Challenges facing Community Based Tourism in Tanzania: A case study of Arumeru District in Arusha Region

Community Based Tourism (CBT) is increasingly being developed and promoted as a means of reducing poverty in developing countries. Some of the needs of the local community are met through offering tourism services. CBT is an initiation of local people in Arumeru District to use tourist attractions to satisfy their needs. However, whilst many community based tourism ventures have been established in developing countries their operation have not been monitored properly. It is apparent that most of these communities based tourism venture are faced with a number of challenges. This study investigated these challenges facing community based tourism in Arumeru. The type of this research is mixed research whereby the case study research design used. The sample size included 4 CBT managers, 8 local tour guides, 8 waiters, 4 village leaders and 32 local residents. Purposive and simple randomly sampling methods were used to select respondents. The collection instruments were questionnaires and interview. Data was analyzed by Statistics Packages for Social Science (SPSS version 16.0) and explained in descriptive statistics, the content analysis was also used. From the findings of the study, it was clear that challenges ranged from; lack of government support, lack of education and training, poor infrastructure, poor marketing strategies, lack of community support, insecurity and poor customer care service. This study recommend that, education and training should be provided to the CBT projects managers and service providers, improvement of infrastructure, Involvement of local communities to CBT projects, establishment of aggressive marketing strategies and improvement of customer care services to CBTS