translated (REUBER & PFAFFENBACH 2005). 53

Despite the transcription in normal standard English, hesitation of the interviewees, laughing and other non-verbal utterances which may be relevant for the interpretation, have also been noted down and marked with cornered brackets along with opaque passages.

3.6. Positionality

Recognising and reflecting about the own position in relation to the research subjects is an important aspect that needs to be considered when conducting field work as a researcher in a foreign country. One of the most important aspects that has to kept in mind is that individual perceptions and observations in the field can never claim to be entirely objective. Interactions between the research participants and the researcher are not embedded within a social vacuum but determined by character traits and other personal characteristics like gender, age, social position or ethnicity. For these reasons, the researcher’s positionality continuously needs to be critically reflected during the research process, especially when research is conducted in foreign cultures and countries (DOWLING 2010).

Concluding from that, my role as an outsider to the Kyrgyz local culture and its dynamics is something that has to be addressed respectively. In terms of personal characteristics, being an outsider was intensified by the fact that I am not married, which is rather uncommon for Kyrgyz people around my age. The language gap further contributed to my outsider status. On the other hand, dealing with all these different representatives from various domains was favoured due to the fact that I am a male. Most of the interviewees were males as well and especially when dealing with government representatives, being a female can complicate the process, because there are deeply entrenched stigmatising gender roles within Kyrgyz society that are partly heavily contrasting our understanding of gender roles, especially with regard to gender equality. My nationality was a rather supporting factor for my field work and for interacting with the interviewees. In Kyrgyzstan, Germany is perceived as a role model for development in many different sectors and thus, people were always interested in communication and usually very supportive. With special regard to the tourism sector, many representatives from the private sector also saw the interviews as a chance to promote Kyrgyzstan as a tourism destination and were hence, very opened for collaboration, cooperation or any other kind of support for my thesis. Many interviewees were also very curious about my motivation for my research project and really appreciated my interest in their country and its tourism sector. In some cases, I had to face wrong expectations that were put in me and my work, as I was expected to make a change for the local communities or even to serve as a mediator between the private sector and the government in order to improve the situation for the tourism development in Kyrgyzstan. In these situations, it was necessary to communicate and explain my role as a researcher in the field and clarify possible outcomes from my work to adjust people’s expectations and hopes. Nonetheless, I scarcely felt my positionality to be a problem for conducting my field work in an appropriate way and the research participants were usually very welcoming and opened for my project.

3.7. Ethical considerations

Whenever human individuals or other living beings become subject of a study, ethical aspects have to be considered. The debate on ethics in research is a relatively young phenomenon and started to be set in motion in the 1950s and the 1960s in the USA, when a number of studies were published that were ethically highly questionable. Research is not a mere technical issue of obtaining and analysing data but rather features an ethical dimension as it can influence people’s lives when they are involved in the study, study results are published or due to the fact that research itself is a human action. Several guidelines or code of ethics evolved during the debate on the subject and they all commonly incorporated one main principle – informed consent (GLÄSER & LAUDEL 2009). Informed consent allows research participants to choose freely whether they want to participate in a study or not and the researcher gets the guarantee that a possible exposure to risks is voluntarily accepted by the participants. Furthermore, societal trust as well as respect for science is strengthened (DIENER & CRANDALL 1978).

Needless to say, that this main principle has been applied to the field work of this thesis as well. However, as no sensible or confidential data has been obtained and no other risks have been posed to the research participants, additional ethical aspects have not been considered.

3.8. Compromises and limitations during fieldwork

The field work was accompanied by a few compromises that had to be made and some limitations that hampered the conduct of the research. First of all, the factor of time has to be considered. The duration of stay was three months, whereby the first seven weeks were spent in Bishkek, followed by a period of four weeks that were spent in the study area, before heading back to Bishkek for some final interviews for the last week. This time did not only include the collection of data, but also time for administrative and organisational issues, a first general orientation and time for specifying and sharpening the geographic and thematic focus in order to designate the respective study area. Consequently, the time which spent in the study area has been limited and thus, might have limited the possibilities of understanding local dynamics, structures and behaviour and also the extent of the data collection as some potential interview partners were not available for an interview appointment by that time. This also leads to another limitation – the difficulty of getting in contact with government representatives. On the one hand, information on current positions within the government body and responsible staff was not made publicly available, at least not in English on the internet, so information could only be sparsely obtained. On the other hand, the government did not seem too interested in the research project, except for the tourism deputy minister and the head of the tourism sector in the province, who were both available for an interview and very supportive. During three interviews, technical problems caused the loss of the recorded interview audios (see table above), which is why the content of these interviews had to be reconstructed with the help of the field notes and the memories from the interview itself.

Last but not least, poor road conditions and improvable infrastructures further limited the field work as it was more time- and cost-consuming to get around within the study area. The described aspects and limitations need to be considered for the analysis of data but before the results will be presented and interpreted, the following chapter will be concerned with the study area, especially with its tourism structures, nature conservation efforts, its approximate extent and the role of external assistance within the area.

4. Study Area

With an area covering almost 200.000 km², Kyrgyzstan is located in the centre of the Eurasian continent, without any access to oceans and accompanied by numerous great mountain ranges. Because of this mountainous landscape and its comparatively intact natural resources, it is a very convenient location for tourism development, especially for nature-based tourism activities. This favourable potential has lately also been recognised by the government and tourism has been made a top priority in the country’s National Strategy for Sustainable Development from 2013. Furthermore, the government has also introduced a visa free regime for international tourists from over 40 countries in 2012 in order to attract more tourists and strengthen Kyrgyzstan as a tourism trademark beyond the Central Asian setting (SHOKIROV et al. 2014). In contrast to these means and the country’s prioritisation, the tourism sector only receives a very little share of the total state budget (PALMER 2006). Despite stunning landscapes, Kyrgyzstan also features a captivating cultural and historical heritage, ranging from nomadic cultures and lifestyles to ancient remnants of the Silk Road (JENISH 2017). The field work was conducted in the southern part of the Issyk-Kul region (see map below).

Figure 11: Study Area. Own depiction.

Issyk-Kul is not only the name of the Oblast – an administrative unit comparable to a province – but also the name of the second-largest mountain lake in the world that is also located within the Oblast and the major tourist attraction in Kyrgyzstan (MENDIKULOVA 2008).

With regard to the tourism development, great spatial disparities exist between the northern and the southern shore of the lake. Whereas the northern lake shore is mainly characterised by typical mass tourism structures which have been developed during the Soviet Era, tourism at the southern shore is rather alternative, especially in the region around the oblast’s capital city Karakol – a hotspot for ecotourism and community-based tourism activities (PALMER 2009). For this reason, the study area has been defined to Karakol and its surrounding, including additional villages along the south shore like Bakonbaevo which is also very important for cultural tourism and CBT activities. Furthermore, the study area features several conservation sites: the Karakol National Park, the Sarychat-Ertasch State Nature Reserve, the Khan Tengri National Park in the Enylchek area and parts of the extensive Issyk-Kul Biosphere Reserve that covers more than a fifth of the Kyrgyz territory. Nonetheless, most of the interviews for this thesis were conducted in Karakol and its closer surrounding, because most of the relevant stakeholders are operating from there.

The following sections will provide general information on Kyrgyzstan, before the tourism development during the Soviet Union and since the country’s independence with all its associated tourism forms are described in detail. As external assistance has always been important since the collapse of the Soviet Union, not only for the socio-economic development, but also for the tourism development, its role will be depicted as well, before an overview about nature conservation efforts in the country and within the study area specifically will be given. To grasp the current situation of Kyrgyz tourism development, it is essential to consider and understand the historical, political and the cultural context in which tourism in Kyrgyzstan is embedded.

4.1. Kyrgyzstan in general

Kyrgyzstan can be topographically divided into northern and southern Kyrgyzstan with the Tian Shan mountain range being the geographic border (see figure below). Due to this geographic isolation, there are also cultural differences that emerged between southern and northern Kyrgyzstan. While southern Kyrgyz are meant to be rather conservative and stronger obliged to their Islamic religion by reason of the influence of the Uzbek minority from the Ferghana valley, the northern Kyrgyz are rather open- minded, probably because of the Russian influence that is more apparent in this region (FARRINGTON 2005).

Figure 12: Topographical Boundary of Southern and Northern Kyrgyzstan. From: FARRINGTON 2005.

Due to the continental climate, temperatures in the mountains can be extremely low in winter time and on the other hand very high in summer in the lowland areas. As lake Issyk-Kul is located approximately 1600m a.s.l., it is a favourable tourism destination in summer, because the temperatures are not too high, and tourists can enjoy the summer freshness (BALBAKOVA et al. 2015).

The history of Kyrgyzstan is very complex and has been defined by territorial occupations and conflicts of different empires and tribes for more than two millennia. In addition to that, the country has always been placed at the crossroads between western and eastern civilisations. As it is not the objective of this thesis to review this multifaceted history, it will not be described specifically at this point. Nevertheless, it is very important to consider that the most influencing civilisations have been nomadic pastoralists in the history of Kyrgyzstan. Their activities, traditions and lifestyles had a great impact and are still partially practiced among Kyrgyz people nowadays and are moreover, subject for many tourists who seek for authentic cultural experiences. The fact that both, Russia and the USA used to have military bases nearby Bishkek, indicates the geostrategic relevance of Kyrgyzstan, as it is located between Russia and China, includes most of the water sources for Central Asia and functionates as a transit corridor for potential gas and oil pipelines (FARRINGTON 2005).

Additionally, China intends to develop road infrastructures in the country in order to realise its “One Belt, One Road” project, by creating a transit corridor via land route to Russia and Europe for further economic development (HONG 2017).

Stalin’s ferocious settlement policies led to the resettlement of more than 6 million people all across the USSR. Even though the Kyrgyz population has already been very diverse in the pre-communist era, Stalin’s policy further fuelled the diversification of the population, resulting in more than 80 nationalities

that are resident in Kyrgyzstan today. Despite this diversification, the population is mainly dominated by three nationalities – ethnic Kyrgyz, which comprise about 60% of the population, followed by ethnic Uzbeks (about 13%) and ethnic Russians (approximately 12%). The population of Kyrgyzstan is estimated to 5.5 million inhabitants. Within the study area, there is also a substantial influence of Dungan and Uighur people, that came from China. Their cultural peculiarities and cuisine is also promoted for cultural tourism by several tour companies (ROWLAND 2002).

In terms of religion it can be stated that most of the ethnic Kyrgyz are adherents of the Islam, even though only a small proportion is strictly adherent to the Islam (as stated above). Alcohol is a substantial component on every celebration and during Ramadan, many restaurants and cafes are still opened throughout the whole month. Despite the dominance of the Islam, there are also a few atheists and Christian converts in the country and as part of the cultural traditions, shamanism (also referred to as “Tengrianity”) is partly practiced in the country (SARYGULOV 2003).

Compared to other Centrals Asian countries, Kyrgyzstan with its parliamentary democracy is probably the freest and most democratic country, even though the situation is far from being ideal. The first Kyrgyz president Askar Akaev ruled from 1991 until 2005. Because of his increasing authoritarian behaviour combined with corruption suspicions and manipulated elections, violent protests against his leadership arose in 2005 (also referred to as “Tulip Revolution”), leading to new elections without him as he fled the country due to the severe corruption accusations. In 2010 a similar pattern occurred with the Kyrgyz president Kumanbek Bakiyev showing comparable authoritarian tendencies, combined with negative impacts of the global economic crisis and ethnic tensions in the southern part of Kyrgyzstan between ethnic Kyrgyz and ethnic Uzbeks. This second Kyrgyz revolution resulted in the introduction of a new parliamentary system which is still present nowadays. The events revealed the corruptive structures within the government that are still apparent today, making it thus, a serious problem and a hampering factor for further development in the country. Furthermore, these political events also affected the tourism industry, leading to significant drops in tourist arrivals in the years 2005 and 2010, that could only be successively compensated over time. Regarding the economy, the country basically used to produce meat, wool, tin and uranium during the Soviet era. Moreover, Kyrgyzstan featured some textile and weapon factories. All of these industrial structures collapsed with the collapse of the USSR, forcing many people into self-subsistence livestock and farming activities. With the independence, Kyrgyzstan progressively carried out market reforms such as a land reform and an improved regulatory system (FARRINGTON 2005).

It was the first CIS nation (Commonwealth of Independent States) that has been accepted as a member state of the WTO. As the country opened for new industry investments, a few new economic branches emerged, like the gold production with the Canadian-owned Kumtor gold mine being one of the biggest gold mines in the world and accounting for about 10% of the country’s GDP (FARRINGTON 2005).

Tobacco, cotton, meat and wool are still the most important agricultural products, whereby tobacco and cotton are the only products that are exported in any significant quantity. Despite gold as the most important industrial export product, natural gas, uranium, electricity and mercury are exported as well. In spite of all these export products, Kyrgyzstan is still facing serious economic problems, resulting in external debts that exceed the entire GDP of the country. Debt redemption accounts for more than half of the state budget and especially in the early years after the independence, Kyrgyzstan’s economy could only withstand due to technical assistance, donor grants and international loans (YOUNGBLOOD- COLEMAN 2015).

For the rural population bazaar trading, semi-nomadic livestock herding and subsistence farming are constituting the main economic activities. Even though nomadic pastoralism is still an essential part of many Kyrgyz family’s lives, Stalin’s attempts towards collectivisation led to a more settled population in Kyrgyzstan and nomadic pastoralism practices are now largely limited to the summer months (especially July and August). During this time, many Kyrgyz families from the countryside retreat to their summer pastures (jailoos) in the mountains with their horses, cows or sheep, put up their yurts and practice rather simple lifestyles, demonstrating ancient nature-based subsistence (PALMER 2006). This cultural lifestyle offers an enormous potential for the tourism sector, as international tourists seek for such authentic cultural experiences in the mountains.

4.2. Tourism during Soviet Era

Already during the times of the Soviet Union, Kyrgyzstan has been a favourable tourism destination for Soviet tourists. The former organisational structures of the USSR are still observable and the touristic infrastructure that has intensely been build up since the 1970s is still coining today’s tourism appearance in Kyrgyzstan. The tourism system during the Soviet Era has been characterised by centralism, large- scale spatial planning processes and an almost absolute governmental control of touristic supply and demand structures (PALMER 2009).

Furthermore, the touristic system has been embedded in the socialistic ideology serving the purpose of encouraging mental and physical powers of the people in order to increase their labour productivity (SHAW 1991). The development of national tourism should also strengthen feelings of national pride and national self-consciousness as an expression of devotion to the Soviet Union. The common experiences and memories that were made during tourism activities should also support the creation of a shared national culture. Initially, this Soviet ideology should be supported by tourism activities that were primarily focussing on cultural and educational awareness-building (PALMER 2009). In addition to that, the Soviet tourism development strategy strived towards mass tourism. Before the Khrushchev era, tourism has originally been a non-manufacturing sector and just with the post-World War II era, tourism development was fostered in order to promote the “Soviet paradise” and transform the sector

into a promising source of income and especially between the 1960s and 1970s, mass tourism became a deliberate strategy to realise this goal (ZHIZANOVA 2011).

There were two main government bureaus organising the international tourism – Sputnik and Intourist. Intourist was responsible for managing the whole tourism system, including the management of touristic infrastructures like recreation centres and hotels, as well as the management of guides, visas, transportation and the travel itineraries. Under the strict supervision of the KGB (Committee of State Security) even foreign tourists were allowed to travel within the Soviet Union. On the other hand, Soviet citizens could also travel abroad, mainly to ideologically like-minded countries like Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland or the German Democratic Republic, but only when several screening processes approved that the potential tourist’s views and opinions aligned with the socialistic ideology (SHEVIRIN 2003).

Sputnik – the second government body that was responsible for tourism activities and which was also referred to as the Bureau of International Youth Tourism, organised international exchange programmes for the youth with a particular focus on sport activities. The bureau had its own guides, camps, recreation centres and transportation and between 1958 and 1986 it was estimated that more than 6.3 million people, aged between 16 and 30, both foreign and Soviet, participated in such tourism exchange programmes. These tourism activities also led to the creation of health resorts and sports tourism facilities. Therefore, every Soviet member state had a “Council for Tourism and Excursions”, that individually promoted and developed local tourism, including sports tourism and excursions. With these measures regional studies should be promoted, patriotism encouraged, and athletic training and sightseeing facilitated (ZHIZANOVA 2011).

Travel routes all across the USSR connected the main tourism destinations. The tourism offer was comprised of hiking, trekking and cycling activities as well as of expeditions and these activities were especially embraced by the youth in the 1970s. There was also a social tourism programme which was run by the central government, aiming for an improvement of the wellbeing of the people. This social tourism programme offered workers the opportunity for recreation in sanatoriums and health resorts and gave their children access to pioneer camps. This led to a further increase of tourism infrastructures (ABDYKARYDOV 1984). In the former Kyrgyz SSR the Republic Committee of Physical Culture and Sports launched a tourism and alpinism department in 1945, where instructors were trained, and alpinism and tourism were widely promoted. In 1959, several campsites around the country were created by the newly established Central Council for Tourism and Excursion. The further development of mountain tourism was later fostered by another newly installed government body in 1977 – the Republic and State Tourism Federations (ZHIZANOVA 2011).

All these measures led to more than one million people that had participated in such tourism-related activities by 1979 in the Kyrgyz SSR (MARECHEK 1982). Despite the promotion of sports tourism, the tourism market in the USSR was also characterised by a big offer for recreational tourism.

The Russian term “rekreacija” encompassed various tourism segments that were contained in the Soviet tourism system – namely cure and recreational services and mobile round trips. Specific touristic infrastructures were assigned to the specific tourism segments. Nearly all facilities could only be accessed with a reception order called “putjovka”. These reception orders were subsidised by the respective facility and distributed according to specific rules. By that time, individual tourism did not officially exist in the Soviet Union and the government strictly tried to prevent this form of tourism due to ideological concerns, but as the capacities of the official tourism facilities could not meet the growing demands, unofficial tourism gained considerable importance (HENNINGSEN 1994).

The numbers of such independent travellers and unorganised holidaymakers already started to grow during the Khrushchev and Brezhnev era, but significantly increased in the period before the collapse of the Soviet Union, as the attitudes towards Soviet tourism already began to shift, accompanied by the crumbling of Stalin’s socialistic ideology. Nonetheless, a comprehensive understanding of Soviet tourist experiences, expectations and attitudes is illusive due to communist conditions that prevented open discourses. Soviet tourism hotspots were primarily located in the Caucasian Mountains, the Caspian Sea, the Black Sea, the Sea of Azov and Central Russia with Moscow. Nonetheless, due to its scenic landscape with the magnificent mountains and the lake Issyk-Kul, Kyrgyzstan managed to become a tourism destination with a supra-regional reach. The Issyk-Kul region was developed as a tourism hotspot for recreational and mountain tourism. By the end of the 1980s about 350.000 tourists from various Soviet republics visited the northern shore of lake Issyk-Kul, mostly because of its unspoiled nature and clear unpolluted water. Especially highly ranked government officials and military personnel from the Communist Party Cadres visited the lake, fuelling the advancement of lake Issyk-Kul as one of the top three tourism destinations for recreation in the USSR (PALMER 2009).

4.3. Tourism in Kyrgyzstan since the independence

Like other CIS countries, Kyrgyzstan eludes typical development classifications due to the hybridity of the social and the political status of the post-Soviet countries (PALMER 2006). Moreover, tourism development in the CIS states is not appropriately represented within conventional development models (JAAKSON 1996).

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, encompassing political, economic and societal processes of change started in the former Soviet Republics. These processes are summarised by the term “post- socialistic transformation”, meaning a simultaneous change of the entire societal system with all its associated economic, political and legal subsystems. This transformation is not only limited to the transition from a centrally planned economy towards a free market economy, but also includes the breach with the centralistic one-party rule, the restructuring of the party-ideological legislation as well as the questioning of the established value systems, manners and lifestyles.

Former securities disappeared and required adaptations that led to changes in spatial patterns and altered regionalisation processes, creating new political and economic swings for new actors who made use of these new potentials (KIRCHMAYER & SCHMITT 2004).

Many authors perceive this transformation as a transitional and adaptational process in the sense of a catch-up development, where the party-centralistic and planned-economy structures are going to be transferred into democratic, constitutional and market-based structures (HOPFMANN & WOLF 1998; MERKEL 1999; CVIJANOVIC 2002).

However, this would imply a terminable process with a fixed endpoint – namely the establishment of a new stabile system. Since the main goals of democratisation and liberalisation are differently or sometimes simply not at all implemented among the former Soviet Union states, such a linearity and seclusion of the transformation process has to be questioned. Instead, the transformation should rather be seen as an open and unbiased process. For tourism in Kyrgyzstan, this means that a complete replacement of former Soviet tourism structures by new western tourism forms is rather unlikely but that the insistence on traditional patterns of behaviour combined with the persistence of Soviet structures is more likely to significantly impact the tourism structures in Kyrgyzstan. Nonetheless, the independence declarations of the Soviet republics affected the tourism structures, as new borders led to interruptions of transport routes and thus, also of travel routes. Due to political and economic deregulation and liberalisation, many private travel agencies and tour operators were founded and created a new free travel market. Simultaneously, the economic situation on the micro level for many households deteriorated. As subventions for transport were cancelled and the governmental welfare function was dramatically decreased, which also included subventions for recreational purposes, financially weak segments of the population (retirees, unemployed, families) could not afford travelling anymore. A significant drop in the number of tourists in 1990 was the consequence. The illustrated developments reveal that the post-socialistic transformation is a substantial determining factor that has to be considered for understanding the current tourism structures in Kyrgyzstan (WILLIAMS & BALAZ 2000).

During the early years after the collapse, numerous travel companies were founded due to the privatisation of state-owned companies as well as due to new company foundations. Compared to industrial facilities, tourism companies were less valuable, making it thus, easier to invest in the sector in times of scarcity of capital. With the privatisation, the state expected to remedy its fiscal deficit and to profit from foreign exchange revenues made by the privatised companies. Furthermore, the privatisation led to the emergence of joint ventures that additionally attracted foreign investors (AIREY & SHACKLEY 1997). Following this, the number of tourists has incrementally increased. After a first drop in visitor numbers after gaining independence, numbers started to increase significantly since the late 1990s until the early 2000s, before the numbers started to increase only sparsely until they almost stagnated in 2011 and the following years (JENISH 2017).

Nevertheless, more than 1.2 million people have visited Kyrgyzstan in 2014 (for leisure purposes), according to a report of the National Statistics Committee of the Kyrgyz Republic (NSC). The report also showed that the tourism sector’s direct contribution to the GDP constantly increased and reached 4.8% in 2014, compared to 14.7% of agriculture and 13.7% provided by the industry sector (NSC 2014).

However, the presented data has to be treated with caution, because the National Statistics Committee does not provide any information on their methods or sources for obtaining and processing the data. The WTTC for instance, estimated that the total contribution (induced, indirect and direct contributions) of the tourism sector to the GDP has only been about 3.5% in 2014. Even though the WTTC also expects the share of the GDP to increase steadily within the next decade, the level is still expected to be comparable to the current state which is supporting the current stagnating trend. The same applies to the tourism sector’s share on the local employment, which was about 1.2% in 2014, being adequate to 28.000 jobs. Estimations for the year 2025 are expected to stay on a similar level (WTTC 2015). The country’s tourism exports illustrated a resembling trend, featuring an initial increase between 1995 and 2008 with a total amount of 374 million US$ in 2008. Due to the global financial crisis and internal political unrest, the export volume decreased in the following years, before the industry could eventually recover in 2013, reaching an export volume of 460 million US$, which accounts for roughly 17% of all exports. Fluctuations in the export volume between 2011 and 2016 can also result from a lack of effective tourism marketing in international markets, as well as from the currency crises in Russia and Kazakhstan, which limited the purchasing power of the most important tourist sending countries for Kyrgyzstan (JENISH 2017).

As reliable statistical data for tourism in Kyrgyzstan and in the study area specifically is lacking, it is not possible to appropriately quantify the tourism industry’s economic importance and relevance on national and provincial levels. Nonetheless, the depicted trends in tourism indicate a general upward trend, even though on a small scale and with slow pace at the moment.

Data provided by the Kyrgyz Border Control Service displays that 3.05 million people travelled to Kyrgyzstan in 2015. According to JENISH (2017), 1.145 million of that came to Kyrgyzstan for business purposes, whereas 641.000 were visiting friends and family and 1.265 million were actually visiting the country for leisure purposes. The most important origin countries for the number of arrivals are the former CIS states, with Kazakhstan leading the way, followed by Russia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and the Ukraine. Turkey, China and India are ranked behind. However, it has to be considered that only Kazakhstan, Russia and Uzbekistan are also relevant for the Kyrgyz tourism market, while most of the people from the other countries are only visiting the country for business purposes or visiting friends and relatives (JENISH 2017).

Whereas tourists from Kazakhstan and Russia are most likely to spend their time in the resorts along the north shore of lake Issyk-Kul, people from Uzbekistan are rather visiting places in south Kyrgyzstan, for instance the walnut forests in Arslanbob, the Sary-Chelek Biosphere Reserve or other cultural sites in the oblast of Osh, but some Uzbeks are also going to lake Issyk-Kul. The most considerable beach zones and resorts at the north shore are located in the area around Cholpon Ata and its close villages, like Bosteri, Korumdy or Kara-Oi (ABAKIROV 2013). Even though the domestic market is even harder to quantify, it still provides a substantial share of the touristic demand that has to be considered within the touristic demand. Approximately 20% of all tourists in Kyrgyzstan are domestic tourists according to a report made by the Kyrgyz Destination Marketing Association (PALMER 2009).

Promoted as the “Switzerland of Central Asia”, Kyrgyzstan also attempts to attract tourists from the western countries. Due to visa restrictions and relatively stable structures in the country, Kyrgyzstan has been able to position itself within the international tourism market, gaining increasing popularity among tourists from western countries, who visit the country in order to experience the mountainous landscape and the local tradition and culture. In comparison to the demand from the CIS countries, the number of tourists coming from these countries is, however, still on a low level. Main tourist sending countries are the USA, Germany, the UK, France, Japan and South Korea. As the given data from the Kyrgyz Border Control Service is only an aggregate of all registered entries to the country, business purposes, visiting friends and family, leisure and other purposes different tourism are simply compounded within this data, making it thus, more vulnerable for data errors and a possible overestimation of the real extent of inbound tourism in Kyrgyzstan (JENISH 2017). Like mentioned before, there are different tourism hotspots in Kyrgyzstan with different forms of tourism that are demanded by different types of tourists from different origin countries. For this reason, the next section shall give an overview about these structures.

4.4. Tourism forms in Kyrgyzstan

As stated above, the northern shore of lake Issyk-Kul serves as an ideal example for resort tourism. This type of mass tourism can be characterised as classical “Sun, Sand and Sea” tourism, featuring a high seasonality with seasonal peaks in July and August. The resort hotels along the north shore account for roughly 90% of all tourism revenues generated in the country and the sandy beaches still keep attracting visitors to the north shore – mainly from Kazakhstan, followed by Russia, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan itself, but for the domestic market, the prices for the resorts are usually too high and can only be afforded by well-off Kyrgyz. Despite the economic importance of the north shore, poor service and product levels have already started to create dissatisfaction among sophisticated tourists from Kazakhstan and Russia. The resorts are privately owned, most notably by persons that can be linked to the former Soviet government body. This applies for instance to the three biggest resorts along the north shore, as they are all owned and managed by companies located in Kazakhstan. (PALMER 2009).

In contrast to this “Soviet era domestic tourism” that is still strongly influencing today’s tourism structures in this region, the south shore of lake Issyk-Kul reveals a different pattern. Medium and small- scale tourism businesses are dominating the more sparsely populated and comparably less developed south shore, promoting ecotourism, adventure tourism, community-based tourism or culture tourism. Popular Activities are trekking, horse-riding, rafting, climbing and even skiing in the winter season. Karakol and its surrounding is a very popular place for trekking and camping as the area features magnificent mountains, glaciers and mountain lakes (PALMER 2009).

Despite many tour operators that are located in Bishkek, there are also several tour companies in Karakol which offer local guides, porters or trekking equipment. Even if skiing is still carried out on a small scale, there is a ski resort in the valley of the Karakol National Park, though the ski base only comprises three T-bars. Equipment is also rent out by companies in Karakol with relative good quality (ABAKIROV 2013). JENISH (2017) stated that there are numerous tourism services facilitated in various ways by several tourism companies. These different tourism forms can be broadly categorised into three types: the beach tourism at lake Issyk-Kul, soft adventure tourism, including ecotourism as well as cultural tourism activities, and hard tourism that is basically comprised of extreme sports such as mountaineering and alpine climbing (JENISH 2017).

Even though the domestic tourism sector is hard to quantify, it accounts for a large proportion of the tourism activities in summer and jailoo tourism is also gaining increasing popularity among international tourists. As stated above, jailoo refers to the summer pastures and traditional nomadic lifestyles that are practiced in the mountains. A touristic offer might include an overnight stay in a yurt, the consumption of traditional products like fermented mare-milk (“Kymyz”) and a horse-ride or hiking trip through the mountains. Community-Based tourism is one possibility to promote this type of tourism. Helvetas, the inauguration of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), launched their Community Business Support Project in 1995 in Kyrgyzstan with the goal of supporting women in rural areas to expand their existing businesses and start new ones. Due to resource limitations the project has been limited to the tourism sector only. Fostering cooperation and collaboration between rural entrepreneurial women and tour operators was seen as a key to success. However, the development of such partnerships has been hampered, because many tour operators were concerned about product and service levels and were thus, not willing to collaborate. This led to the creation of a new tour operator in the form of a Swiss-Kyrgyz joint venture in 1999 – Novinomad. This company received technical assistance from Helvetas and was specifically developed to work with the local population and to promote local community-based tourism products to the international markets. In 2000, Helvetas started their Community Tourism Support Project in Kyrgyzstan, where several CBT groups all across the country has been established, targeting to improve the living standards of CBT members by providing a reasonable source of income and to support environmental conservation as well as the preservation of Kyrgyz culture and traditions. The CBT groups encompass several local service providers, that offer accommodation, guidance, cuisine, souvenirs, transportation or other touristic attractions and in 67

collaboration with tour operators, their services and products are promoted mutually among international tourists. In order to ensure appropriate service quality, Helvetas technically assisted the project by providing specific trainings. After the completion of the trainings in 2003, the CBT groups founded the Kyrgyz Community Based Tourism Association (KCBTA) as an umbrella organisation that focussed on developing partnerships with tour operators to further promote the CBT groups (PALMER 2006).

The association’s overall goal is to harness the natural, cultural and recreational resources in remote mountain areas with the help of sustainable tourism and ecotourism in order to improve the living conditions for the local population (BOZ 2008).

While some tour operators develop partnerships with the CBT groups and their service providers, others perceive the CBT project as a competitor in the tourism market and they are convinced that they have more expertise and knowledge than the rural communities from the CBT groups which is why they are promoting own alternative rural tourism products and services, that are usually labelled as ecotourism. This also indicates that the external assistance that is provided by organisations like Helvetas might have a negative impact on internal competition structures within the sector. In spite of such competitive behaviour, private tour operators are also attempting to strengthen partnerships and collaborations among themselves, like is exemplarily shown by the establishment of the Kyrgyz Association of Tour Operators (KATO). Furthermore, an appropriate support from the government for private tour operators and local tourism businesses is essential in order to further develop this tourism segment in Kyrgyzstan. Despite this fact, especially in earlier times, the government consequently attempted to influence and regulate the tourism sector, for instance via licensing, which rather hampered further tourism development instead of supporting it. As the businesses are following up with the capitalistic system, the market should regulate itself instead of being regulated by the state in their opinion and as the government is also known for its corruptive structures, state influence is rather perceived as hampering and anti-competitive. Anyways, the government provided some legislative framework, for instance with the law on tourism, the “Comprehensive Development Framework of Kyrgyzstan until 2010” (CDF) or the National Strategy for Sustainable Development that prioritised tourism as one economic sector with a considerable growth potential. The priorities within the tourism sector itself are mainly aligning to recreational tourism at lake Issyk-Kul, adventure tourism that is comprised of mountaineering, trekking, horse-riding etc., Silk Road tourism and business tourism, leaving out forms like eco-, jailoo or community-based tourism. Even though this framework and its priorities might implicit the government’s interest in developing tourism, the reality draws a different picture, as constant financial pressures in combination with multiple institutional and personnel changes within the State Agency of Tourism strongly limit the government’s support. Additionally, it should be added that the law on tourism is outdated and the regulatory frameworks are relatively vague which leads, in combination with inconvenient licensing processes, to the prevention of domestic and foreign investments and thus, further complicates and hampers tourism development in the country (PALMER 2006).

4.5. Role of external assistance

As already insinuated above, Kyrgyzstan has received much external assistance from various international donors since its independence, as projects and initiatives are less complicated to implement, because the country is assumed to be more democratic than its Central Asian neighbours. International development agencies and NGOs initiated numerous projects that cover a wide spectrum of topics and activities. Besides Helvetas and their CBT project, other organisations like the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), German Development Agency (GIZ, formerly GTZ), Technical Assistance of the Commonwealth of Independent States (TACIS), Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the World Bank, United Nations or the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) initiated several projects in Kyrgyzstan. Most of the new tourism projects in the country are supported and facilitated by international development organisations and their funding agendas, which had also led to a shift towards more sustainable forms of tourism that have been fostered. The dependency of the Kyrgyz government on external assistance is clearly observable in the country’s tourism sector, even though the tangible relations between the government and the international development actors as well as the power structures are not evidently defined.

However, it can be stated that the government is obviously seeking for external assistance. Many projects that promote regional development in rural areas by facilitating the touristic potential are linked to sustainability or nature conservation aspects as well and thus, taking ecotourism principles and activities into account. At this point, it should be alluded to the fact that neither the term nor the concept of ecotourism does actually exist in the Kyrgyz language, implying conceptual discrepancies between the local communities and western development practitioners. Additionally, the concept of CBT also becomes questionable when it is applied to communities that are so heterogenous and multi-ethnic like in Kyrgyzstan. Furthermore, it has to be considered that most of the projects that target any kind of facilitation of local culture, are principally referring to the ethnic Kyrgyz culture and are thus, excluding many other ethnicities and associated cultural traditions within the communities. This draws attention to the circumstance that western models, theories and concepts cannot always be simply imposed in every setting and regional peculiarities have to be borne in mind when implementing such projects (PALMER 2006).

4.6. Nature Conservation in the Study Area

Besides the tourism sector’s potential to contribute to nature conservation, Kyrgyzstan and the USSR specifically have a considerable history in conservation practices. After the independence, Kyrgyzstan largely adopted the former protected area network system of the Soviet Union. There are six conservation categories ranging from natural areas for health and recreation, zoological and botanical parks, monuments of nature, zakazniki (hunting reserves), normal national parks and zapovedniki, which were the essential conservation efforts as they were the strictest conservation units, where almost 69

every anthropogenic activity was prohibited. Even though the system had the reputation to be one of the best nature conservation systems and has been successfully implemented, agricultural activities in the surrounding as well as deforestation negatively impacted the zapovedniki. On the other hand, national parks should combine preservation principles with economic interests by facilitating tourism activities. In contrast to that, the hunting reserves (zakazniki) only serve the purpose to protect specific species. As Kyrgyzstan engaged in the UNESCO’s Man and Biosphere Programme, the conservation network got extended by two biosphere reserves. Furthermore, it became a member of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1996. In 1998, the Global Environment Facility funded and supported the country for the preparation of its “Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan”. While the other conservation categories (monuments of nature, botanical park etc.) can be neglected with regard to their contribution to nature conservation, the entire protected area system covers about 4% of the country’s area, including several zakazniki, a few national parks, two biosphere reserves and six zapovedniki (TER-GHAZARYAN & HEINEN 2006).

Sary-Chelek has been the first biosphere reserve that has been designated in Kyrgyzstan in 1978, whereas the bigger Issyk-Kul Biosphere Reserve (IKBR) has been designated in 2001 and encompasses the entire territory of the Issyk-Kul oblast (see map below).

Figure 13: Issyk-Kul Biosphere Reserve. BAETOV 2005.

Before this designation, there has also been the Issyk-Kul Nature Reserve with its protected parcels being adopted as core zones within the new biosphere reserve. The Sarytash-Ertash zapovednik has been incorporated as another core zone. Although Issyk-Kul features considerable agricultural activities, the Oblast has been mostly spared from the large-scale agricultural practices of the USSR and its negative impacts which is why nature conservation can still be effectively performed within the area. The GTZ offered vital assistance for the management of the IKBR and initiated several projects related to sustainable development and ecotourism. 70

Despite these sustainable tourism development approaches, the conventional mass tourism along the north shore poses a risk to the IKBR and the implementation of proper guidelines is threatened due to the domination of economic interests in the tourism sector. In addition to that, the Sarytash-Ertash zapovedniki faces another jeopardy – the Kumtor gold mine. In 1998, a truck accident caused a toxic spill of almost two tons of cyanide in the Barskoon river, that is also running into lake Issyk-Kul. Following that, these mining activities are highly conflicting with the conservation objectives of the zapovedniki and superior the IKBR itself. Like with tourism, environmental protection experienced various administrative changes within the government and in combination with economic constraints that arose during the transformational processes after the collapse of the USSR, this led to a constant lack of funding for nature conservation as the funding has been dependent on the state budget. The illustrated issues elucidate the problems for nature conservation in Kyrgyzstan, but also the potential for further conservation efforts with the help of international donors who mainly promote an integrative approach for their projects, seeking to combine conservation and regional development (TER- GHAZARYAN & HEINEN 2006).

4.7. Summarising key aspects

The previous chapter described the current tourism situation in the study area and in Kyrgyzstan specifically. To understand these current structures, it is essential to consider the heritage of the Soviet era. This becomes particularly apparent when taking a look at the lake Issyk-Kul and its two tourism development directions. While the north shore is still adhering to the Soviet tourism structures with all its associated infrastructures, touristic offers and guest structure, the south shore is promoting alternative tourism forms with its niche markets in order to attract international tourists especially from the western countries. Therefore, nature-based activities are offered in combination with cultural activities that refer to the nomadic lifestyle of the ethnic Kyrgyz. Admittedly, this commercialisation of the Kyrgyz culture did not only bring positive effects as financial incentives already started to conflict with the traditional hospitality of the Kyrgyz people. The external assistance with its diverse tourism projects is truly contributing to the tourism development in the fields of sustainable, eco- and community-based tourism, even though specific implementation barriers have to be overridden and individual settings need to be considered. Additively, the private sector is partly perceiving this influence to be anti-competitive.

Nonetheless, without the work of the NGOs and international development agencies, the sector would most likely not be able to articulate an appropriate countermovement towards the conventional tourism practices at the north shore of lake Issyk-Kul. Moreover, as the initiatives are usually oriented towards the sustainable development principles, many projects also try to connect their rural development objectives with nature conservation measures and it can be stated that ecotourism has originally been introduced to the country by the western development agencies, driven by their funding agendas. Though Kyrgyzstan features an extensive protected area network, lack of financial, technical and administrative

capacity prevents an effective environmental protection. The tourism sector is also affected by these capacity lacks from the government side and the insufficient government support combined with hindering regulation attempts is hampering further development in the sector. Consequently, the tourism development in Kyrgyzstan is driven by the private sector, external assistance organisations and the government and all of these stakeholders might have diverging motives and pursue diverging objectives based on diverging interests. At this juncture, concepts like ecotourism or CBT can be applied to contribute to environmental protection, rural development and sustainable development in general that can eventually benefit all three stakeholder groups.

Nevertheless, as the actual contribution to nature conservation and community development of these concepts have already been critically scrutinised in the academic literature, the following results derived from the field work will try to conduce to a further understanding of the impacts and potentials of these specific tourism forms for conservation and development, though the Soviet heritage places this case study in a unique setting that has not been subject of much academic research yet. All in all, the previous chapters provided the basis for the results section. All relevant theoretical concepts have been introduced and delimitated from one another in the best way possible.

The methods that have been utilised in the field have been precisely described along with their theoretical background and limitations. Finally, the setting in which the field work was conducted and embedded has been illustrated to clarify the specific tourism structures and conservation efforts in Kyrgyzstan and in the study area specifically. Following up on this, the next chapter will provide an insight into the own findings that were made during the field work for this thesis.

5. Results

Before presenting the processed results derived from the interviews, it is important to address issues that are related to the selection of experts and their associated background and expertise for the research topic. Some of the interviewees featured a lack of tourism-specific knowledge (especially in terms of conceptual issues) that is going to be described more in detail in the sections below. Most of the interviewees occupied relatively high positions within their organisations, associations, tour companies or government institutions, for instance as project coordinators or executive directors, meaning that their range of tasks was rather restricted to management, organisational or other business activities than to tourism activities specifically. Furthermore, the selected experts covered a broad range of experience in the tourism sector, ranging from numerous years of experience since the independence, like some private tour operators, to just a few years of experience like in some associations or international organisations. However, the positions the interviewees are in charge of demonstrate the importance of their role within the Kyrgyz tourism sector and within the study area’s tourism sector in particular. Another aspect that became apparent during the analysis of the interviews was that the interviewees seemed to have difficulties in focussing on ecotourism and CBT activities only when they were asked about impacts, further improvements or future perspectives for these tourism forms in Kyrgyzstan, making it thus, sometimes complicated to assign their answer to either ecotourism and CBT activities or to tourism activities in general. This circumstance may also have contributed to the perception that a certain depth could not be reached in some interviews, not even by repeated inquiries for ecotourism- and CBT-related issues. The depicted issues combined with the limitations in the field that have been described in chapter 3.8. have to be considered in order to respectively align the following results.

According to the qualitative content analysis that has been applied for the analysis of the obtained data, a category system was designed on the basis of the interview guide and theoretical preliminary considerations. This category system has been adopted for the following results chapter, which means that the findings are going to be presented in various thematic blocks, reflecting the different categories that have been conceived for the preceding analysis. In order to preserve the anonymity of the interviewees, they have been encoded according to the four categories that have been presented in chapter 3.4. (see table below).

ENCODED CATEGORIES GO Government PS Private Sector EX External Assistance Organisations TA Tourism-Supportive Associations Table 7: Encoded categories for the interview partners.

5.1. Tourism Development in Kyrgyzstan

After gaining independence, tourism activities in Kyrgyzstan were very limited and only a few people started to engage in tourism. In the beginning the country rather functioned as a transit point between China and Uzbekistan for Silk Road tours and some tourism activities along the north shore of lake Issyk-Kul remained as Soviet residues. All interviewees stated that tourism activities during the first decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union remained on a low level, reflecting economic struggles the country had to face in the initial stage of the transition process. By that time, there was a lack of experience and knowledge, hampering tourism development as it is indicated by the following quote of PS2: “nobody knew what tourism meant nor how to do a business”.

With the beginning of the new millennia, tourism started to grow and especially nature-based tourism activities like trekking in the mountains gained increasing popularity by that time. However, the international market stayed on a relatively low level. Many interviewees see a lack of international promotion as a reason for that. The increase in tourism is only vividly reflected by the increase of travel companies. According to PS3, there were only two officially registered tour companies located in Bishkek in 1999. Nowadays, there are more than 250. The introduction of the visa free regime for several countries is seen as an additional boost for increasing tourist numbers since the last two or three years by all interviewees. Most respondents claimed that tourism in Kyrgyzstan did only develop because of the efforts made by the private sector and the support provided by international development agencies and NGOs. Since the last 5 or 10 years the situation in rural areas significantly improved in terms of sanitation and electricity and this is a merit of the tourism development in these places. In the study area, winter tourism is also being developed and in 2006, a skiing base was opened close to Karakol. However, trekking tourism is still the most popular and profitable tourism form within the study area, according to most of the experts. The Destination project of USAID that is embedded within the BGI project, led to new tourism products that were developed for Karakol and its surroundings and thus, the average duration of stay in Karakol extended from one night to two or three nights and the city is no longer perceived solely as a transition place for the trekking tours (interview with TA3). All respondents stated that Kyrgyzstan features a stunning mountainous landscape and a unique nomadic culture that provide a huge potential for tourism development.

What hampered tourism development in Kyrgyzstan?

Despite these favouring factors, there were also limiting conditions for tourism development in the country. Most interviewees mentioned a lack of government support on all levels as most hampering factor. Corruptive structures within government institutions and among the police is posing another limitation. Other hampering factors that were repetitively mentioned by the interviewed experts, were a lack of infrastructure and poor infrastructure quality like bad road conditions which limits tourism capacities, a lack of knowledge and expertise for strategically planning and implementing tourism 74

development, the economic crisis after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a lack of tourism promotion, bureaucratic burdens like the laborious license system for tourism enterprises in the beginning, the political events in 2005 and 2010 that led to a sharp decline of visitor numbers for the country, as well as a lack of proper standards for service quality in tourism and a proper implementation and monitoring of tourism-related laws like the meanwhile outdated law on tourism. Last but not least, numerous interviewees alluded to the fact that Kyrgyzstan has no direct flights to Europe or Asia and that all Kyrgyz airlines are on the blacklist of many western countries.

What supported tourism development in Kyrgyzstan?

Except for the nomadic culture and the marvellous landscape, there were also other impacts and conditions supporting further tourism development in Kyrgyzstan. Despite the nomadic culture, Kyrgyzstan is also situated along the former Silk Road, which further amplifies the country’s potential for cultural tourism. In terms of promotion, positive reviews of tourists and bloggers, promotion in travel magazines and on the internet in general as well as the World Nomad Games in 2014 enormously contributed to the promotion of Kyrgyzstan within the international tourism market. Additionally, international organisations played a major role in changing the mindset of local people and introducing expertise and specialised knowledge in rural areas so that local people learnt how to do a business, how to do service and how to develop tour products. Furthermore, Russia supported the country a lot in order to keep stable conditions for own geopolitical interests. Like mentioned above, the visa free regime is perceived as the most supportive government action by most of the interviewees. Road improvements like done along the north shore of lake Issyk-Kul were also mentioned by some respondents as well as the increasing number of flights to Kyrgyzstan from Moscow and Istanbul.

The Soviet Heritage

Like already explained in chapter four, the tourism structures that have been developed during the Soviet era, do still dominate the tourism sector in Kyrgyzstan today. It is mainly people from Kazakhstan and Russia who visit the north shore of lake Issyk-Kul for recreational purposes in the resorts and sanatoria and it is still the biggest portion of the tourism market in the country.

The interviews revealed that the time after the collapse was very hard due to the forced transition into the market economy and tourism has been in a very bad condition. As the government is also dominated by former Soviet organisation structures, their focus remains on tourism along the north shore, also because most profits are generated there. But as the level of service and infrastructure is not always satisfying, the destinations competitiveness with other typical resort destinations like Turkey or Egypt is highly questionable (interview with TA2).

Thus, all interviewees from the private sector and from external assistance organisations did not see any future for this type of tourism and it were only representatives from the government who had faith in the mass tourism along the north shore of lake Issyk-Kul.

Structure of the tourism sector

Like already stated above, the mass beach tourism along the north shore of lake Issyk-Kul is responsible for most of the tourist numbers and tourist revenues. But as this thesis focusses on ecotourism and CBT activities, the following section will focus on the alternative tourism market. The following statements have been derived from several interviews with experts from the study area. Most of the tourists who seek for ecotourism are from western countries and they mainly go to the surrounding mountains of lake Issyk-Kul and to lake Son-Kul in the Naryn Oblast. One of the most popular tourism products is the Silk Road tour, that is mostly booked by elderly people who are primarily interested in cultural aspects. Silk Road tourism can be valuable for CBT because accommodation along the tour can be provided by CBT stakeholders. In terms of central Asian competition, Silk Road tourism is bigger and more popular in Uzbekistan, as the country features numerous ancient Silk Road sites. However, touristic tours in Kyrgyzstan can encompass a broad spectrum of activities and are thus, more flexible as a tour can include cultural activities as well as mountain or recreational activities. According to the statements of several tour operators, many tourists book tour packages and are usually 40+ ages, while there are also a lot of individual tourists in the form of backpackers. Their proportion is seen as equal. A typical tour package has a duration between 10 and 12 days, starting with visiting lake Issyk-Kul from the north, then stopping in Karakol to visit valleys like Altyn Arashan, Karakol valley or Jeti Oguz, before heading further along the south shore to the Naryn Oblast, visiting Kochkor and doing a guided trekking, horse- riding or jeep trip to lake Son-Kul, where people usually stay overnight in a yurt and experience the nomadic lifestyle. For trekking tourism, July until the end of October is the best time, because June can still be quite rainy in many areas across the country. The summer season still marks the most important time for business, but winter tourism is also getting more and more developed, even though it is mainly people from Bishkek, Russia or Kazakhstan who come to Karakol for skiing in winter (January – March). All interviewees stated that trekking is the most popular activity within the study area. Despite trekking tours, accommodation services are the second most profitable tourism activities. According to TA4, it is difficult to say, what is more valuable for his company. The level of infrastructure in many rural areas and mountain communities specifically, are currently not suited for receiving other guests than backpackers as they do not demand high quality and infrastructure standards like other guest segments. This circumstance also limits the revenues as backpackers and cyclers just require basic services that cannot be expensive. All small-scale tourism forms like ecotourism, adventure tourism or trekking tourism are comparably new to the country and getting popular year by year. The guest segmentation for winter tourism and resort tourism has already been explained above.

Small-scale tourism products are obtained by tourists from Europe (France in the first place, followed by German, Switzerland, Austria, Dutch, Polish and Czech), Canada, USA, Australia, Israel and even South-East Asia as a newly emerging market (interview with TA3, TA5, PS2, PS5). Tourists from Asia are usually not travelling as individual tourists like the rest, but in organised groups with up to 30 people by bus. According to statements provided by PS1, the different guest segments also have diverging standards and expectations of service levels. While guests from Europe usually only require a convenient bed, breakfast, shower and toilet, domestic tourists from Bishkek or tourists from other CIS states want to experience recreation in their rooms, so they need a nice television, comfortable shower etc. Guests from Asia are pickier in terms of food and also more comfortable in their way of travelling than European trekking tourists. Anyways, most of the tourists who come to Karakol are Europeans and according to PS5, every fourth tourist is French-speaking. In comparison to the mass beach tourism, the small-scale tourism market has still a relatively small share of the tourism sector in Kyrgyzstan with only “63.000 tourists from the visa free countries arriving in 2016” (quote: TA1). Issyk-Kul is without question the most important tourism hotspot in the country. The interviewees reported that other important locations for CBT, trekking, cultural and ecotourism are Osh in southern Kyrgyzstan (mostly cultural tourism), Sary Chelek and Arslanbob (CBT and ecotourism) and Kochkor and lake Son-Kul (CBT, ecotourism and jailoo tourism). According to GO1, besides Issyk-Kul - Naryn, Jalalabad, Batken and Talas Oblasts are also prioritised by the government for tourism development. Within the study area, there are mainly valleys and landscapes with exceptional beauty and in pristine conditions within the scope of tourism due to the dominance of trekking tourism. Valleys like Altyn Arashan, Karakol valley (which is also the area of the Karakol National Park) or Jeti Oguz are the most popular natural sites in the study area and the trekking route to lake Ala-Kol offers various opportunities to connect these valleys within a multi-day hike. Due to the support of USAID, Jyrgalan did also become a popular location for mountain tourism.

5.2. Intersectoral Synergies

The interviews revealed that some of the experts had problems with finding intersectoral synergies proceeding from tourism. Most respondents mentioned aspects related to tourism’s multiplier effect. Consequently, the accommodation, transportation and food sectors are highly benefitting from tourism activities, even though the accommodation sector can also be counted as a sub category of the tourism sector. The food sector is strongly connected with agriculture and all accommodation providers who were interviewed stated that they try to use as many local products as possible for their tourism services. With regard to the multiplier effect, tourism naturally contributes to creating jobs in the addressed sectors. Many experts particularly highlighted the job opportunities for the young generation that are provided by tourism which is also counteracting the migration into cities.

According to statements made by the local group coordinator of the CBT group in Bakonbaevo, CBT is also perceived as an instrument for poverty reduction and the CBT group is trying to utilise this tool respectively.

Especially within the segment of ecotourism, CBT and other alternative tourism forms, tourists are typically seeking for untouched and rather underdeveloped places where local communities face problems with poverty, so tourism activities in these areas are also supporting poverty mitigation. According to the head of the DMO Jyrgalan, “tourism does not only bring money for the rich people, but also for ordinary people. For example, lake Son-Kul is very popular and provides jobs for taxi drivers, shepherds, horse owners and family home stays. So, it creates good jobs for the people.”

However, most interviewees are convinced that the government is not realising tourism’s potential for job creation, poverty reduction and as a business incubator that benefits several other sectors as well. Instead, the government is mainly focussing on areas like the north shore of lake Issyk-Kul, because most of the income is generated there and they can observe the direct economic effects. On the other hand, there were some respondents who reported that the government, at least on the regional level, also starts to recognise the indirect benefits that arise from tourism activities and that tourism in Karakol for instance lasts way longer (up to 10 months) than tourism in places like Cholpon-Ata where the main season only lasts between two to three months. As a consequence, the government slowly tries to enter into a dialogue with the private sector (interview with DMO Jyrgalan). But except for some meetings with the private sector, the government did not engage very actively in the tourism development.

5.3. Role of the Government

Almost all interviewees from the private sector and the external assistance organisations conformably stated that the government is not doing so much for the tourism development in the country. Furthermore, several experts from the private sector reported on various problems that emerged for their tourism businesses due to government activities. As already mentioned before, the introduction of a visa free regime for several countries is acknowledged as one of the most supportive moves from the government by the interviewees. Some respondents stated that the government is also supporting tourism promotion and thus, partially funding private tour operators at international tourism fairs. The World Nomad Games were also mentioned as one of the most supportive government actions by several respondents. The Ayil Okmotu is the municipal administration and represents the government on the local level. Thus, the support for tourism highly depends on the respective Ayil Okmotu. PS7 was very satisfied with the Ayil Okmotu in Bakonbaevo, saying that “the Ayil Okmotu is helping us fruitfully.” On the national level the deputy minister from the ministry of culture, information and tourism of the Kyrgyz Republic is responsible for the national tourism development. Some respondents praised the work of the deputy minister, even though they also addressed the limitations of the ministry due to a low budget and limited human resources. 78

EX1 also noted that the ministry’s “staff is not well paid and well experienced, which is why well- educated people are not going for that job.” According to GO1, the government’s role “is regulation and keeping the balance in the market system.

The license system has been removed along with other bureaucratic burdens and infrastructure has been improved as can be seen with the improvement of the road along the north shore of lake Issyk-Kul or the construction of the Hippodrome in Cholpon-Ata for the World Nomad Games. We are also developing a national strategy for tourism development until 2020.” Even though this statement illustrates some of the efforts made by the government, it also corresponds with statements from the private sector, stating that the government is doing something, but could do much more and that there is a lot of talking and prioritising in strategic documents, but no real actions in reality. The statements of the interviewees also indicate that the support is growing as tourism is climbing up the ladder on the national political agendas. Road improvements and a stable electricity network have also been acknowledged as supportive government activities by some respondents (quote TA5: “10 years ago, the electricity network was a disaster, at any moment it could happen that there was no electricity.” However, most of the interviewees see a lack of capacities on the government side, especially with regard to the tourism department which is preventing any valuable support for tourism development.

Most respondents mentioned unstable political conditions as important hampering factors with reference to the political events in 2005 and 2010. Additionally, a lack of strategic planning processes and appropriate policies for tourism development was mentioned by some interviewees as well. Furthermore, there are no government instruments or mechanisms that support tourism development on the regional or local level. Visa restrictions and effortful border crossings further hamper tourism development. The taxation system is insufficient and corrupted and if every tourism business would follow the law and pay taxes accordingly, they would not make any revenues at all, which is why they fraud the system to make money and thus, further fuel corruption. As a consequence, the government cannot grasp the real extent of the tourism activities and their importance for the local and national economy. The tax payments in the tourism sector are based on a patent system, where a fixed price needs to be paid for every bed per month, regardless whether there are tourists or not, so the people usually report less beds than they have and in case of inspections the inspectors can be easily bribed (interview with PS1). The already addressed lack of government capacities does also become apparent on the Oblast level. There are only two people working in the Oblast’s tourism department – one responsible for foreign investments and the other one is in charge of the whole tourism development in the Oblast (interview with TA3). Furthermore, the government prioritises the tourism development along the north shore of lake Issyk-Kul rather than supporting small-scale tourism activities along the south shore. Another example where the government hampered tourism development was the tourist registration that has been introduced two years ago and became abolished due to pressure from the private sector the same year. Tourists were expected to register at an institution that was not even capable of speaking English properly and if the tourists did not register, they were vigorously fined at their departure. 79

A comparable example is the designation of the Khan Tengri National Park and the introduction of entrance fees for the park, that were comparably high for the normal trekking tourists who did not intend to do high altitude mountaineering in the area.

It was also the merit of the private sector that the issue got solved. Anyways, these two examples do also insinuate that the government is also considering the private sector and reacting on its impulses. EX1 also alluded to the lack of government capacities and its impact on the local level by stating that “local communities are left by themselves, so they use the natural resources they have as good as they can, without considering conservation aspects.”

Legislative changes also hamper the government’s efforts in supporting the tourism sector as well as the cooperation and collaboration with international organisations and the private sector. According to TA1, the position of the tourism department has already changed about 12 to 13 times and the director of the department even 17 to 18 times since the independence. As the tourism department is currently administratively assigned to the ministry of culture, the capacities are limited because the ministry does not have so much influence in comparison to other ministries. Organisations like USAID are working more intensively with the middle management as it is more sustainable than the top management, even though they also have to work with the top management to show good will in order to push things forward (interview with EX3). Many interviewees, especially from the private sector, see a clear disadvantage in the assignment of all Kyrgyz airlines to the black list of all tourist-sending countries.

What should the government do in the future to support tourism development in Kyrgyzstan?

EX1 spoke a lot with private businessmen and drew the conclusion that one of the main government tasks should be to create an enabling environment by:

• Improving rules and laws

• Improving regulations (reducing bureaucratic burdens)

• Improving infrastructures

• Improving services (like security or rescue services)

• Establish agreements and partnerships with the private sector

With focus on the tourism sector, other respondents assessed the government’s main role to support international promotion. As an example, Mongolia – Kyrgyzstan’s biggest competitor in terms of nomadic culture tourism – spends 50 million US$ only for promotion and is benefitting from that with an increasing tourism volume (interview with TA3). According to the surveyed experts, the government should also educate and inform the local population via mass media channels in order to change their mindset and raise awareness for the environment and also for a tourism culture, as the people have to be ready to welcome an increasing number of tourists. 80

Other respondents also demanded an appropriate strategy for an organised tourism development that should be provided by the government. Furthermore, border crossings should be eased to simplify travelling through whole Central Asia. Many interviewees also desired an open sky policy with direct flights to the potential markets in Europe and Asia being established. Tax deregulations or an improvement of the current tax system were also mentioned.

A quote of PS1 describes current problems with the taxes: “starting a business is very hard when you are not popular and you have to start and still pay so much for taxes, so it is not easy to enter the tourism market.” EX2 also talked about a “VAT tax, which is paid by tour operators (12%) and which makes the prices higher than in other Central Asian countries like UZB where they don’t have such tax.” Consequently, tax deregulations contribute to the country’s competitiveness and facilitates the emergence of small-scale tourism businesses. Following up with this, interest rates for loans are perceived to be very high, which is why it is not worth taking loans, except for micro loans that are normally not sufficient enough for independently starting a tourism business. In order to enhance the government’s ability in contributing to tourism development, corruption needs to be fought and well- experienced and well-educated people need to be hired for the respective positions within the government institutions. Summing up, most interviewees see the promotion of the country (including establishment of open sky policy) and infrastructure improvements as the government’s main role.

5.4. Role of External Assistance

Kyrgyzstan and many of its companies receive financial and technical assistance from various international donors. Some of these companies, like Novinomad, the CBT network or Turkestan Yurt Camp managed to operate independently and financially sustainable after the funding stopped. A lot of assistance is also directed to the promotion of tourism (for example the invitation of bloggers is funded by USAID’s destination project). Tourism is seen as a potential source of income, especially in rural areas, which is why it is integrated in most of the organisation’s agendas. Despite the financial support the organisations also provide specialised knowledge, expertise and experience. Some agencies and organisations did very likely choose Kyrgyzstan due to its geostrategic location between China and Russia. Furthermore, the country is more favourable for international assistance than other Central Asian countries, because its parliamentary democracy created relatively safe and stable conditions. The first Kyrgyz president Akaev ruled the country with other governance approaches than the authoritarian leaders in the surrounding countries, which made it thus, more convenient for international organisations to implement their projects. As Kyrgyzstan is still classified as low-income country it receives more external assistance than Kazakhstan for example, which is classified as middle-income country (interview with EX3).

Positive influence of external assistance

All interviewees acknowledged the importance of international organisations and their work for the development of the country. Especially in the beginning after gaining independence, the people lacked experience in the market economy as everything was state-owned and money was provided by the Soviet state. Due to the expertise and experience that is provided by external assistance organisations, the Kyrgyz people get taught the way of developing tourism.

As there is a lack of government support, the role of external assistance organisations becomes even more vital (interview with TA5). TA1 features a great experience in the tourism sector and summed up the impact of international organisations by stating that “many projects have been implemented in Kyrgyzstan, some of them even with huge budget, some have been successful, and some have not.” In addition to that, many interviewees see Helvetas’ CBT project as the most successful best practice project in the country. Despite this example, there is also the “Business Growth Initiative” project of USAID that has a huge budget and is also partially fostering tourism development. The GIZ assists rural areas in developing agrotourism within their “Sustainable Economic Development” project and the Japanese development agency JICA also supports tourism development with its “One Villa One Product” project. JICA also implemented a lot of projects in the Issyk-Kul Oblast in earlier times.

Which inputs have been most beneficial?

Most of the respondents claimed that both, technical and financial inputs are important, even though many interviewees thought technical assistance to be more vital than financial assistance. “Show us how Austria or Switzerland are developing winter tourism”, stated GO1, highlighting the importance of concepts, knowledge and experience that is provided by international organisations. Teaching local people how to work in the tourism sphere is essential for successful tourism development. This includes how to manage a business, how to receive guests, how to guide, how to develop and implement tour products and how to market and promote tourism. EX1 delineated this circumstance: “You cannot pay for changing people’s mentality you have to teach them.” Another quote from EX2 and TA2 further summarises this attitude: “We have Russian saying: you should give a man a fishing rod, instead of giving him the fish.”

Financial support is, however, still essential and organisations fund infrastructure improvements (e.g. the World Bank who is currently considering supporting the reconstruction of the Karakol airport), culture festivals, the acquirement of equipment (like in Jyrgalan, where USAID provided horse saddles, skis and bikes) or other projects like the Riverpark project in Karakol that has been supported by USAID as well. The interviewees concluded that a lot of projects, where only financial support has been provided, had rather disappointing outcomes.

Critical aspects and challenges related to external assistance

Most interviewees were only positive about the external assistance and did not see any negative impacts or critical aspects. Nonetheless, some of the surveyed experts addressed the sustainability of projects, claiming that sometimes there is nothing valuable left after projects have ended. One example can be found in the destination project of USAID.

Several destination management organisations (DMO) have been established all over the country, member fees are not sufficient enough to cover all expenses of the DMOs, which is why they started to develop own tour products to sustain their organisations after the project funding ends. However, the DMO is rather becoming another competitor in the regional tourism market, instead of being responsible for the promotion and the management of the respective region. TA2 suggested to tackle this issue by applying a gradual scheme for projects where much support is offered in the initial stage, followed by gradually decreases until the projects work independently in the end. Some representatives from the private sector noted that the local people who might be affected by the project, do not get informed about the project implementation. Additionally, they criticised that the selection of project partners is sometimes only based on sympathy and connections which is why eventually only a selected group of people benefits from the project.

From the perspective of the external assistance organisations, there are also some challenges for a successful project implementation. The main aspect that has been mentioned by various representatives of international organisations, is that the mentality of the people needs to be changed and that this process can be very effortful and complicated, especially when the projects do not offer financial support for the people, but only trainings or seminars. According to an employee of EX3 “sometimes local people make commitments and approve everything and then it turns out that they haven’t done anything and that they didn’t implement suggestions and ideas.” Another issue is that the government is sometimes requesting something that is not adequate for achieving the desired objective. One example for that can be found in USAID’s Crisis Project: the government requested machines for the local population that should enhance the agricultural production, but always when the machine has been plugged in, the whole electricity in the community went off, because the electricity network had not enough capacities. In the end, the machine could not be used for anything. There are also some problems with the staff of the international organisations, as they usually hire experts for project management, but they are sometimes lacking tourism-specific knowledge. Last but not least, project processes can get prolonged when the organisations work together with the government, because the government and the organisations do have their own procedures. By the time, decisions are finally made, changing circumstances might already have made the decision irrelevant.

5.5. Cooperation and Partnerships

Cooperation and partnerships within the tourism sector are important aspects that need to be additionally considered for understanding the dynamics within the sector. The destination management organisations are a good example for local networking as they try to connect all members and bring them together to consolidate a network with all partners of the DMO. The external assistance organisations are also opened for collaboration with other organisations, but as all organisations implement projects according to their own agendas and only a few projects deal with tourism development, collaboration does not emerge so often, even though the international organisations do have coordinating bodies in each sector and once a quarter they meet to speak about their activities and to look for collaboration possibilities (interview with EX3). As already explained in the government role section, local communities are often left by themselves by the government and the government’s will to collaborate highly depends on the respective Ayil Okmotu.

Furthermore, there are also interesting dynamics within the private sector, especially in areas where a CBT group has been established within the frame of Helvetas’ CBT project. Many tour operators used to be members of the CBT groups before and decided to start own businesses at some point. However, the relationship between the tour operators and the CBT groups is good and there is no real competition, because the tour operators also make use of the CBT network (interview with PS5). The amount of CBT members and individual businesses is likely to be equal.

Nonetheless, the number of independent tourism companies is increasing, and the CBT network is expected to hold only a small portion on the CBT market in the future. This means that competition will eventually grow, but most interviewees found that to be a positive thing for the market. However, according to other respondents, there is already external competition between independent tourism businesses and some CBT groups as well as internal competition within some CBT groups and some interviewees from the private sector reported that the cooperation between tour operators and CBT groups are complicated from time to time.

The network of the CBT groups is what makes them strong and with the Kyrgyz Community-Based Tourism Association as overarching institution, the CBT groups could manage to become an important service provider for small-scale tourism on the Kyrgyz tourism market. It has already been indicated that the relationship between the government and the private sector is somewhat complicated and usually not very positive. According to the surveyed experts from the private sector, the private sector does not want to get too much in contact with the government and they rather do not wish to be disturbed in their activities due to obstacles evoked by the government. On the other hand, the government wants to get as many taxes as possible to increase its income from tourism and the private sector is consequently hiding its real situation as the tax system is too much of a burden. The private sector is also subscribing to the view that they do not need any government support because they already managed to develop the tourism sector by themselves with support from the external assistance organisations. 84

According to several interviewees, the relationship with the government is non-existent, but some are convinced that the establishment of a successful cooperation will be the key for further development and therefore, understanding from both sides for future objectives and underlying motives will be necessary, not only on paper but also in practice (interview with PS3).

5.6. Conceptual Issues

Conclusions for the CBT concept

The interviews revealed that some interviewees faced problems when answering questions that dealt with conceptual issues of ecotourism and CBT. Even though their positions within the company, organisation or government body indicated that they are supposed to have such tourism-specific knowledge, their answers drew a different picture. PS6, whose company claimed to provide ecotourism products and services, was not able to give a sufficient definition of ecotourism. GO3 could not give an appropriate explanation of the concepts of CBT and ecotourism. It seemed that there is some kind of a common sense among the interviewees of what these tourism concepts mean with some people having more profound and encompassing knowledge about the concepts, while others only have a vague understanding of them.

With regard to CBT, the CBT project implemented by Helvetas in Kyrgyzstan and its success story led to the perception that CBT in Kyrgyzstan is more of a brand rather than a general concept. Hence, the surveyed people often only thought about the CBT project specifically and not about other areas where CBT might also be practiced respectively. Most of the interviewees defined the concept by stating that most of the benefits should remain in the community and that everybody should get involved. These central aspects are not reflected in reality, because the CBT groups usually have a consolidated group of members and do not intend to accept new members in order to keep their organisational and decision power. Instead, they offer temporary partnerships for the summer season as they rely on additional capacities to meet the growing demand. Only the CBT group in Kochkor tries to involve everybody who wants to engage in tourism activities, even though the city is relatively big with about 15.000 inhabitants and only 15% are involved in tourism. This alludes to another issue: the CBT groups were all established in relatively big cities which is contradicting with the concept, as it was originally designed for rural areas where everybody of the local community can participate. In Kyzyl Oi - a comparably small village where a CBT group has been established – only 40 out of 180 families belong to the CBT group (interview with TA1). In Karakol – the capital of the Issyk-Kul Oblast – the portion of local community members who are part of the CBT group is even smaller. Even though many interviewees referred to the involvement of local community members, they did not specify how this involvement should look like nor did they mention specific aspects of participation.

Another important conceptual aspect – the cultural interaction between tourists and service providers – has also been critically evaluated by the interviewees, because many service providers only think about making profits and hence, commercialise the cultural interaction which further fuels the neglection of the conceptual principles. Jyrgalan might serve as an ideal example for CBT outside the CBT network established by Helvetas. The community features about 1000 inhabitants and the whole village mutually decided to engage in tourism activities, meaning planning and designing the tour products, doing marketing and defining a strategic tourism concept.

The revenues are also shared with their destination management organisation in order to provide resources for further strategic planning. But also in this example, an external assistance organisation (USAID) supported the tourism development within the community by establishing the DMO Jyrgalan (interview with TA5).

In terms of ecotourism, many respondents saw similarities and overlapping between the two concepts and some interviewees claimed that ecotourism should provide the basis for CBT, meaning that CBT should be based on ecotourism principles as well. Quoting GO1, “CBT does not necessarily have to stick to ecotourism principles, but if the balance can be maintained they can coexist.” TA2 is supporting this perspective and further adds that “ecotourism follows an ecological code, while CBT does not necessarily have to and CBT involves more people, whereas ecotourism can also be done by a few people.” Nonetheless, most of the other interviewees rather saw similarities and claimed that a combination of both concepts, were community is developing in nature is preserved, is the most desirable way of developing tourism. In case of Jyrgalan it also became obvious, that local communities are more engaging in nature conservation when their tourism activities focus on mountain and nature activities. The same applies for tour companies who focus on nature-based activities like trekking tourism.

Conclusions for the ecotourism concept

According to some respondents, ecotourism principles are reflected by the nomadic lifestyle and can be incorporated into tourism in the form of jailoo tourism, meaning tourism activities at the summer pastures in the mountains, for instance hiking and horse-riding activities as well as staying in a yurt. Trekking and horse-riding are also considered to be environmentally friendly activities. PS5 also said that “it is not only about tourism in the nature, but also about showing how Kyrgyz people live in harmony with nature.” Additionally, most of the interviewees drew the conclusion that ecotourism means tourism that does not harm the environment and they realise that the Kyrgyz nature is one of the most important factors that attract international tourists, so they realise the need for preserving this nature.

However, like already stated above, some respondents who were even promoting themselves as ecotourism companies defined ecotourism as tourism in the nature without making any reference to nature conservation. The lack of understanding the concept and its objectives among tour operators and other service providers from the private sector poses a threat to the usage of the ecotourism concept as it is used inflationary and mainly for promotional purposes. Furthermore, only a few of the surveyed experts linked the ecotourism concept to conservation units like the Karakol National Park or the Issyk- Kul Biosphere Reserve, while other respondents did not seem to realise the potential of these conservation units to support nature conservation, probably because the management of these conservation units does currently not contribute substantially to nature conservation, except for the zapovednikis.

Quoting EX3, “if you want to manage tourism environmentally friendly you have to plan and organise carefully and Kyrgyzstan is not ready to do this right now.” Even though the interviewees from the private sector seem to be aware of the potential dangers of overexploitation of natural resources for tourism development and repetitively alluded to the negative example of Nepal, companies who claim to do ecotourism are still not paying much attention to the conceptual principles and their conservation efforts are limited to some cleaning activities once or twice a year and they rather use keywords like ecotourism to attract more tourists.

5.7. Impacts of CBT and ecotourism activities 5.7.1. Ecological impacts of CBT and ecotourism activities

Negative Impacts

According to most interviewees, ecotourism should not have any negative ecological impacts when the conceptual principles are considered respectively. Anyways, the respondents also pointed to mass tourism and its negative impacts on the environment, even though many of them reported that the nature had to suffer way more during the Soviet time from extensive agricultural and mining activities. They only see potential dangers for the environment when tourism becomes mass tourism like along the northern shore of lake Issyk-Kul. The same applies for CBT activities: only when the demand for accommodation and other services is increasing it can become a threat for the environment, but the current extent of CBT is still on a harmless level. The interviews also revealed that there is a loss of sight for the actual scope of the questions and the interviewees had problems in focussing on CBT and ecotourism activities only. Nonetheless, some critical aspects could be derived from the statements. One example is given by the management of the conservation units, especially the National Parks. TA3 reported that there is no transparency from the park management side and nobody knows what happens with the entrance fees they collect. The same is true for the Khan Tengri National Park, even though the entrance fee has already been removed after pressure from the private sector.

In addition to that, Kyrgyzstan features numerous laws on conservation aspects, but they are not well- implemented and monitored, so law enforcement is heavily lacking. The lack of conceptual knowledge for ecotourism among private business men who engage in ecotourism activities may also have negative impacts, because the people have no proper idea what ecotourism means and if they perceive it just as nature-based tourism it may have negative environmental impacts. Some interviewees mentioned a lack of capacities (in terms of infrastructure) to receive an increasing number of international tourists as another threat, even though there were some other respondents who contended that the current inbound tourism extent is not so high and that there are still enough capacities to expand the tourism volume.

However, GO2 reported that many villages are located too close to the lake and that an increasing number of tourists who also stay in the villages eventually affects the water quality of the lake as proper waste and sewage management is lacking in most places. Moreover, Karakol “National Park is poorly equipped and lacks a proper technical base.”

Problems with garbage were most often mentioned as negative impact, even though most interviewees also stated that trash along trekking or horse-riding routes in the mountains is mostly left by the local people (guides, porters etc.). Increasing number of tourists also means more garbage in the mountains and popular places like Altyn Arashan or Karakol valley already face some problems with garbage. TA4 is still convinced that this is not a present problem as long as the tourist numbers are not extremely increasing, because cleanings which are organised along the treks are still sufficient enough for solving the evolving problems. Moreover, the surveyed experts know very well about the situation in other countries like Nepal and they try to keep such negative examples in mind to prevent their country from experiencing the same problems. GO2 noted the lack of purification systems and bio-toilets which leads to further pollution. He also mentioned poaching as another destructive activity, even though it is hard to evaluate whether poachers also consume CBT or ecotourism products which is why this negative impact cannot be clearly assigned to tourism activities. According to PS3, people who want to engage in jailoo tourism, put up yurts without paying attention to ecological standards and the government turns a blind eye to these activities because the people have jobs and earn money from that.

Summing up, it is very difficult to evaluate the negative impacts of ecotourism and CBT activities in the study area, because the interviewees had problems in clearly identifying such activities and separate them from usual tourism activities. Ecotourism like it is promoted by some private tour operators, definitely has negative impacts when destructive activities like off-road jeep tours are promoted as well. CBT like it is practiced in the study area, is not necessarily considering ecological principles and may thus, have negative impacts when the tourism volume is increasing. The selected experts are completely aware of their virgin nature with its potential for tourism and know about the necessity to preserve it, but it seems that the representatives from the private sector still prioritise their profits towards stricter nature conservation.

Positive Impacts

In general ecotourism is perceived as something good by all respondents. Compared to other economic activities like agriculture or mining, tourism and especially small-scale tourism like CBT or ecotourism is meant to be less destructive. On the other hand, there are some interviewees who cannot recognise any positive impacts for the environment, because “nature existed so long without us” (interview with TA3).

According to most interviewees, one of the major positive influence that emerges from ecotourism and CBT activities is the raising of environmental awareness among the local people. Earning money from these types of tourism lets them also realise the need for preserving the environment.

Furthermore, local people also start to engage in mountain activities and learn about the environment and its conservation. International tourists, especially from the western countries serve as role models when it comes to dealing with garbage and the local people also start to keep their trash. They start to use plastic or iron boxes for collecting their garbage, even the cigarettes (interview with PS5). According to PS5, information is the most important thing, information desks need to be installed and the staff of the National Park as well as of the tourism businesses need to be educated and trained. The CBT group is also organising seminars for their members and addressing environmental pollution (for example problems with garbage) helps a lot in changing mentalities and raising more environmental awareness. PS7 also reported that they start to install green technologies like solar panels and bio-toilets.

Like stated above, most interviewees spoke about problems related to trash and how to solve these problems. Several respondents talked about cleaning initiatives they organised in the mountains along the most popular treks like the route to lake Ala-Kol. Quoting PS5, “each year in the end of the season each CBT group organises trash collections with its members.” The tour companies are also installing trash cans along the treks. All in all, the interviewees just referred to the awareness raising and the trash collection, other positive impacts for conservation could not be found. Furthermore, the Karakol National Park is not perceived as an instrument for conservation and the private sector did not see any conservation efforts provided by the National Park and its staff.

5.7.2. Socioeconomic Impacts of CBT and ecotourism activities

Negative Impacts

Almost every interviewee believed that there are no negative socioeconomic impacts evolving from ecotourism and CBT activities. Only a few brought up some negative impacts. PS3 spoke about a decrease in the number of teachers and kindergartners as many women start to engage in tourism activities in the countryside which is much more profitable than working as a teacher or kindergartner. Another issue may also touch CBT and ecotourism activities: unregistered businesses cause a real price dumping and make it hard for officially registered businesses to stay competitive. 89

Furthermore, GO1 asserted that CBT activities may destroy important components of ecosystems and the restoration of these components can become very expensive. Anyways, the mentioned aspects are rather addressing small-scale tourism in general and the impacts do not only arise from CBT and ecotourism activities specifically, even though they have to be considered for the planning of CBT and ecotourism activities as well.

Positive Impacts

Positive socioeconomic impacts that were always mentioned by the respondents are the contribution to economic growth, raising of the living standards, especially in rural areas and thus, a decrease in poverty due to CBT activities.

PS8 also explained that poverty reduction is one of the main CBT objectives which is hence, fostered by the CBT groups. Concerning the tourism development, the people in the study area became more opened for foreign investments as well (interview with PS2).

Many interviewees brought up aspects of infrastructure improvements. For the homestays, showers and toilets needed to be installed and let to an improvement of the sanitarian standards (interview with PS3). Due to the tourism development in Karakol, more hotels, restaurants and cafes are being built and due to the growing economic importance of tourism, the private sector has been able to pressurise the government to do infrastructure improvements, mainly in terms of the road conditions, even though it is still a slow process (interview with TA3).

Another positive impact refers to education and the younger generation. According to the surveyed experts, more and more people start to learn English, even in small villages because the people see the necessity to learn English in order to develop tourism. Furthermore, speaking English fosters intercultural exchange and especially young people get engaged and want to go abroad for education. Additionally, PS4 explained that becoming a guide in Karakol is “one of the most profitable professions.”

Another positive aspect is the comparably high level of income that can be earnt from tourism. Some people even stated that tourism is the most profitable sector. Especially in Karakol, tourism can be carried out almost throughout the whole year (approximately 10 months) and compared to agriculture where the people only have one harvest, the economic potential is enormous, especially for small- and medium-sized businesses (interview with TA3). Especially, in rural areas, CBT and ecotourism activities can be the biggest financial source of income for the local communities. In terms of ecotourism, the respondents see the potential for directing a share of the revenues from the entrance fees of National Parks to their development again and thus, ecotourism can contribute to further nature conservation, albeit this approach does not seem to have been implemented in Karakol or Khan Tengri National Park yet (interview with GO1).

TA2 also noted that money is not only generated on the household level but also on the community level via tax payments that are partially directed to the Ayil Okmotu. With regard to the economic potential of such tourism activities, one is also drawn to the question to what extent tourism activities can be an alternative income for local community members.

Most interviewed persons are convinced that ecotourism and CBT activities can provide an additional income for local community members. A few years ago, people used to go to Russia or Kazakhstan to find work, nowadays they can stay and engage in tourism and especially in Karakol and its surrounding job opportunities within the tourism sector are very good and jobs are well-paid. Some interviewees also noted that the profits can even be enhanced when tourism is mutually developed and with consideration of the ecotourism principles. The relatively long tourism season also supports the thesis of an alternative income source and tourism activities can even be combined with agricultural activities, for example when developing jailoo or agrotourism.

Additionally, the cash flow in rural areas is normally not so good and people have to sell livestock or other agricultural products and with tourism they get the chance to immediately generate money. TA1 gave one example to illustrate the economic potential: in Kyzyl Oi a teacher earns about 100 US$ per month and when they are working with tourists in summer during school holidays they can earn up to 1000 US$ in three months. Another example was provided by TA6: a former member of the CBT group in Kochkor opened up a yurt camp at lake Son-Kul as a local shepherd and gradually turned all his activities to tourism. Now he has no livestock anymore and operates independently.

On the other hand, there are also some respondents who do not believe that these tourism activities can be a real alternative source of income, because only a small portion of the community is usually making a significant additional income from tourism, while the rest can only make a little additional money and still heavily depend on their agricultural activities (interview with EX1). Consequently, the current demand is limiting the number of people who can engage and earn a substantial income from tourism (interview with TA6).

Ecotourism and CBT activities specifically, also impacted the community development in many villages. One aspect that has been recognised by several interviewees is the change of the role of women. Many guest houses are owned and managed by women and thus, they got into a more powerful position.

All women at lake Son-Kul started with one or two yurts, now they have a new car, horses for rent and five to six yurts. The number of rooms at the local home stays also increased and some even managed to build real hotels (interview with TA1). Another impact on the community level, is that more young people start their own tourism businesses. A few years ago, there were only tour operators from Bishkek involved in tourism (interview with TA1). The CBT groups served as business incubators in their respective areas and many former members started to operate independently. But like mentioned earlier, the CBT groups do also not intend on expanding their number of members which highly contradicts with the actual concept of CBT. 91

For the CBT group in Karakol it seemed to be more convenient to keep the number of members because there no inner conflicts and the situation is very stable, so they just increased the number of seasonal partnerships in order to keep their decisive power while also keeping the necessary flexibility on the labour market to meet the demand. According to PS5, there is no disadvantage of not being a member as they still get the same amount of tourists. But the lack of decision power also indicates a lack of participation and is hence, contrasting with the CBT principles. The CBT members and seasonal partners also pay commission fees which are used for further development of the CBT group, but the exact usage of these fees and their outcomes remain unclear. As already mentioned above, Jyrgalan serves as a very good example for CBT, because everybody in the small community is involved in tourism activities.

EX1 also claimed that there is a difference between the mountain communities and the communities along the lake shore, as there is a smaller portion of mountain community members involved in tourism than in communities which are located at the lake. Another limiting aspect for the contribution of CBT and ecotourism activities to community development is the current guest segment.

As there are mostly backpackers consuming CBT and ecotourism services and products who require rather basic services, the revenues are relatively low (interview with EX1). TA1 gave another example for a contribution to community development within the CBT group Arslanbob. The local group coordinator is really strict about the CBT principles and offers educational programmes for the local children like teaching them how to ski and for the 10th anniversary he did not organise a big festival but installed 10 garbage cans instead.

Last but not least, CBT and ecotourism contribute to the decrease of unemployment. TA5 contended that an ordinary tourist generates up to three jobs, while a premium tourist can even generate up to 10 jobs. The created jobs range from taxi drivers, guides, guest house and yurt camp owners, cooks, porters and other touristic service providers.

5.7.3. Cultural impacts of CBT and ecotourism activities

Negative Impacts

There were only a few respondents who did not recognise any negative cultural impacts. One of the main perceptions among the interviewees was that more tourism will eventually lead to less hospitality as the hospitality is getting more and more commercialised and service providers only focus on making more profits. To quote PS7: “People see tourists as walking dollars – the nation is getting less hospitable.” Such statements are also supported by experiences made during field observations and when interacting with the people in the field. Another example for the commercialisation of traditions has been given by PS4: “10 years ago, tea and Kymyz (fermented mare’s milk) were served for free on the jailoo as this is part of the Kyrgyz hospitality, but now money is charged for everything.” During the interview with EX3, another illustrating example was broad up with a spatial focus on lake Son-Kul. 92

The lake represents the ideal image of Kyrgyzstan with yurts standing around the shore, surrounded by wild nature, but now they start to increase the capacities, bringing up more yurts and even putting up containers because they are more convenient and do not need so much maintenance like the yurts. Other respondents like TA2 also see the transition to the market economy as a reason for this commercialisation, because capitalism provides the intrinsic motor for making more and more money and people have to take care of themselves. Even GO1 noted that more masses in tourism may ultimately lead to less quality, like can be seen with the production of traditional Kyrgyz felt carpets.

Following up on this commercialisation of traditions, many interviewees recognised fake authenticity emerging from tourism activities. According to PS5, cultural festivals and events are organised, but they all show a fake picture. He further concludes that people want to maximise their profits with growing tourist numbers and at some point, they do not offer authentic tourism products anymore. For instance, the demand for Komus - a traditional Kyrgyz music instrument – is increasing and thus, it is not produced in a traditional way anymore because the production has to become faster and cheaper.

Another example is given with Kymyz – the fermented mare’s milk which is served as a traditional Kyrgyz drink thaty is also being used as a health treatment. As the demand for Kymyz is growing as well, China started to invade the market by producing a powder which is dissolved in water and tastes like the original. It has also been reported that some people had to change their traditional lifestyles in order to meet the tourism standard expected by the tourists, meaning a specific level of comfort, including international sanitarian standards. There are no raw traditional yurts today for the tourists as everything has been modified and adapted to meet their expectations (interview with EX3). This loss of traditional lifestyles is also connected to other losses of traditions. The impact of globalisation in combination with increasing visitor numbers lead to a mix of cultures and an orientation towards western culture and due to this cultural adaptation Kyrgyz people start to lose their culture and tradition. Another example for loosing traditions are the traditional felt hats that were originally only given to elderly people as a sign of respect, but nowadays it became a popular souvenir and everybody is wearing these hats (interview with TA7). Again, it has to be kept in mind that these impacts actually pertain to all forms of small-scale tourism and not only to ecotourism and CBT activities specifically, but CBT and ecotourism activities definitely contributed to the described effects.

Positive Impacts

On the other hand, the interviewees also acknowledged the positive cultural impacts of CBT and ecotourism. Tourism can also enrich the Kyrgyz culture as can be seen with the World Nomad Games, where Kyrgyz culture has been promoted and Kyrgyz people felt proud about their culture and traditions. While most of the respondents saw both, negative as well as positive cultural impacts, there were only a few people who were completely positive about CBT’s and ecotourism’s impact on the culture.

Especially among the younger generation, tourism activities are rousing people’s interest for the Kyrgyz culture again and they want to engage, for instance by learning traditional Kyrgyz music instruments. Furthermore, children start to learn English and seek for education abroad in order to come back and engage in rural tourism. TA7 especially sees a lot of potential in ecotourism for filling the generation gap, because young people start to work as guides and showing the tourists their nature and culture makes them get even more interested in their own country. According to PS5, the already mentioned fake authenticity is prevented within the CBT groups, because it is local people that are involved in the tourism activities and that is why the experience is more authentic. Anyways, due to the above mentioned reasons for a commercialisation of culture and traditions, this statement can be questioned. Another important aspect is the cultural exchange which has been highlighted by most of the interviewees. Due to the interaction with the tourists they also get feedback about their services and the tourists share their experiences with them they gathered during other travels. Local people see travelling tourists and also start to get interested in travelling. The TA5 also reported that since roughly five years, Kyrgyz people have also started to travel. In addition to that, people observe the tourists and get interested in mountain activities like hiking or skiing as well.

Some respondents also perceive the adaptation of the western culture as something valuable, when it is critically reflected and only positive aspects are adapted. Due to the intercultural exchange people become more opened and dismantle their prejudices and distrust. For some topics like environmental protection, tourists also serve as role models for the local people.

In contrast to the mentioned loss of traditions, most of the interviewees mentioned the preservation and reviving of traditions as the main impact of CBT and ecotourism activities. Especially during Soviet times many traditions were lost and forgotten and now they are reborn due to tourism. The interviewees are convinced that the unique Kyrgyz culture and the traditional nomadic lifestyle are one of the main tourist attractions, so they realise the need of keeping the traditions for attracting tourists. Especially the reviving of the nomadic lifestyle is a positive aspect, because it is based on living together with nature in harmony. Furthermore, traditions are not only revived for the tourists but also for the local people themselves. The traditional horse game Ulak Tartysh is now organised in official leagues among the villages and not for showing it to the tourists, but only for the local people’s pleasure (interview with PS5).

The depicted examples and positive aspects indicate the influence of ecotourism and CBT activities on the Kyrgyz culture. However, one aspect that has not been addressed is the neglection of other ethnical groups’ cultures and traditions. All interviewees only referred to the culture of the ethnic Kyrgyz without making any reference to other cultures that are also present within Kyrgyzstan, except for Dungan and Uighur people’s culture, as their traditional food is promoted within some tourism products in Karakol. TA3 for instance, is offering a Dungan dinner in a Dungan village that is located close to Karakol.

During the interviews, the impression was created that the interviewees are mostly positive about CBT and ecotourism and its influence on the Kyrgyz culture, except for some dissenting voices that were raised with regard to the authenticity and the loss of traditions, even though this loss is rather perceived as a consequence of the growing globalisation influence than of the small-scale tourism activities.

5.8. Future Perspectives and Suggestions for Improvements

Optimism

Regarding the future of tourism in Kyrgyzstan, a great majority of interviewees is very optimistic as they see a lot of potential for further tourism development due to the country’s intact natural resources, unique cultural features and the Kyrgyz hospitality. Furthermore, many respondents are convinced that this development will occur with rapid pace and the sector is seen as a promising source of income for the future. The visa free regime is perceived as a competitive advantage towards other Central Asian countries. The surveyed experts were also optimistic about further targeting the Asian market, especially the newly emerging market in China. Silk Road tour products are also getting very popular. As the cultural and natural potential is still enormous, the interviewees also assessed a lot of potential for further ecotourism and CBT development.

The World Nomad Games, along with other promotional moves that have also been supported by external assistance organisations already contributed a lot to the promotion of the country and the interviewed experts are sanguine that this promotion had a sustainable impact and in combination with further promotional steps this will ultimately contribute to increasing numbers of tourists. GO1 was also very positive about the tourism future in the country, quoting that “there will be a big boom in tourism development with many hotels and guest houses being created.” According to TA1, he gets at least one email per week, where people want to get information on how to start a tourism business in their village. This indicates that especially rural areas start to recognise their potential for tourism and start to engage in small-scale tourism activities. Many respondents also forecast a shift in the country’s economy, where the tourism sector will eventually become more and more important, likely getting one of the top three priorities within the next years.

Scepticism

On the contrary, there is also some scepticism spreading among some interviewees who are not expecting such a great increase of tourist numbers within the next years. Even though they realise the already addressed potential, they are of the opinion that the current main obstacles which will be discussed more in detail a few sections below, cannot be easily overcome in the next years, which is why they thus, will hamper further tourism development.

Local Population

For the future the surveyed experts expect tourism (mainly CBT and ecotourism activities) to increasingly impact local communities, especially in rural areas. TA1 stated that “many people will learn English, ecotourists will be accepted as role models and local people will start to keep their trash.” Furthermore, they are also aware of the importance to involve local community members because the integration of local people into tourism activities will make them realise the importance of preserving their natural resources and their cultural traditions in order to attract tourists. Moreover, many young people have ideas for tourism businesses and need to be supported for their start-ups.

Education

As has already been clarified above, it is mainly the local tourists being the trouble makers, leaving their garbage and not caring about the environment. Hence, education for local people is essential. Due to trainings, educational programmes and seminars that have been conducted and that are going to be conducted in the future as well, the interviewees expect a raise of environmental awareness among local community members.

Despite this environmental education, education and knowledge transfer in the field of economy is also contributing to further tourism development, because the local people get taught how to manage a business, how to plan tour products, how to organise touristic services and how to market and promote these services and products. However, there is still a long path to go and environmental as well as tourism-specific education should be extended in the future. Additionally, sharing experiences and spreading knowledge gained from ecotourism activities can support the promotion of ecotourism and its environmental principles.

Infrastructure

Most of the surveyed people expect an expansion of infrastructure, especially in terms of road improvements, because a well-established and -maintained road network will not only ease transportation, but also make it cheaper and thus, more convenient. Moreover, they expect an improvement of the accommodation infrastructures and an increasing construction of hotel complexes and guest houses. Besides, the respondents hope to attract more middle-class tourists with a higher budget than the current backpacking tourists who dominate the market, when infrastructures are improved. In addition to that, the level of service, especially in rural areas, is expected to improve significantly which would also support the attraction of middle-class tourists. The majority of the interviewees believes that main improvements in the infrastructure sector should be made by the government on the local level.

Additionally, the country and Karakol and its surrounding specifically, feature a great potential for foreign investments, but there need to be stable conditions in order to convince foreign investors to invest. Many interview partners levelled criticism against large-scale infrastructure projects with big hotel complexes and resorts like in Turkey or Dubai, because they do not desire to develop such mass tourism and furthermore, they do not believe that Kyrgyzstan is in the condition to compete with other luxurious resort destinations around the globe. Instead, unique cultural centres or camps in the mountains should be created where tourists can get the unique experiences they are seeking for (interview with PS2). However, the reconstruction of the Karakol airport, that is currently considered as an investment project by the World Bank, would be a supportive factor for the tourism development in the area. Most interview partners agreed upon the fact that huge infrastructure investments are not necessary when developing ecotourism or CBT in rural areas. In the mountains there is no need for a lot of infrastructure, but according to PS1, the construction of huts in the mountains like in the Alps could be helpful, albeit the Kyrgyz land use policies are presently preventing such infrastructure projects in the mountains.

Promotion

The dominating notion among the interviewees is that the promotion of local specifications, local culture and natural sites are essential for attracting tourists. Some also reported that social media and tourism- related platforms like TripAdvisor or booking.com have an immense relevance for their promotion and satisfying the tourists is the key to positive reviews and hence, a positive image of the country (PS5). Pushing tourism promotion and spending government budget for promotional purposes was numerously mentioned as one of the government’s main tasks during several interviews. However, representatives of the private sector also noted that proper marketing takes time and is coherent with considerable financial efforts. As many people from German-speaking countries like Switzerland, Austria or Germany are usually very interested in mountain activities, interviewees from the private sector also want to intensively target these markets for promoting their tourism products and services. As Kyrgyzstan alone might not be able to compete with other global destinations, uniting all Central Asian countries as a whole destination could strengthen their position in the market and ease tourism promotion interview with TA6). Further promotion of Kyrgyz tourism is also facilitated by the fact that many foreign ministries in Europe removed Kyrgyzstan from the list of risky countries (interview with PS3). External assistance organisations and the government should also communicate the country’s tourism potential to the local people to sensitise them for their own opportunities and make them stay in their villages to counteract urban migration. Last but not least, if the country can manage to compete with its biggest competitor in terms of nomadic culture and lifestyle – Mongolia – then even more tourists can be attracted (interview with TA5).

Government

Even though the government’s budget for tourism development is relatively low at the moment, the government truly wants to support further development by pushing an open sky policy and by supporting the sector in terms of promotion. During the interviews the experts from the private sector mentioned political stability, a proper tourism development strategy, open sky policy, easing visa restrictions and the tax system and infrastructure improvements as main supporting steps the government should organise and implement. Regarding visa restrictions, one respondent also presumed that the government might even remove the visa free regime again and replace it by an e-visa system because the government wants to regain control over the migration in their country. “Kyrgyzstan is the second Switzerland” – this promotional strapline has been coined by the former president Akaev and is still utilised nowadays by the government for tourism promotion. On the other hand, some interviewees alluded to the fact that the country is not ready yet to receive increasing numbers of tourists as long as there is no awareness raised among the local people for a tourism culture and as long as the infrastructure capacities are lacking. Like mentioned earlier, representatives from the tourism sector expect tourism to grow which will eventually let the government realise its economic potential and importance and hopefully lead to a stronger support for the sector by the government.

Especially on the local level, the government bodies need to understand the benefits arising from tourism development for local communities and for their community development, because they need to get active and support this development process. However, some of the interviewed experts still seem to be sceptical about the government support due to the experiences they already made with the government in the past. In order to do things differently than in the past and enhance the government support, it will be a key challenge to tackle corruption in the country on all government levels. Furthermore, an increase of the tourism department’s budget and its human resource capacities is essential to enable government support. Relocating the department at a higher level within the government body would provide additional influence and decision power. In terms of priorities within the tourism sector, the government should start to shift their interests towards other places in Kyrgyzstan that have a greater potential for further tourism (especially small-scale and alternative tourism) development than the northern shore of lake Issyk-Kul. Last but not least, the government and the private sector should try to establish stable partnerships and cooperation as a mutual coordination of their activities will finally lead to a further boost in Kyrgyzstan’s tourism development.

Conservation Aspects

As has been noted several times before, many remote areas feature a great potential for tourism and many interviewees see ecotourism as a convenient tool to utilise this potential. One of the most important aspects is the environmental education that is being increasingly fostered and which contributes to a changing mentality among the local community members that engage in small-scale tourism and hence, 98

also contribute to environmental conservation. From the given statements during the interviews it can be concluded that this educational process is just about to start and that more and more awareness is raised year by year. However, feedback provided by tourists who visited the country in the past 10 years already indicate that a stronger focus has to be put on conservation aspects, because popular places are already getting polluted and this is getting recognised by the visitors (interview with TA5). Some interview partners also noted that tourism which is developed in accordance to the nomadic lifestyle, will cause no environmental damage. In terms of the conservation units, a certain neglection becomes evident. The IKBR with its different conservation zones is not esteemed and the same applies for the Karakol and Khan Tengri National Park. The private sector also demands more transparency from government side regarding the usage of the collected park entrance fees and expects them to use the money for improving nature conservation, for instance by installing garbage bins, educating people about environmental protection and keeping the sites clean. To improve the contribution of tourism to nature conservation in general, the respondents gave some ideas: promotion of green technologies, sustainable natural resource management (water use in hotels and guest houses, waste and sewage management) and creating small-scale facilities (e.g. developing yurt camps in the mountains).

In addition to that, more conservation sites like the National Parks should be created to improve conservation, even though restrictions would have to be better implemented and the park administration should have the necessary capacities to appropriately manage the park. On the other hand, these conservation units might collide with the agricultural sector as keeping animals is a big part of the Kyrgyz tradition and domestic animals cannot stay in the National Park according to its usage restrictions (interview with TA3). As there were already negative reports about places like the Sary- Chelek zapovednik getting overcrowded, a sustainable management of natural resources in general and of reserve sites specifically should be further emphasised in the future. Initiatives for sustainable resource management could be supported, starting on the local level, creating best practices and finally transfer and adapt it in other areas.

During the interviews, the impression has been created that everybody who is engaged in tourism is well aware of the need for nature conservation in order to keep the natural resources intact for attracting tourists. Nonetheless, tourism development and its associated profits seems to dominate the people’s interest and conservation aspects are only acknowledged and incorporated when it supports the further promotion of tourism.

Development Directions

Especially in Karakol, the interviewed stakeholders expect a rapid growth and special emphasis is going to be put on the international market, because the tourists seek for several different activities which can be offered for a longer period than the usual two months of beach tourism at the north shore of the lake and because international tourists are expected to spend more money for their unique experiences. 99

As a consequence, an economic shift of tourism revenues is expected to occur, whereby the international market will grow and bring more revenues for mountains tourism, ecotourism, CBT and other small- scale tourism activities. Furthermore, GO1 is also confident that further tourism development will also lead to an increase of the sector’s share of the GDP. Along with jailoo tourism, most interviewees expect trekking and horse-riding activities to get more and more popular each year. According to PS7 and TA8, Bakonbaevo and its surrounding villages will become a hotspot for cultural and ethno-tourism, including the promotion of nomadic lifestyles and Silk Road products. TA4 predicted that the number of adventure tourists will also double within the next few years and the great potential of the Kyrgyz mountain landscape is going to be further utilised.

Only a few representatives were rather sceptical about the tourism growth, noting that Kyrgyzstan will remain a rather unknown destination in terms of ecotourism and current CBT capacities are already reached, so they do not expect the numbers of eco- and CBT-tourists to increase that much. On the contrary, they also presume that the number of local businesses is going to rise which will further fuel competition in the sector. Some representatives of the private sector also intend to design their touristic products for middle-class people specifically to generate more profits.

A small minority sees it as inevitable to develop the main tourism sector along the north shore in the first place in order to establish infrastructure facilities and service levels that meet the middle-class tourists’ expectations. However, the majority does not share this opinion and is convinced that the future lies in the sustainable development of small-scale tourism forms like ecotourism and CBT.

Legislative Framework

Like indicated earlier, the private sector strives for a further deregulation of the visa regime and perceives the introduction of an e-visa as a good step, but not as the end of the story (interview with EX2). Following up on this, some interviewees also demanded an easing of the border crossings and were even suggesting the creation of a space like the European Schengen area to guarantee the freedom of travel in Central Asia and to facilitate the promotion of Central Asia as a whole tourism destination. Additionally, a reform or further deregulation of the tax system will be essential for creating an enabling environment. Kyrgyz tour operators need to pay a so-called VAT tax of 12%, which leads to higher prices for their tour products and thus, poses a competitive disadvantage towards Uzbekistan which can be seen as one of the main competitors in the Central Asian Silk Road tourism market and where its tour operators do not have to pay such tax (interview with EX2). Another enormously important enabling factor is the realisation of an open sky policy, including the establishment of direct flight to the European cities. The lack of proper tourism development strategies has also been repetitively brought up by several interview partners. When implemented properly, such a strategy may provide a proper framework for tourism and ensure a non-destructive sector development.

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This improvement of the legislative framework also includes a reform of the law on tourism, that is perceived as outdated and seriously lacks proper law enforcement. Facilitating bureaucratic processes in general has also been mentioned by several experts. All the paperwork that is associated with registering a tourism business and reporting everything to the government takes great efforts and require time-consuming processes (interview with PS1).

5.9. Main Obstacles

In general, most of the interviewees mentioned a lack of infrastructure and a lack of government support as the major obstacles.

Lack of Government Capacities and Support

The unstable situation in the governmental administration is perceived as hampering. A missing open sky policy, alongside with an overregulated taxation system, strenuous visa restrictions, lacking tourism development strategies, poor infrastructure conditions, effortful bureaucratic processes and lacking support for tourism promotion are severe hurdles that need to be conveyed out of the way.

TA1 explained that 70% of their time and activities are directed to solve small problems that arise due to government activities, while only 30% of their capacities can be used for new ideas and projects. This also indicates the need for further cooperation between the government and the private sector.

Lack of Cooperation and partnerships

Despite the problematic relationship between the private sector and the government, there are also intricate relations between Kyrgyzstan and its neighbouring countries which also complicate issues related to border crossings. The competitiveness within the private sector might pose another obstacle as it is preventing mutual development and promotion initiatives. Only one tour company in Karakol strives to strengthen partnerships with other companies in order to expand their touristic offer.

Profit-Driven Mentality of the People

The profit-oriented attitude within the private sector may prevent a sustainable tourism development with a focus on CBT and ecotourism as these forms require the consideration of rules and principles that can collide with the economic interests of the tourism companies (interview with TA2). Though, changing people’s mentality and behaviour is a major challenge that has to be tackled in order to achieve a sustainable development for tourism.

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The examples the resorts along the northern lake shore illustrate the short-term oriented thinking of the people without paying any attention to ecological principles and thus, to a long-term oriented intactness of the touristic potential. The interview with EX1 also revealed this short-term orientation in the agricultural sector when it comes to the management of natural resources. Pastures located close to the settlements are getting overgrazed, while others lie idle. This handling in managing natural resources vividly depicts the need for a change in the people’s mindset. This educational process should also be heavily supported and facilitated by the government, for instance due to information distribution via mass media channels.

Lack of Infrastructure and Poor Infrastructure Conditions

Deducing from statements of several interview partners, the infrastructural capacities are insufficient for receiving more tourists. The current road conditions also limit further development of the transportation network and thus, further tourism development. Even though bad infrastructure conditions can presently be an advantage as well because backpackers are seeking for places different then their usual surrounding, all interviewees agreed that infrastructure investments are necessary, especially with focus on the partially desired attraction of middle-class tourists. Especially the lack in air traffic infrastructures is perceived as hinderance by most of the respondents.

Lack of Promotion

The already addressed lack of government support for marketing and promotion forces tourism companies to privately organise promotion at international tourism fairs and market their own online- presence. According to PS1, the company spent roughly 10.000 USD on promotion which accounts for a great share of the generated profits. Despite these enormous financial efforts, this promotion is only targeting on representing the individual tourism companies and an encompassing marketing of Kyrgyzstan as a whole destination is simply lacking. For this reason, Kyrgyzstan is still a rather unknown tourism destination.

Insufficient Service Quality

Another impediment can be found in insufficient service levels that have partially already started to create dissatisfaction among tourists. According to representatives of the private sector, dissatisfaction with the quality of service among some CBT members led to the creation of yurt camps by the private tour operators in order to let them keep the necessary quality standards.

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TA1 reported that the Ak-Sai travel company put up a yurt camp at Enilchek glacier due to these reasons, even though it has to be noted that the field observations revealed other advantages which simultaneously arose from the selection of the location for the yurt camp and that unsatisfying service levels do not have to be the only reasons for opening up an own yurt camp. Anyways, every tourism stakeholder is aware about the importance of quality of services which is why service improvements are always emphasised by tourism companies and among service providers.

Lack of Knowledge

Last but not least, the lack of tourism-specific knowledge also interferes further tourism development and CBT and ecotourism development specifically. Despite conceptual misunderstandings, there are also tourism-related knowledge gaps among the staff of external assistance organisations and the tourism-supportive associations. Furthermore, a lack of exact statistics prevents the sector from articulating its economic importance to the government. Thus, implementing a system for obtaining reliable tourism statistics could provide a quantitative framework for analysing the situation and develop appropriate strategies. There is a WIFI-project driven by the DMO Karakol, where they want to create a free WIFI-network for Karakol and due to the number of logins onto the network, they want to derive statistics on tourist arrivals. Other possibilities, like the visitor’s tax system in the Alps are not expected to work due to the corruptive structures in the country and it exemplifies the typical dilemma that models from western countries cannot always be simply transitioned to other countries (interview with TA3).

The figure below summarises the most important hampering aspects for further tourism development in Kyrgyzstan. GOVERNMENT LOCAL MENTALITY IN GENERAL • Lack of support • Lack of awareness • Lack of promotion • Lack of capacities for sustainability • Lack of finances • Corruption principles • Lack of human • Inappropriate • Profit-oriented resources legislative mindset • Lack of experience framework • Short-term and expertise among • Effortful bureaucratic perspectives tourism stakeholders processes • Focus on competition • Lack of network- • Inappropriate tax rather than on relationships system cooperation • Lack of infrastructure • Lack of proper • Lack of quality tourism development standards strategies

Figure 14: Hampering factors for further tourism development in Kyrgyzstan. Own depiction.

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5.10. Discussion of the Results

The surveyed experts shared a broad range of knowledge and experiences from different perspectives, highlighting various potentials and impacts of tourism in general and of CBT and ecotourism specifically. Despite these valuable contributions, a lack of conceptual knowledge among some of the interviewees became apparent during the field work. This knowledge gap may have caused some confusion and distortion, which is why some experts had difficulties in referring to ecotourism and CBT activities only in their answers and in distinguishing between the two forms. These discrepancies needed to be carefully considered for the analysis of the given statements. Nonetheless, valuable results could be produced which contributed substantially to the understanding of the previously posed research objectives and to a final answer of the central research question.

Tourism development in Kyrgyzstan is still divided into two different directions – the mass tourism structures along the north shore of lake Issyk-Kul and the small-scale tourism structures that can be found in many places across the country. Due to its current economic importance, the government is highly favouring and supporting the development along the north shore of lake Issyk-Kul, whereas most of the respondents do not see a future perspective for this type of tourism. This circumstance alludes to the diverging point of views between the private sector and the government and while the private sector tries to engage more and more in the international tourism market, the government still seems to confide the Soviet tourism heritage. However, decreasing tourist satisfactions, deteriorating infrastructure qualities and the short tourism season highly questions the future potential of this tourism development direction, whereas alternative small-scale tourism activities increase year by year and experience growing popularity.

Furthermore, most of the hampering factors that were mentioned can be linked to the government in one way or another, indicating severe capacity lacks in the government combined with counter-productive prioritisations in relation to tourism among the respective government institutions and a neglection of the economic relevance of tourism for local communities, which altogether ultimately lead to a great lack of support, especially for the small-scale tourism sector. Moreover, this government neglection extends to the identified intersectoral synergies which further hampers the possibilities for government support as the government does not recognise the development potential. Anyways, tourism activities and their multiplier effect are highly benefitting local communities and clearly have a more comprehensive economic impact on the community level than other economic sectors like agriculture. Following up with the role of the government, a pervasion of former Soviet government structures within the present Kyrgyz government becomes apparent in the form of strict regulations, bureaucratic burdens and other effortful administrative issues that interfere with the interests of the private sector.

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In addition to that, an adherence to these former Soviet structures does not match with the market dynamics of the tourism sector, so if the government wants to substantially contribute to the sector’s development and to the economic development in general, a disentanglement of the outdated structures is necessary and may eventually lead to a better adaptation to the current global economic system.

The role of external assistance organisations is undoubtably for the tourism development in the country, but this also alludes to a dependency on these organisations that can become problematic at some point. Moreover, the activities of these organisations do also intervene in the Kyrgyz tourism market, by supporting local tourism businesses which thus, get competitive advantages in the market compared to independent operators and service providers. Even though, the dynamics of the interactions between external assistance organisations, the government and the private sector are hard to grasp, the organisations do have undeniable impacts, which can be both positive and negative. The dependencies that are being created may negatively impact local development, for instance when projects strive to fundamentally change the economic, cultural and social structures within a community without considering the sustainable long-term perspective, as this can lead to serious problems after the project ends. A stronger focus on the provision of technical inputs might mitigate the created dependencies. Nevertheless, the current state of development in Kyrgyzstan assigns an indispensable role to the external assistance organisations and without this foreign support, the country would truly be in a worse condition.

With regard to the importance of relationships and cooperation, the results revealed that the majority of the private sector does not seem to realise the economic long-term potential that can emerge from cooperation when overarching tourism development goals are mutually targeted. Instead, competition is perceived as the more important driving force that will lead to more development, growth, service quality and extended touristic offers in the sector. International development agencies attempted to target such network-building processes, for instance with the CBT network created due to the support of Helvetas.

Nonetheless, the overarching Kyrgyz Community-Based Tourism Association is getting less and less influence on the single groups and the groups strive for more independence as they do not seem to perceive the advantages that such a mutual platform can offer. A comparable situation is given by the destination project of USAID. Admittedly, the DMOs do have a lot of members, but decisions are still primarily based on individual interests and thus, people do not seem to be ready for cooperatively engaging in the regional tourism development. As another association, KATO is uniting some of the private tour operators and hence, creates a valuable voice that can pressurise the government in their decision processes, but there still seems to be competition mentalities dominating the network rather than cooperative mentalities. Only a few private tourism stakeholders have realised the potential of consolidated partnerships and networking activities for a mutually planned tourism development.

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Regarding future perspectives and major obstacles, the impression is created that the government needs to make a big step in the right direction by tackling major obstacles like infrastructure improvements, tax reforms, further visa deregulations along with deregulation of other administrative processes and most importantly, support of tourism development and promotion. It seems that those responsible for tourism within the respective government institutions already start to realise the potential of further tourism development for the national economy, community development, poverty reduction etc., but tourism needs to be higher prioritised by the top administration in order to provide more capacities for the tourism department. Furthermore, the Soviet heritage in the form of the tourism resorts are still attracting the major attention. However, the focus should not be put on a further development of these resorts structures, but on finding a way to transform them into a sustainable tourism form without polluting the environment and without decomposing social structures within the respective communities. As most interviewees were mainly positive about the future perspectives and often used the words growth or growing, the question arises, whether existing carrying capacities along with environmental aspects are going to be considered by the tourism stakeholders once the profits start to rise significantly. Right now, the debate on environmental protection, sustainable tourism development and the consideration of ecological principles within the sphere of tourism seems to be publicly acknowledged and the respondents echo the content of the environmental education programmes that have been provided by external assistance organisations and show their commitment with some cleaning activities. But once, numbers begin to rise and environmental strains get intensified, other means that require more effortful compromises like limitations of National Park visitors will be needed and then it will become apparent, whether the current awareness-raising is sufficient enough to make the private sector keep their current affirmation to a sustainable and environmentally responsible tourism development. Apart from that, there are some stakeholders in the sector who are pretty much aware of the potential dangers that may arise due to an unrestrained tourism development and thanks to these stakeholders, alongside with other tourism-supportive associations and external assistance organisations, environmental awareness is raised, further sensitising the sector for the need of a sustainable tourism development.

The future perspectives and the given expectation on further improvement do also seem to be partially illusionary as it would require enormous government and private sector capacities to tackle all of the mentioned obstacles and these capacities cannot be simply created from one day to the next. It can be presumed that the corruptive structures that currently penetrate the country on all levels and in all areas, will remain a major hampering factor for further tourism development. Infrastructure improvements require great financial capacities. Indeed, they could be provided by foreign investors but therefore, they would have to have compelling reasons to invest their money. On the contrary, educational progress will make a valuable impact, promotion is likely to increase within the next years and will thus, further contribute to tourism development. Service quality can also be easily facilitated. Changing the mindset of the people will however, remain a challenging and time-consuming task. 106

With a special focus on CBT and community development, focussing on community participation and empowerment will also continue to be a great challenge due to the complexity of social community structures and because existing CBT groups are located in the cities, which are too big to involve everybody. The concept of CBT also needs to break loose from its current perception of being a tourism brand in Kyrgyzstan in order to facilitate its implementation in other, more appropriate communities with fewer inhabitants.

Discussing the central research question

In terms of the specific research question, various conclusions have been drawn. The impacts on the community level are manifested in a decrease of unemployment, an increase of community income via tax payments, an empowerment of women, a raise of living standards as well as sanitarian standards, infrastructure improvements for the community and the individual household levels as well as in an increase of education (economic and ecological knowledge) and job opportunities for the younger generations, which thus, counteracts the migration from the land into the cities and supports further community development. The multiplier effect of tourism also stimulates the local economy and effects the agricultural sector and various additional local activities.

With a special focus on CBT, it can be stated that the communities where the concept has been introduced and implemented by Helvetas, feature too many inhabitants, which is why the relation of the community size towards the demand for tourism services and products does not allow every community member to get involved in tourism activities. As a consequence, internal competition within the CBT groups as well as external competition with other service providers prevents the participation of all community members. However, this circumstance is not a failure of the concept, but rather a man-made failure due to the selected locations.

In contrast to the CBT network, Jyrgalan has proofed to be a positive example for CBT, where everybody is getting involved and thus, also benefits from the community’s tourism activities. Furthermore, participation is strongly fostered and the community mutually decides how to develop and manage their tourism sector. In terms of the potential for CBT and ecotourism to be alternative income sources, the interviews revealed that some community members managed to shift all of their activities towards tourism, while others cannot live from tourism activities alone which is why they have to engage in other economic branches, mostly agriculture as well.

Another critical aspect about the impacts of CBT and ecotourism for community development is the potential shortage of teachers and kindergartners as more and more people start to engage in tourism. Additionally, from a cultural perspective, CBT and ecotourism are fuelling acculturation processes, eventually leading to a loss of traditions. On the other hand, traditions are revived as well, but some cases illustrated that an “over-reviving” has already caused a commercialisation of traditions and culture and in the end, unauthentic cultural images are being created. 107

Due to the local tourism activities that are often coined by profit-orientations, the community members also start to lose their hospitality. All in all, CBT and ecotourism are double-edged swords, that can be very useful instruments for community development, especially in rural areas with limited alternative income sources, but on the contrary, they might negatively impact the community development and its members when critical aspects are not appropriately considered.

Even though conservation initiatives are assumed to be central elements of CBT as well (see table 4), the results showed that conservation aspects do not play a major role within the Kyrgyz CBT examples and ecological principles are not receiving the necessary attention. Admittedly, the principles are acknowledged and publicly addressed, but the activities in practice remain sparsely, even though many respondents drew clear parallels between ecotourism and CBT. However, ecotourism does also not contribute substantially to nature conservation either, at least not in the way it is practiced in many companies, who claim to do ecotourism. Nonetheless, in comparison to other economic activities, which are mainly related to agriculture, ecotourism and CBT are likely to do less harm to the environment, especially due to the relatively low frequencies at the moment. Tourism is also generating revenues for conservation with the collected Karakol National Park entrance fees, but as the government is managing the Park and its revenues and they are not acting transparent, it is not possible to estimate how great the park’s contribution for conservation is and thus, how great the tourism activities’ contribution is. Despite of generated revenues that are somehow directed to nature conservation, other positive impacts could be identified. Environmental education and its associated influence on changing local people’s behaviour and mindset might be the major impact of ecotourism and CBT activities on conservation. In Kyrgyzstan, such educational programmes, seminars, presentations and trainings have been strongly emphasised and facilitated a lot by external assistance organisations, which is why their importance for conservation is vital in this context.

According to the interviewees, the effect of this environmental educational could already been perceived, as local service providers start to pay more attention to garbage issues. On the other hand, it has to be noted at this point that this behavioural change also evolved due to the international tourists who served as role models. The consequent cultural interaction did not only open the local people to the rest of the world but did also raise and strengthen their environmental awareness.

Another rather direct positive impact of ecotourism and CBT activities are the cleaning activities along the treks that are organised by CBT members, members of the DMO in Karakol and other ecotourism service providers. Even though these actions are counteracting the pollution in the area, they also highlight the problems that already arose from trekking tourism activities in the mountains. As the general trends for tourist numbers is going upwards, more tourists, regardless of their environmental awareness, will lead to more environmental straints, when conservation units like the National Parks or the IKBR do not feature the required capacities and are hence, not providing an appropriate infrastructure.

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As the number of tourists have ben relatively low in the past, ecological issues did only emerge tenuously and could still be solved by single actions, but if the numbers are about to continue their increase, comprehensive strategies will need to be developed and implemented respectively, accompanied by an effective law enforcement for the environmental laws and restrictions. The comparably low tourism intensity does also allude to limitations for the concepts’ potential. As clarified above, mostly backpackers are presently visiting the country in order to consume cultural or mountain-related tourism products. According to the interview partners, the tourists are seeking for unique experiences, they seek for something different, something individual. Presuming a rise of tourist numbers, alongside with infrastructure improvements and an extended offer of various tourism products, this kind of tourism will lose its specialty and thus, its attraction for these tourists. Additionally, expanding the tourism capacities might collide with the two concepts’ objectives of contributing to nature conservation. However, for community development an expanding tourism volume can be rather supportive as growing demand will allow more local community members to engage in tourism. This situation actually alludes to an alleged fundamental contradiction between the concepts of ecotourism and CBT – namely the antagonism of development and conservation. While a proceeding development process may pose a threat to nature conservation, conservation efforts may as well limit development progress on the contrary. According to the future perspectives in tourism, keeping these two major objectives in balance will become a challenging task, once the tourism volume expands. At this point, it comes again to prioritising long-term perspectives over short-term benefits as intact natural resources will be necessary to attract tourists in the future as well and hence, further contribute to community development.

In theory, the potential for the two concepts to contribute to nature conservation sounds compelling, but there need to be tourism specialists involved for the implementation, human resource and financial capacities need to be provided altogether with a strong government support that is incorporating such a development within their respective strategies and agendas. In addition to that, in a country like Kyrgyzstan, the external assistance organisations have a key role in giving support, especially by providing technical inputs and expertise. The same requirements apply for the realisation of the concepts’ potential for community development even though, this objective might be easier to achieve due to the individual impellent of the community members to raise their living standards by making more profits.

Nevertheless, there also needs to be government support and a certain degree of regulation with reference to the law and tourism strategies to prevent the communities from overexploitation of their resources, both cultural and natural.

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6. Conclusion and implications for research and practice

Tourism in Kyrgyzstan is just about to develop and in its current initial stage, the country still features a great cultural and natural potential, especially for small-scale tourism in rural areas. As the sector is just about to emerge, the government has not fully recognised its potential as economic motor for such areas with its multiplicator effect and its function as a business incubator. This neglection of the sector’s growing importance has led to a lack of government capacities and consequently, to a lack of government support in general. But the private sector did not have to develop tourism completely on its own. Instead, external assistance organisations played a major role in supporting the development of tourism in rural areas in order to realise their development goals. Due to these supporting projects, tourism in the respective areas has also been shifted towards a sustainable direction as the projects usually intend to incorporate sustainability principles that align with the organisations’ agendas. Many of the external assistance projects strived for an establishment of enabling networks or other cooperative structures, but partnerships and created networks like the DMO network or the CBT network are still characterised by a considerable lack of empowerment and influence, because the members usually do not perceive their potential benefits arsing from the cooperation and are thus, acting in accordance to their individual motives and intentions. Conceptual knowledge gaps for ecotourism and CBT have steered to a misuse as well as to an inflationary use of the concepts, especially in terms of ecotourism. Furthermore, the misunderstanding of the terms also complicated the interpretation of the statements given by some interview partners who faced problem in distinguishing between the two concepts, dissociating the concepts from other tourism forms and identifying examples from practice for the two forms.

It could be shown that ecotourism and CBT are contributing to some extent to nature conservation and to community development, but major challenges have also been indicated, highlighting the limitations of their possible contributions, not only in the current state but also due to their future potential for Kyrgyzstan. Nonetheless, the potential for improving nature conservation and community development is undeniable and highly depends on the way the development is approached and implemented. In respect of this future, the interviewees were predominantly positive, because a further increase of tourist numbers can be expected. Anyways, framework conditions need to be improved to facilitate further tourism development and copious sustainable tourism development strategies need to be designed and effectuated to prevent destructive impacts caused by exploitative tourism activities. Therefore, some major obstacles have to be tackled. First of all, there are severe capacity lacks on different levels and in different fields, ranging from a lack of human resources within tourism- and conservation-related government bodies, which also induces a lack of institutional capacities to a lack of necessary infrastructures and an associated lack of financial capacities. All in all, these discrepancies culminate in a lack of governance, that is particularly manifested in rural communities where the need for capacity building is highest.

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Further obstacles, hampering tourism development, are a lack of government support, a lack of cooperation between different stakeholders, including private sector, government institutions and external assistance organisations, the mentality of the people and their neglection of sustainable long- term perspectives, a lack of tourism promotion for the country as a whole destination, insufficient service qualities due to a lack of unified standards and a lack of knowledge among institutional staff, the staff of external assistance organisations and tourism-supportive associations as well as among service providers and tour operators, comprising tourism-specific, environmental and business-specific knowledge.

6.1. Implications for Practice

On the basis of the addressed present conditions, the potential and the obstacles for further development, implications for practice could be derived and will thus, be described in the following section. A major factor for further development will be infrastructure improvements. This refers to the road conditions, to the road network as well as to air traffic. Navigational signs in English, like it has already been done by the USAID project in the Issyk-Kul Oblast, will help the tourists to better orientate in the country. An improvement of the domestic airports, along with safety improvements for the Kyrgyz airlines and an increase of domestic flights are essential as well. A dialogue with the European countries should be started to push an open sky policy and work on the removal of Kyrgyz airlines from the black lists. Even though the government, already made great supportive steps, access to the country can still be improvement, for instance by including additional countries in the visa free regime that feature a high potential for sending tourists to the country. Networking processes, partnerships and cooperation should be further strengthened and established. The CBT groups should become more opened for new members again and cooperation should be emphasised rather than competition. The DMOs can functionate as coordinating bodies. Therefore, its members have to realise the DMOs’ potential in promoting the respective destinations in order to make them pay higher member fees, so that the DMOs can solely focus on marketing and promotion goals, instead of developing own tour products and becoming another internal competitor. Competition with other destinations will provide the necessary incentives to ensure service standards and satisfying tourist experiences, but internally the focus should be put on cooperation, as the synergies will pool the resources of the private sector and thus, lead to an extended tourism offer, more flexibility and ultimately, to a stronger position of the destination. Building up on this, external assistance organisations should pay considerable attention to the sustainability of their projects, for instance by applying a gradual support scheme that will decrease the support step by step until the project can operate independently to prevent developments like in the destination project. Young people and tourism start-ups need to be supported by alleviating administrative barriers, reforming the tax system and establishing proper financing models with reasonable credit facilities. 111

The development of winter tourism should be further fostered to bridge seasonality issues and increase the economic potential.

In terms of the environment, sewage and waste management needs to be improved to prevent pollution in the mountains and in the lake. Ecological codes should be implemented, especially by tourism companies, who promote ecotourism to prevent an overexploitation of the natural resources. The DMO could be the coordinating body for developing and implementing this ecological code. Furthermore, the management of conservation units, especially the National Parks, need to be enhanced. More transparency is required reduce the mistrust of the local stakeholders towards the government staff. Additionally, the park staff should feature the necessary expertise and experience to manage the park appropriately and ensure its conservation. The tourism stakeholders should be informed about conservation activities in the park to let them recognise the efforts. If necessary, human and financial capacities should be provided by the government to achieve these conditions. Moreover, environmental education has to be intensified and also supported by the government via national media channels. More trainings, seminars and additional educational programmes should be provided to increase the environmental awareness, especially among the local population. Despite this environmental education, additional tourism-specific educational programmes and courses should be designed and offered, particularly for attracting young people and make them stay in their home communities. Additionally, it is essential that more people learn English to facilitate the interaction with tourists. Consistent standard for service quality need to be established, for instance by applying a certification system. Trainings and seminars that are designed in accordance to these standards should be offered for service providers to guarantee tourist satisfaction which is supporting the country’s reputation. This is also the key word for tourism promotion. On the national level, it should be the government’s responsibility to promote the country as a whole destination in the international market. Further cooperation with other Central Asian countries can also lead to an additional promotion of Central Asia as a unified destination. On the regional level the government should still support tourism promotion, but at this point, the private sector should also engage in the promotion, for instance through the DMOs, the CBT groups or other overarching associations like KCBTA or KATO. Last but not least, CBT and ecotourism can be introduced to additional rural areas and in accordance to their conceptual principles to ensure a sustainable tourism development in these regions.

6.2. Implications for further Research

First of all, research should focus on generating reliable statistics that proof the extent of current tourism structures as well as its importance for the local economies. This will support to make the government recognise the potential and may eventually lead to an increasing support from the government side.

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Reliable statistics furthermore, contribute to a further comprehension of supply and demand processes and will assist in adjusting marketing and promotion strategies to specific travel motives and traveller types that can be derived from the statistics. Further research should also be directed to enabling and hampering factors that determine community participation and empowerment.

In this context, further research is also needed to grasp the benefit distribution and the existing power structures within the communities. It has to be clarified, how disadvantaged groups participate in the benefits. Moreover, benefits on the community level should be analysed more intensely, as most of the current research projects usually obtain data about the benefits on the household level and then extrapolate the community benefits from these results. In addition to that, economic analyses should be conducted to evaluate the potential of CBT and ecotourism to provide a substantial alternative income source for the majority of the community, along with calculation on tourist numbers and expenses that are necessary to provide enough revenues as CBT and ecotourism can only contribute to community development in a sustainable way when the required tourism volume does not exceed the carrying capacities of the area. Following up on this, further research should focus on finding ways to minimise and manage waste in both, natural landscapes and areas of settlement. Last but not least, the impacts of interactions between the tourists and the community members on the community development, the societal structures, the culture and the lifestyles should be further analysed.

6.3. Concluding Remark

Tourism is a relatively young phenomenon in Kyrgyzstan and the country offers a huge potential for further development. As this development is currently gathering pace, it is vital to set the course to a sustainable direction, where development and conservation purposes are balanced and targeted in harmony. Ecotourism and CBT may be harnessed as instruments to pursue this direction, even though the case of Kyrgyzstan indicated the potential obstacles and challenges that have to be overcome to introduce and implement these concepts appropriately. The framework that needs to be provided for this implementation largely depends on the available capacities, the mentality of the local people as well as on their specialised knowledge and experience and on the support from the government and external assistance organisations. If this framework is developed mutually with all relevant stakeholders, under best possible consideration of their interests and needs and in accordance to the principles of ecotourism and CBT, a sustainable tourism development can be achieved, even though the management of such a cooperatively action poses - without any illusion - a mammoth task to all involved stakeholders.

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Annex

Annex 1: Interview Schedule.

1. How would you describe the development of tourism in Kyrgyzstan since 1991? 2. What do you think about the role of external assistance (NGOs, International Development Agencies) for the development of tourism in Kyrgyzstan? What inputs (technical, financial) have been most beneficial? Also, what challenges or difficulties do you feel have arisen in context of such tourism-related externally assisted development interventions? 3. What do you see as the government’s main role(s) in the country’s tourism development? Additionally, how can development of the tourism sector assist across different development sectors? For example, tourism-for-development, poverty alleviation, pro-conservation, etc. Are such inter-sectoral (potential) synergies adequately recognized by government partners? 4. How do you understand the terms/concepts of ‘ecotourism’ and ‘community based tourism’? What are their main characteristics or core elements? What are differences between the two? 5. What could be some negative ecological impacts of ecotourism/CBT activities? What are some of the main positive conservation effects or outcomes of ecotourism/CBT activities? 6. Are there negative socio-economic impacts resulting from ecotourism/CBT activities? What are the main positive development effects? And more specficially, to what extent can CBT and/or ecotourism provide alternative/additional income for local community members? 7. Which positive or negative cultural impacts can ecotourism/CBT activities have at the community or societal level? 8. What do you see as future perspectives or promising possibilities for tourism in Kyrgyzstan in the next 1-2 decades? In what ways do you you think tourism in Kyrgyzstan could be further developed to achieve greatest benefit possible for local communities and for conservation of the environment (especially in regard to CBT and ecotourism)? 9. What are the main obstacles for further development of tourism (especially ecotourism/CBT)? 10. What could be done/changed/improved to increase the contribution of ecotourism and CBT to nature conservation and community development?

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Eidesstattliche Erklärung

Ich erkläre hiermit an Eides statt durch meine eigenhändige Unterschrift, dass ich die vorliegende Arbeit selbstständig verfasst und keine anderen als die angegebenen Quellen und Hilfsmittel verwendet habe. Alle Stellen, die wörtlich oder inhaltlich den angegebenen Quellen entnommen wurden, sind als solche kenntlich gemacht.

Die vorliegende Arbeit wurde bisher in gleicher oder ähnlicher Form noch nicht als Magister- /Diplomarbeit/Dissertation eingereicht.

Datum Unterschrift

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