Homework before homestay : The importance of host-training for sustainable tourism development

Sammanfattning: When tourism is growing fast it is important to develop it in a sustainable way which benefits the communities involved as much as possible. Homestay tourism can benefit local communities such as mass tourism has been widely criticized for failing to do. Homestay has shown to be successful as a tool for building sustainable tourism and contributing to locals involved in other countries. The concept has given hosts an opportunity to gain from their local resources. This gives the resources importance thereby locals preserve them. Although, there is a lack of studies on how the homestay concept can contribute to sustainable tourism development and how the concept is implemented in the Philippines. The aim with the research is to explore impacts of the homestay concept in sustainable tourism development through following perspectives: assess the social and economic impacts of having a homestay, identify motivational factors behind local peoples' decisions to put up a homestay, explore further ways of developing homestays in a developing country with focus on the central part of The Philippines. In the research, several challanges for implementing the homestay concept in a sustainable way have been identified and given suggestions on. The biggest challenge identified is that hosts do not have the skills and knowledge for the purpose of the homestay concept. The study argue that this challenge could be overcome by host-training to a large extent. This host-training should preferably be facilitated by the government, which in the Philippines has internal challenges such as reversed hierarchy and low commitment to overcome before being able to facilitate the homestays for a more sustainable tourism development.