For me, TRUE CBT occurs when the residents of a destination own and operate their own tourism facilities and therefore earn the largest possible proportion of revenues derived from tourism in their area. Often, and in its purest form, this is in the form of homestays, where visitors stay in the houses of the residents as paying guests and they take the opportunity to learn about the cultures and lifestyles of their hosts, perhaps even participating in their daily living activities.

Such tourism has been proven to be capable of generating incomes for poor rural residents that provide important supplements to their agricultural-based livelihoods. However, and most interestingly, the rural residents that I work with who provide these kinds of travel experiences tell me that while the additional income is useful, they mostly value the interactions that they enjoy with their visitors, especially those from overseas. So it’s a doubly rewarding experience and when organised in this way, it fosters close and memorable encounters between people from starkly different backgrounds which lead to mutual respect and understanding.

When you stay in someone’s house you become their guest and the relationship is quite different to the experience a traveller gets when she stays in a lodge. In so-called community-lodges, the relationship between the host and the guest is that of an employer-employee, as in a hotel, and the encounter has a completely different outcome than a homestay. See http://www.asianencounters.org for a better taste.