4 September 2007

Thailand Community Based Tourism Institute (CBT-I) was established in Aug 2007. It is a groundbreaking organization which unites the grass-roots community development experience of the Responsible Ecological Social Tours Project (REST) with the community-based research skills of the Thailand Research Fund (TRF)

REST have worked for over 12 years assisting local Thai communities to develop CBT models tailored to their socio-cultural and natural environments. Our models have been studied and applied by practitioners from Asia, Europe, and the Americas. TRF have worked for 5 years using Community-based Action Research as a tool to empower community researchers to analyze how their communities can benefit most from local tourism development. TRF’s work has grown into a vibrant grass-roots CBT knowledge-sharing network.

CBT-I aims to provide support from ‘product development to the market’ to a ‘Thai CBT Network’ representing over 50 local Thai communities. This will be achieved through research, capacity building, facilitating market and stakeholder linkages, and strengthening the profile and position of the CBT brand including policy advocacy.

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