This manuscript uses a social-representational approach that allows for including social interactions, history and cultural background to explain and cluster resident attitudes to tourism in protected areas in developing countries. Based on the published evidence on the failure of community-based tourism programmes and projects that aim to achieve community engagement and benefits, and on scholars attributing those failures to the lack of consideration given to the perceptions and ambitions of the communities, that in turn are split into different groups that perceive tourism dissimilarly, we propose a pathway to encouraging community engagement and participation. Field work carried out throughout the settlements neighbouring the National Park of La Langue de Barbarie in northern Senegal allowed to identify three group profiles: The largest minority are reluctant to accept any type of tourism at all, a second minority actively supports another type of community-based tourism, more locally centred, and a third group consists of those mainly wanting to escape their unwanted existence and migrate. We conclude that, to achieve successful sustainable tourism development, interventions should capacitate the group that supports tourism to lead initiatives, seduce the reluctant ones, energise those who seek to migrate and negotiate with the external tourist agents to achieve more equitable tourism development in which locals actively participate.