Host learning in community-based ecotourism in Nepal: The case of Sirubari and Ghalegaun homestays

This study investigated host learning in two community-based ecotourism homestay villages in Nepal's mountain trekking region. Homestays are an intense visitor-host contact zone, rich in learning, and important to the success of ecotourism projects. This was an interpretive case study used to interpret and test Billet's (2014) theory of workplace learning, and offer insights into a new area of inquiry in tourism studies. This theoretical lens captured the complex, contextually-based curricular, pedagogical and epistemological practices of host learning in ecotourism homestays. Findings identified a homestay “hosting curriculum” comprising: (a) environmental cleanliness, sanitation and conservation; (b) the valuing of local culture; and (c) homestay management. The study showed the complex dimensions of host learning in a time of cultural, economic and social change occurring in both villages, and how local hosts adapted their beliefs, tourism practices and identities in response to these changes.