How a community-based tourism & homestay network empowers women in Nepal

Tour­ism impact and sus­tain­ab­il­ity expert Aady­aa Pandey dis­cusses a few of the chal­lenges over­come by Nepal’s Com­munity Homestay Net­work (CHN). And she cel­eb­rates its pos­it­ive impacts. Thanks to “Good Tour­ism” Insight Part­ner Second Look World­wide for invit­ing Aady­aa to con­trib­ute this inspir­ing “GT” Insight about a social enter­prise that arose from a mod­est yet wildly suc­cess­ful CSR pro­ject.

“Tour­ism has the poten­tial to change lives for the bet­ter.” Not only does this sound good in the­ory, but data and anec­dot­al evid­ence from around the world shed light on the power of tour­ism to improve people’s lives. Nepal, the home of the Him­alay­as, has a large scope for tour­ism. With this comes an oppor­tun­ity to engage loc­al com­munit­ies so that the bene­fits of tour­ism can seep through to the grass­roots level.

With the aim to empower women and enable the bene­fits of tour­ism to reach loc­al com­munit­ies, Roy­al Moun­tain Travel (RMT), set up a com­munity homestay with one woman and her house in Panauti in 2012.

For any enter­prise to become suc­cess­ful, there has to be a mar­ket link­age. RMT provided that mar­ket­ing sup­port by fea­tur­ing Panauti in travel blogs and glob­al magazines. As glimpses of the his­tor­ic and intric­ately-dec­or­ated temples, snap­shots of the Newari way of life, and scenes of an old idyll­ic town reached audi­ences world­wide, trav­el­lers star­ted pour­ing into Panauti to exper­i­ence the laid-back life­style them­selves. And 10 more houses quickly signed up.

Suc­cess in Panauti, helped along by a Book­ing Boost­er grant in 2018, gave birth to what is now Com­munity Homestay Net­work (CHN), a social enter­prise that works with com­munit­ies at the grass­roots level. CHN primar­ily provides mar­ket­ing and logist­ics sup­port to the mem­ber com­munit­ies. In addi­tion, CHN offers train­ing to homestay hosts on top­ics related to hos­pit­al­ity man­age­ment and works with the com­munit­ies to design add-on exper­i­ences for trav­el­lers so that they might enhance and extend their stay.

Community-based tourism challenges

Any grass­roots-level inter­ven­tion comes with its set of chal­lenges and CHN’s exper­i­ences are no dif­fer­ent. One of the biggest chal­lenges CHN faces with the com­munit­ies it engages with is con­vin­cing mem­bers to invest in upgrad­ing their ser­vices to trav­el­lers from the get-go. While com­munit­ies look to CHN to guar­an­tee guests before they make any invest­ment, CHN can­not send guests to the com­munity until the com­munity meets a cer­tain stand­ard. A clas­sic chick­en-or-egg prob­lem. CHN has imple­men­ted a clear com­mu­nic­a­tion strategy to inform mem­ber com­munit­ies on the value it can add and gen­er­ally this has been enough to gen­er­ate cooper­a­tion from the mem­ber communities.

Anoth­er chal­lenge is that it is dif­fi­cult to work at the com­munity level when there is cri­ti­cism from and dis­har­mony in the wider com­munity. CHN has exper­i­enced dis­rup­tion from some mem­bers of the com­munity who are not part of the net­work. To com­bat con­flict in the com­munity and enable cooper­a­tion, CHN imple­men­ted an 80 – 20 mod­ule through which each mem­ber of the net­work is required to alloc­ate 20% of the rev­en­ue they receive towards com­munity devel­op­ment activ­it­ies. In addi­tion to this, mem­bers are strongly encour­aged to buy products loc­ally, prefer­ably from their own neighborhood.

In extremely con­ser­vat­ive soci­et­ies there are bound to be cul­tur­al chal­lenges as well. While CHN encour­ages women to open and man­age homestays, some mem­bers of the wider com­munity frown upon women inter­act­ing with for­eign­ers or even shak­ing a male traveller’s hand. How­ever, as cul­tur­al exchanges become the norm and not the excep­tion, cri­ti­cisms and unwanted remarks from con­ser­vat­ive mem­bers dissipate.

Community-based homestay benefits

Des­pite being faced with chal­lenges, the impact that CHN has been able to gen­er­ate is remark­able. When you vis­it these homestays, which are mostly led by women, you get a palp­able sense of improve­ment in their lives. In Panauti for example, as you inter­act more with homestay hosts, they will tell you their stor­ies of how homestays have made them more con­fid­ent, more in con­trol of their spend­ing, and helped them gain more respect from their com­munit­ies as they have become more fin­an­cially inde­pend­ent. Women who were once very shy are now con­vers­ing con­fid­ently with the tour­ists that vis­it them. Fur­ther­more, new busi­nesses have emerged near the homestays, tour­ists are get­ting more oppor­tun­it­ies to wit­ness the cul­tures of indi­gen­ous groups, and homestay own­ers are learn­ing more from cul­tures around the world. One homestay own­er remarked: “Why travel the world when the world can come to your own doorstep?” 

The ripple effect of com­munity-based tour­ism stretches far. In Barauli, for example, since the estab­lish­ment of the com­munity homestay, the loc­al agri­cul­ture-based eco­nomy has been bene­fit­ing as most of the sup­plies are sourced loc­ally. Oth­er com­munity-based lodges and res­taur­ants have emerged in Barauli provid­ing employ­ment to many loc­als, mostly youths. This is sig­ni­fic­ant for a coun­try that has suffered from young people migrat­ing out of the coun­try in search of bet­ter employ­ment opportunities.

The poten­tial of com­munity-based tour­ism to change lives seems infin­ite. While trav­el­lers get to exper­i­ence a loc­a­tion in a very authen­t­ic way, loc­als bene­fit too as every mon­et­ary con­tri­bu­tion goes into uplift­ing them both socially and financially.

Fea­tured image: Women who man­age the Panauti Com­munity Homestay with some mem­bers of the Com­munity Homestay Net­work team. Sup­plied by Aady­aa Pandey.

About the author

Aady­aa Pandey leads the Impact and Sus­tain­ab­il­ity Depart­ment at Roy­al Moun­tain Travel, a Nepal-based sus­tain­able tour oper­at­or that spe­cial­ises in offer­ing com­munity-based products. Her depart­ment’s role includes meas­ur­ing the company’s social and envir­on­ment­al per­form­ance; imple­ment­ing, mon­it­or­ing and eval­u­at­ing impact and sus­tain­ab­il­ity-ori­ented efforts; and com­mu­nic­at­ing the company’s com­mit­ments towards people, com­munit­ies and the plan­et to appro­pri­ate stakeholders.

Thanks to “Good Tour­ism” Insight Part­ner Second Look World­wide for invit­ing Aady­aa to con­trib­ute this “GT” Insight.