🌊 Imagine… Tourism by Pacific Islanders, for Pacific Islanders🌊
💡 Imagined Endstate:
A Pacific where tourism is not something done to communities, but something designed, governed, and sustained by them, strengthening culture, protecting land and sea, and building long-term prosperity rooted in local values and decision-making.
📚 Source:
South Pacific Islands Travel. (2023). Solomon Islanders call for sustainable community-driven tourism. link. southpacificislands.travel.
💥 What’s the Big Deal:
What makes this story powerful is not simply that Solomon Islanders are calling for sustainable tourism, it’s that they are demonstrating self-efficacy in action✊. The voices captured in the study reflect a clear belief among communities that they have the capability, knowledge, and authority to shape tourism in ways that serve their people rather than external interests.
For too long, tourism in the Pacific has followed extractive models where value flows outward, decisions are made elsewhere, and communities are expected to adapt after the fact 🛖. This research shows Solomon Islanders rejecting that pattern. They are articulating what works for them: tourism that respects customary land ownership, protects fragile ecosystems, supports local employment, and reinvests benefits back into villages and families. This is not resistance for resistance’s sake, it is confidence born of lived experience and an understanding of what sustainable development actually looks like on islands.
The study highlights something deeper than policy preferences. It reveals a shift in mindset from dependency to agency. Solomon Islanders are not waiting for international consultants, foreign investors, or national governments to define success. Instead, they are asserting their right to lead, grounded in cultural knowledge, place-based stewardship, and a long-term view that prioritizes future generations over short-term gains🌱.
This is what Pacific self-efficacy looks like: communities recognizing their own capacity to plan, negotiate, and govern complex economic systems like tourism, and insisting that growth must align with social cohesion, cultural integrity, and environmental balance🌍 . In doing so, Solomon Islanders are offering a model for the wider Pacific: development driven from within, not imposed from outside.
The call for community-driven tourism in the Solomon Islands is more than a tourism conversation, it is a declaration of capability and confidence. It shows that Pacific peoples are not lacking vision or capacity; they are demanding space to lead🌺. When Solomon Islanders claim agency over how their cultures are shared and how their lands are protected, they remind the world that sustainable tourism is strongest when it grows from the ground up. Imagine a Pacific future where this kind of leadership is the norm, not the exception.
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