Rural community tourism initiatives in developed nations share most positive and negative characteristics with community-based tourism (CBT) initiatives in developing nations. They also share many barriers and conditions for tourism development. What makes them different is the context in which they operate. This paper identifies the main conditions that explain these differences through a review of findings from 103 location-specific case studies and other available literature that provides empirical evidence. The paper also explores the usage of the concepts of CBT and rural tourism. The findings are discussed under seven categories: Definitions, socioeconomic and cultural factors, policy and governance, land ownership, community cohesiveness, assimilation of external stakeholders, and type of visitors. It is argued that it is the developing-/developed-nation context, and not objectively established criteria, which largely dictates authors’ narratives with corresponding takes on tourism development and subsequent recommendations. The paper engages in a discussion about case-study research, its weaknesses and tendencies, providing some recommendations on how to increase the contribution of case studies to knowledge, and calls for more research on externally assisted non-Indigenous community-tourism initiatives in developed nations.

Many community-based tourism (CBT) initiatives around the world have failed to deliver expected benefits because of unfavorable conditions involving a variety of entwined social, cultural, economic, and political factors. Because of different economic, legislative, and political conditions, factors that facilitate and inhibit CBT are believed to be different in developing and developed nations. A directed content analysis of CBT case studies in 48 developing countries and 37 developed countries show that some of these differences vary in being advantageous or disadvantageous for either developing or developed nations. Furthermore, many case studies do not address factors and themes essential for tourism development because of the lack of a clear CBT framework guiding their research and a lack of integration of external conditions in the analysis. In general, collective land and tourism initiative ownership can provide certain advantages to communities in developing countries when it gives them control over land, tourism and natural resources, independence in decision-making, participative management and wider distribution of benefits.