FEBRUARY 2000JOU N L OF TRAVEL RESEARCH Building Tourism Excellence at the Community Level: Capacity Building for Community-Based Entrepreneurs in Uganda

The recuperation of tourism in Uganda will be a slow process. The tourist industry must overcome years of neglect, bad publicity, and the devastation of its most treasured tour-ism products—its wildlife and natural beauty. With tourism’s resurgence, it will be important for people living around Uganda’s natural areas to benefit economically from the ex-istence of those areas and from the potential tourist income. Tourism offers the only legal avenue by which people living in rural communities can derive economic benefits from wildlife. However, most rural entrepreneurs and community organizations interested in the tourist market possess neither the skills nor the know-how to operate successful tourism es-tablishments. This article describes a training program aimed at building those skills and establishing strong institu-tional linkages to ensure the existence of a viabl