Empowering Urban Ecotourism: A New approach to Development Local Communities Empowerment

Abstract

Empowerment has always been considered as one of the primary directions for improving the quality of life in local communities, and it may be accomplished in a variety of ways depending on the circumstances. Some disadvantaged urban areas with a significant need for empowerment offer the pristine natural potential for ecotourism. Ecotourism not only provides the proper quality of the environment for tourists, but also offers the greatest protection in the host society's different social, economic, cultural, and environmental domains. In this study, the meta-combination approach is used to combine the two ideas of empowerment and ecotourism, resulting in a set of benefits for empowering communities and the framework of Empowering Urban Ecotourism and its process and criteria had been explained by the relationship between, Empowering and Urban Ecotourism By means of using the Delphi method. The results of the research show that Empowerment ecotourism has social, cultural, economic, political, Psychology-perceptual, and, environmental domains. This approach follows step-by-step individual empowerment, increasing the ability to participate, social development and social effectiveness, social empowerment of the host communities.

Keywords

• urban ecotourism
• community-based ecotourism
• empowerment
• local community
• empowerment ecotourism