Article Type : Research Article
Authors : Nuong LN, Huyen Trang NT, Ngoc Huy DT, Thuy Trang NT and Tien Lam N
Keywords : Tourism development; Rural Tourism; Bac Kan
Tourism
development policy will pay attention to stakeholders, especially the people,
who play an important role. However, in reality, when people participate in
rural tourism development, they are not equipped with basic knowledge and
skills in managing and serving tourists. Because the benefits between
stakeholders are still not clear, the participation of people in rural tourism
development is currently only passive. Active participation needs to be
directed from the Government and local authorities because the concept that
rural tourism development is not only about creating economic benefits but also
associated with conservation and preservation, together with keeping and
promoting cultural - historical values in rural areas.
Rural
tourism in Bac Kan has just been formed for more than a decade, but has brought
great benefits to participating households. In general, rural tourism in Bac
Kan has not really developed to match the potential of a locality with a long
origin in agricultural production. Together with the trend of
"urbanization" today, this has opened up opportunities to develop
diverse forms of tourism. in which, rural tourism is a relatively new
direction. In rural tourism development, stakeholders, especially the people,
play an important role. Vietnam Tourism Law 2017 clearly states that
residential communities have the right to participate and enjoy legal benefits
from tourism activities, and are responsible for protecting tourism resources.
Accordingly, the residential community is facilitated to invest in tourism
development, restore and promote different types of cultures ... This shows
that the Party and State have been highly appreciating activities of developing
different types of tourism, including rural tourism. However, the reality shows
that when people participate in rural tourism development, they are not
equipped with basic knowledge and skills in welcoming, managing and serving
tourists. In addition, the benefit distribution mechanism among stakeholders is
still not really clear. Therefore, the participation of people in rural tourism
development is currently only symbolic and passive. Therefore, the article will
focus on researching, analyzing in-depth, understanding the process of people's
participation in rural tourism development and through the factors affecting
that participation, proposing a number of recommendations and solutions for
managers in policy-making to increase their participation in the coming time.
Pretty
examines different types of community participation in tourism development.
Accordingly, there are 5 types of community participation. These include active
participation, passive participation, consultation, participation in
information provision, participation in the implementation of tourism
development functions. Tosun studies the barriers in which people participating
in tourism development activities. In this study, people will be affected by
three groups of barriers when deciding to participate, which are operational
barriers, cultural barriers and structural barriers. Latkova studies the
attitudes of people when participating in tourism [1]. This study identifies
factors that influence people's participation decisions. Accordingly, there are
3 groups of influencing factors: (1) People's perception of tourism, (2) The
role of barriers when participating in tourism, (3) Personal benefits received
from travel. Nguyen Viet Ha undertakes research with the aim of understanding
the effect of local people's perceptions on willingness to participate in
volunteer tourism in Sapa, Lao Cai, Vietnam. The research has built 4
hypotheses and proved that all 4 research hypotheses are accepted through
multivariate regression model under the support of SPSS 19.0 software. Bui Thi
Thu Van performed researches on people's awareness and participation in tourism
development. This study used Pearson's correlation to see the relationship
between consciousness and people's participation. Accordingly, after conducting
the investigation and processing the data, the results obtained is that there
is a positive relationship between awareness and participation.
Nguyen
Thi My Hanh conducted research on local community participation in mountainous
tourism development, a typical case in Sapa, Lao Cai [2]. Accordingly, the
theory of social exchange is used to clearly see the factors affecting people's
intention to participate. The results show that the perception of factors
affecting both positively and negatively influences on people's participation.
Besides, the new factor is the added experience when joining tourism is a new
variable proven to influence the decision to participate in tourism in the
future. Kumar and Sekhar conclude that the use of technology has evolved the
way that rural tourism could be conducted [3]. Furthermore, it has opened up
ways to use rural tourism as a means to solve existing socio-economic
challenges in society. An and Alarcon confirmed that efforts to understand
sustainable rural tourism from the customer perspective have been increased
since customer loyalty is considered important for sustainability [4]. This
study is significant in that, since it evaluated the knowledge status for the
first time through systematic review and applied content analysis to academic
literature related to sustainability in the sector of rural tourism, it can
expand and deepen the knowledge and understanding of related topics and raise
awareness of a new research direction.
Research
Methods
Research
sample
Based
on the research object, time and objective of the study, the author conducts a
survey at tourist destinations with rural tourism development conditions in Bac
Kan province according to the list of suitable sites for development. Rural
tourism is based on the research results of “Vietnam rural tourism development
practical handbook”. Sites that have been researched and proven to have rural
tourism activities include: Pac Ngoi village; Coc Toc village; Nam Dai village
and Bo Lu village.
For
managers: For each village, the author chooses 5 managers, so the number of
questionnaires is: 4 * 5 = 20 managers.
For
residents, the total number of the population in the province that practice
rural tourism in Bac Kan as of the end of 2019 is 57 households. Therefore, the
author will use the overall survey method to collect information on the
participation of households in rural tourism development in Bac Kan province.
Analytical
model: The regression model used to analyze the factors affecting the
participation of people in rural tourism development has the following form:
Y =
+
Dependent variable (Y): People's participation
+
Independent variables (X) include:
X1:
Benefit
X2:
Barriers
X3:
People's opinion
X4:
State policy
Current
situation of participation in rural tourism development in Bac Kan province
Situation
of people's participation in rural tourism development in Bac Kan province
The following research results show a relative assessment of the research subjects’ people on the level of people's participation in activities related to rural tourism development. Accordingly, the results were implemented with 57 people and 40 management staff participating in rural tourism development activities in the area.
·
Participate in planning process
The
analyzed results in Table 1 show that there is a difference in the assessment
between the different surveyed subjects (Table 1). If the people show a high
level of agreement on the contents of the planning process in which they
participate, the management staff, particularly the village leaders and the
socio-cultural staff of Communes showed lower levels of consent. Accordingly,
from the point of view of local residents, they assessed that they have the
highest participation in the concept of rural tourism development in the area
and that they have participated in data collection. Rural tourism is considered
to be the lowest level by the people. Meanwhile, from views of managers, they
appreciate the role of people in participating in the stages of proposing rural
tourism development ideas; so, they set rural tourism development goals and
targets and develop implementation plans, although the level of consent is
generally not as high as that of the people as analyzed above.
·
Participate in the process of building an
organizational structure
With content participating in the process of building the organizational structure, the research results show that the level of consent on the participation content of the people is not high when the opinions are not yet 50% of the respondent’s agreement. Accordingly, both the management staff and the people have low assessment of the organization's process of setting up operating regulations. This can be explained by the reason that the people's education level is not high, leading to important jobs that require thinking and involving many people, people are not able to participate (Table 2).
·
. Participate in the design
process of tourism products and services
The
design process of rural tourism products is shown through the contents in
(Table 3). The content of visiting and learning the model of rural tourism
development in localities at home and abroad has not been appreciated by both
the people and the management staff because of the real development of
different types of tourism. in general, and rural tourism in particular in the
research areas of Bac Kan province have not been highly appreciated by the
local authorities and policy makers and the funding for this activity has not
been widely allocated.
·
Participate in the process of receiving
visitors
Among
the contents in which people participate in rural tourism development, the
visitor welcoming process is directly related and associated with the
relationships between other stakeholders in the local community. This means
that the best possible reception of tourists requires a close coordination
between the parties, namely local authorities, tourism service providers,
industry agencies and people - subjects standing at a central role in the
connection. Because of that importance, both the people and the management
staff appreciate and show a high agreement with this content. In particular,
the stage of providing information about tours, tourist destinations for
tourists and designing tourism products specific to regions was rated highest
by both participants. In addition, there is more expectation on the
participation of people in creating a safe and hygienic accommodation
environment to serve tourists because this is an important highlight to attract
the locality (Table 4).
·
Participate in tourism promotion
The
study shows that the promotion of rural tourism, although interested by the
people and government officials, is not really appreciated. Mainly, people only
participate in promoting rural tourism services through rural tourism products
and services associated with famous regional specialties such as Tay people,
... or from rural places that are well-known. The modern and more active
activities such as promoting rural tourism services through the media
(Internet, newspapers, radio, ...) are not really interested in people and
authorities (Table 5).
·
Participate in tourism control and
management
Activities
covered here including organizational structure building; tourism promotion, as
well as tourism control & management have been participated by local
people, but the level of interest and appreciation are not high for both
residents and managers. Table 6 shows that only the content proposing solutions
to attract local visitors in the future is of much interest to the people and
officials (Table 6). However, the remaining issues addressing developing
strategies to control and manage rural tourism in the future have not been
mentioned and concerned. A stable and sustainable development of this type of
tourism can help reduce poverty, improve income and living standards of the
local; however, a long-term strategy is difficult to formulate.
In
addition, the results also show a comparison of the level of participation in
rural tourism development among research subjects. Accordingly, the assessment
of people about their own participation is higher than that of managers. This
indicates that there is a difference in the perception and assessment between
the two subjects by education level, subjective perspective as well as opinions
in general.
Level
of participation in rural tourism development process
The
participation level is shown under two aspects: passive participation and
active participation. The first two levels in the table are defined by the
author as passive participation whereas the remaining four levels are
generalized as active participation. Accordingly, the contents of planning,
designing tourism products, services and receiving visitors are aspects in
which people actively take part in. However, in terms of building the
organizational structure; promotion and control & management, the local has
passively merge themselves into the process and only do such things under the
steering of the authorities and receive announcement from the authorities once
the work has been completed (Table 7).
Analysis
of factors affecting the participation of people in rural tourism development
in Bac Kan province
According
to the multivariate regression results table, it appears that there are 4
factors that have a linear relationship with the participation of people in
rural tourism development with a significant level. <5% (P - value
<0.005) includes the benefits, barriers, views and policies of the State.
This means that we have a basis to reject the hypothesis H0 that there is no
linear relationship between Benefit (hypothesis 1), Barrier (hypothesis 2),
Viewpoint (hypothesis 3) and State policies (hypothesis 4) with the
participation of people in rural tourism development; accept H1 (alternative
hypothesis) - there is a positive relationship between these factors with
people's participation in rural tourism development. Considering the
standardized Beta values, we see that the variables of interests, views and
policies of the State are all greater than 0, which means that the variables
have a positive influence on participation in tourism development. In rural
areas, the barrier variable has a negative impact on participation in rural
tourism development in Bac Kan province (Table 8).
The
study comes to some conclusions and suggests policies to increase the
participation of people in rural tourism development based on the analysis of
the situation and the model of factors affecting participation of people in
rural tourism development in Bac Kan province [5-14]. As follows:
Increase
the benefits of rural tourism
It
is necessary to have initial support for newcomers to tourism, such as:
investment consulting, consulting on production and business techniques,
organizing training courses, to help them acquire the necessary skills and
knowledge to provide the best CBT products
Local
authorities need to involve farmers in their research in order to add new value
with their own "rural" resources to develop services;
It
is necessary to clearly identify the goal of tourism in rural areas is to
develop ecotourism and cultural tourism with the mode of diversifying
participants. Efficient exploitation of resources for tourism development needs
to pay attention and share benefits with local communities, ensuring
sustainable development.
Limit
barriers in rural tourism development
Information
on tourism development planning, plans and policies should be transparently
publicized, so that communities in the region can actively participate. It is necessary to consider the main factors
for rural tourism development, which includes community factors and building up
the traditional cultural identity of each ethnic group, each locality;
participation of rural communities and people, as subjects of rural tourism;
promote the role of other stakeholders.
The
authorities at all levels, especially the grassroots level, need to organize
forums for people to contribute their opinions on tourism development plans and
tourism plans in the area. Through the participation of local communities to
develop traditional industries and festivals, tourists can visit and experience
with rural communities.
Travelling
agencies together with local authorities should recommend to the superior
authorities to remove barriers to rural tourism development such as quality of
local tourism human resources, people's knowledge and experience, and people
working in tourism, ...
Raising people's awareness about rural tourism
·
Visit each household, talk and listen to
people's opinion. This is a basic method to create opportunities for
conversation, openness and intimacy, thereby confirming people's desire to
participate in tourism, listening to their comments and assessments.
·
Group discussion: Group discussions are
conducted according to local units or industry groups. Group discussion is a
meeting with a large number of participants, according to specified topics.
Through group discussion, it is possible to see the major opinion of the people
in the area on relevant issues, thereby building Overall measures to impact
groups of people in the region.
· Organize training programs for people: Training sessions may or may not be tourism related. Topics may be related to agriculture and new rural construction incorporating tourism development. In addition, training programs can also be designed to raise people's awareness by combining educational, propaganda and economic methods.
Complete
State policies to support rural tourism development
The
State needs to improve tourism planning for each locality and strengthen state
management to implement approved plans. For localities that already have a
clear potential for rural tourism development, priority must be given to
developing infrastructure, supporting facilities to attract more tourists;
To
Improve mechanisms and policies to manage tourism services, open classes for
local government officials to raise awareness about tourism development.
Continue to improve the management mechanism, simplify administrative
procedures, create an open environment to attract investment in tourism
development
To
build a mechanism to attract capital from the people to invest in tourism
development; implement the socialization of the conservation and embellishment
of monuments, landscapes, festivals, folklore activities, craft villages ...
for tourism development. Perfecting tourism development mechanisms and policies
to create the most favorable conditions for residential communities to
participate in tourism activities.
To
develop mechanisms to attract capital from the people to invest in tourism
development, to socialize the conservation and embellishment of monuments,
landscapes, festivals, folklore activities, and villages. profession ... for
tourism development.
To
step up the training of human resources for tourism enterprises, to introduce
rural tourism development training programs to training establishments;
Strengthen
market expansion and propaganda for rural tourism programs built on the basis
of ensuring the relationship between exploitation and sustainable development
of natural resources
Thank
you editors, friends and Mr Dinh Tran Ngoc Huy (dtnhuy2010@gmail.com) to
support this publication.