Towards sustainable ecotourism in Tanzania: The Stakeholders9 Perspective

This study intends to assess the contribution of stakeholders’ involvement strategies towards sustainability of ecotourism. More specifically the study assesses the indicators of sustainable ecotourism; and examines stakeholders’ collaboration strategies, good governance and community empowerment for sustainability of ecotourism in Tanzania. The research employed mixed research approaches whereby a survey involving 250 respondents from eastern and northern tourist circuits in Tanzania was conducted. Data was analysed using various methods and techniques including qualitative description, binary logit models, ANOVA and factor analysis. The study managed to establish four groups of ecotourism indicators namely; natural conservation, stakeholder participation, cultural conservation and infrastructure support. The findings also reveal low level of stakeholders’ involvement in sustaining ecotourism, weak sustainability initiatives and poor coordination of networks and public private partnerships. There is unsatisfactory level of accountability among actors due to unclear distribution of responsibilities and mechanism for monitoring stakeholders’ activities. Most of rural communities have insufficient ecotourism knowledge due to inadequate information and tendency of using unfamiliar languages. Capacity building through training on principles of sustainable ecotourism and infrastructure support are recommend. For ecotourism to be sustainable, community empowerment is inevitable. Finally, further research should be carried out on how ecotourism and sustainable development strategies can be integrated.