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

Najib Noorashid,Wei Lee Chin

doi:10.3390/su13158618

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.

Highlights

Since the first recorded case of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Hubei, China in December 2019, the pandemic has impacted many aspects of global livelihood and public health, with no reservation to the travel and tourism industry
Based on a report by United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) [1], the global inbound and outbound expenditure was forecasted to plummet by 60–80% due to travel restrictions imposed by many countries, including those of key players in global tourism and economies, and this has since affected other smaller countries that rely heavily on international tourism [2,3,4]
The owners claimed that the pandemic was the most unprecedented challenge that they had ever faced in years of operating their businesses, as it affected the economy of most of these community-based tourism (CBT) operations

Summary

Introduction

Since the first recorded case of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Hubei, China in December 2019, the pandemic has impacted many aspects of global livelihood and public health, with no reservation to the travel and tourism industry. As the pandemic continues to change how global citizens view many aspects of lifestyle, resilience and the implementation of transformational efforts are necessary to secure sustainability and continuity of operations in many areas [2,3,5,6,7,8]. In July 2021, international communities are still struggling to cope with the ongoing effects of the pandemic with more than 191 million confirmed recorded cases globally. The effects of the global pandemic have affected the tourism industry in the small Southeast Asian country of Brunei. Since the first reported case of COVID-19 in Sustainability 2021, 13, 8618.

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion