Community based tourism performance scorecard

Abstract

Community-Based Tourism (CBT) is when a local community is involved actively in the provision of tourism goods and services to visitors for economic gains. Communities for CBT projects must be chosen carefully and require constant monitoring for sustainability. Here then lies the problem; the literature review shows that currently there is no proper Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tool to assist a funding agency like the Ministry of Tourism to evaluate the performance of a CBT. The goal of this research is to fill in the gap by proposing a performance scorecard for the evaluation of a CBT project. A main research question here is what are the indicators for the scorecard? The interpretive and constructivist paradigms were chosen to answer the research questions with an embedded mixed method chosen as its research approach. Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is able to reflect the multiple perspectives of an organization but its application in the tourism industry is limited and has never been applied to Malaysian CBT. The primary purpose of the study is to use the BSC perspectives to test Tourism Service BSC that predicts various variables that can influence the performance of a CBT while the secondary purpose is to gather qualitative data on CBT performance. Action research was used as the main research methodology. Three action research cycles were conducted on the Malaysian CBT industry using a modified Service BSC tool developed in this research. The first cycle was on the Johor Homestay quality evaluation and monitoring programme. The second cycle was on the performance of the Johor tourism industry through the Johor Tourism Award. Finally, the third cycle was carried out on actual CBT telecentres in Sabah and Sarawak. Based on this research and the tools developed, a clearer and more indicative perspective of the CBT can now be strategically planned, applied and monitored through a Tourism Service BSC.