Sustainable Destination Development through Responsible Community Based Tourism Initiatives: Select Case Studies from Bali Village, Indian Sunderbans

Responsible tourism is emerging out as a tourism strategy that focuses on the maximization of tourism benefits. It not only emphasizes on the environmental protection but also remembers the tourism stakeholders their socio-economic and environmental responsibilities to a certain place and to its people. In this background, the current paper has tried to access two Community Based Tourism (CBT) initiatives namely (1) Sundarban Jungle Camp, and (2) Tora Eco resort and Life Experience Centre in the Bali village of Indian Sunderbans –those have been emerged as two successful Responsible Tourism Models and have immense contribution towards the sustainable rural development of Bali village, Indian Sunderbans and are also inspiring others to follow their footprints. The researchers have adopted the qualitative approach for collecting the empirics of the paper. Both primary and secondary data have been collected to provide evidences to support the concluding remark that these two Community Based Tourism initiatives those are following the Responsible Tourism Guidelines have significant contribution towards achieving the economic prosperity, social equity and environmental quality - the three pillars of sustainable development in the context of Bali village. Therefore, the researchers suggest that more and more such responsible community based tourism initiatives should be carried out in the future course of time in different parts of Sunderbans also for achieving the same success in a larger scale