Coping with COVID-19: The Resilience and Transformation of Community-Based Tourism in Brunei Darussalam

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic heavily impacted the travel and tourism industry, economies, livelihoods, public services, and opportunities globally. This is also observed in the small country of Brunei. As one of the few countries that have successfully mitigated COVID-19 transmissions, Brunei is slowly rebuilding its tourism industry through its community-based tourism (CBT). Following Sharma et al.’s resilience-based framework for reviving the tourism industry post‑COVID-19 established in 2021, this study incorporates responses from semi-structured interviews with 16 local CBT owners on the challenges, the management, and the CBT initiatives during the height of the pandemic until today. These initiatives include diversifying more tour packages and utilising local resources and products. Despite the lockdown imposed by the government, which suspended businesses and restricted all travelling, local CBT operations flourished, generated more income for the owners, and created job opportunities for the community. Such efforts have caused the public to appreciate local cultures, the environment, and ultimately increase CBT experiences in the country. While shedding light on Brunei’s unique management of its tourism industry during the pandemic, this paper also demonstrates theoretical and conceptual contributions to the recent literature of resilient and transformational tourism and provide suggestions on how to manage CBT operations during these challenging times.

Strategies for Village Tourism Development in Coastal During Covid-19: Challenges and Opportunities

“…One model of tourism development that empowers communities with Community Based Tourism (CBT) is the development of tourist villages (Gabriel-Campos et al, 2021;Komariah et al, 2020;Mahfud et al, 2018;Wu et al, 2022). Community-based tourism (CBT) has been adopted in developing countries as a way for sustainable tourism development that ensures the achievement and distribution of tourism benefits to all, through community empowerment and tourism participation (Junaid et al, 2021;Noorashid and Chin, 2021;Nugroho and Numata, 2020;Walsh and Zin, 2019). The concept of community participation in tourism still raises various problems, for example, not all communities have benefited from the existence of the tourism industry.…”

Analyzing the green financing and energy efficiency relationship in ASEAN

“…, 2020a, b) in various countries, leading to an increase in nonperforming loans (Wojcik and Fernando, 2020), which is a negative signal for the global green financing market. On the other hand, some ASEAN economies, such as Brunei, Myanmar and Cambodia, do not have significant economic resilience to exogenous shocks, such as COVID-19 (Noorashid and Chin, 2021; Sadiq et al. , 2021), leading to deeper economic recession, market vulnerability and economic instability that hinder green energy project financing.…”

Guest editorial: The re-imagination of New Zealand tourism

“…Whereas, on the other hand, it is just a matter of trying to survive? In this section, we look at business change and transformation in order to create a resilient future (Hartman, 2018; Noorashid and Chin, 2021; Postma and Yeoman, 2021). At the heart of Fountain's (2021) paper is the relationship between economy and identity with food and representing both concepts; thus, the following question is propositioned “what role will – or could – food and drink play in a more resilient tourism future for the country?” Fountain observes that COVID-19 has accelerated a number of trends, which are likely to influence the resetting of tourism on a more resilient and regenerative pathway.…”