Community Tourism in Ecuador

Development Model Is Transforming Villages

On a frigid Andean night last summer I broke bread with a Quichua community in Chilcapamba, Ecuador. We traded jokes and uncertain glances, working to get to know one another. I was there as a paying guest to experience a development model that is transforming villages throughout Ecuador: community tourism.

Travelers, local communities, and international organizations are calling for more community tourism opportunities, but few people fully consider the paradox this presents. Welcoming visitors is necessarily welcoming change. The market is thriving, but by definition it must restrain itself. A sense of being a minority in a new, not wholly understood, place is central to community tourism’s increasing appeal.

In Ecuador there are opportunities to live in indigenous Amazonian villages, go downriver in a dugout canoe, or stare up at the Southern Cross from Andean communities still unblemished by light pollution. Many visitors are not at all interested in questions about ownership and profit. Yet for communities these questions may matter most.

The fee for tourists there is $20 a night. The families receive $8 and must provide dinner and breakfast. Promotion and office space seem like they shouldn’t require much, but some communities have learned of their importance the hard way. A village I visited in the Amazon, Capirona, was an early entrepreneur in community tourism. They simply built cabanas and advertised locally, then had no visitors for the first three years. They needed connections to the outside world.

The families’ pay compares favorably with the wages of local flower industry workers, which are typically $5 to $7 for 12 hours of ceaseless labor. The long-standing disparity between rich and poor throughout Latin America makes $8 a day look like a comparatively decent wage.

Learn more about it, on Transitions Abroad Ecuador.