Community-Based Tourism from Perspectives of Local People: The Case of Yazılıkaya-Midas Valley

Abstract

Community-based tourism is a type of tourism that meets the needs of local communities, prioritizes locals’ participation in decisions, facilitates access to resources, and ensures fair distribution of income amongst locals. Community-based tourism also includes many dynamics that can directly or indirectly affect the local people, especially in terms of socio-economic, sociocultural, and environmental aspects. Based on these dynamics, the aim of the study was to evaluate the local people's perspective on the development of Yazılıkaya-Midas Valley in terms of community-based tourism. For this purpose, the research was designed qualitatively, and faceto- face interview technique was utilized. Participants were selected using the snowball sampling method, and the data obtained were categorized and interpreted by the descriptive analysis method. It has been determined that the local people approach positively toward the development of community-based tourism. The fact that local entrepreneurship is not encouraged in the region, the quality of life of the local people is low, and that the region lacks a participatory management approach that looks after the interests of the local people have been identified as negative aspects.