The key findings from the 4 case studies reveal that community-based
tourism in Thailand generally emerged from both inside and outside factors, including
economic difficulties, environmental degradation as well as government policy. The
success of community-based tourism depends on various issues, such as the
abundance of tourism resources, level of community participation, strong leadership,
the strength of community organization, fair benefit distribution, effective natural
resource management and sufficient outside support.
The result of this study also highlighted that community-based tourism,
which has been perceived as a sustainable tourism, would create both advantages
and disadvantages to local people in various aspects, including economic,
environmental, social and cultural impacts. Therefore, principles of sufficient
economy philosophy and Buddhist economics were introduced to integrate with
the concept of community-based tourism as a guiding principle for all people to
acquire real happiness.