As trips to rural areas and communities are gaining popularity in recent years, those tours have multiple effects, both beneficial and detrimental, on the living environment and the native people. Therefore, regarding both views, I firmly believe that rural tourism brings both positive and negative development for the local community.
On the first hand, rural tourism helps with native employment and job creation in those rural areas, and invests in infrastructure, which are crucial for improving the financial state for rural areas. By transforming a remote region into a tourist center, not only the place will be the beneficiary from augmented economic development and facilities by attracting more potential investors, but also the native people, who would benefit from higher job opportunities created by tourism. Furthermore, doing so would disseminate awareness about the native cultures, helping to increase the number of visitors while enforcing cultural exchange. A typical example for this is the Polynesian Culture Center in Hawaii, a popular tourist attraction where lectures about Polynesian norms are given by native people on the island, thereby spreading cultural awareness and increasing native employment simultaneously.
On the other hand, these kinds of activities can be detrimental to both the native community and the environment, due to littering and deforestation. Although rural tourism attracts more visitors, it should be acknowledged that by doing so, this would result in littering and the destruction of forests to expand tourist facilities, hence affecting the crop production cycle and native people who harvest them. Additionally, when transmuting into a popular tourist attraction, daily expenses will increase, forcing native people to migrate to other regions with a cheaper cost of living. For instance, in Phu Quoc island, a tourist center in Vietnam, although well-known and frequently visited by travelers every year, has a low native population as the result of disturbance from tourism.
In conclusion, while it is a common belief that tourism benefits the rural community by developing infrastructure and fostering job creation, it should also be acknowledged that the environment could be damaged, therefore affecting the lives of the people who live there.