A ‘Dutch vision’ of Community Based Tourism: Dutch People in the Belgian Ardennes

One theoretical recommendation to develop sustainable rural tourism is to base its development on local resources. This should embed the tourist activity into the local society, avoid easy relocalization of investment, and help to brand the destination. The Belgian Ardennes is a proximate recreational location for Dutch people. The paper lists the local resources that attract Dutch tourists and the ways in which regional and local authorities deal with this tourist development. Based on key actor interviews and in depth analysis of the promotional material produced both by authorities and commercial companies, the paper underlines the hotchpotch of ways used in selling and consuming the Ardennes. Due to the lack of local entrepreneurship and because the Dutch tourism enterprises have better knowledge of the Dutch market, these enterprises control a huge share of tourism activities in the Ardennes. These Dutch investments change the destination as well as the local identity. Initially, Dutch companies developed a form of tourism based on nature and the rural landscape, but they diversified their activities into non land based tourism (not involving the use of land as in agriculture hors sol) and the ‘disneyfication’ of places. This Belgian case study follows more or less the well known ‘tourist destination life cycle model’, but the originality of the paper is to stress the difficulties posed for authorities to regulate tourism development and to maintain the quality of the destination.