Community participation in sustainable rural tourism experience creation: a long-term appraisal and lessons from a thematic villages project in Poland

The paper has twin but related objectives. It examines the origins of the concept of theme villages in creating new rural tourism experiences and explores issues in the implementation of the concept. It also discusses the role of community involvement in theme village development, probing and testing existing models of local participation in tourism development in the context of five thematic villages in Poland. The five-year research project based on participatory action research covered the entire process of forming thematic rural tourist products. Five years later its effectiveness and sustainability was measured by a follow-up study. As a result, a seven-step community-created sustainable rural tourism development model is proposed. Local involvement in creating thematic villages is much more intensive and has such a wide scope that one cannot speak of facilitating or involving a community in the development process, but rather of tourism development creation by local communities. However, the social focus and inward-oriented perspective of community tourism can hamper effective adaptation of local resources to suit market needs and thus prevent the sustainable growth of community linked rural tourism. Expert external assistance may be necessary at key stages, especially by providing professional knowledge of markets and marketing.