Paper short abstract:

Tata Somba is the most famous Beninese architectural heritage. Growing poverty was the reason for increasing abandonment of it. To find appropriate answer to it continuing loss, we conducted survey which findings underscored the need to include Tata Somba as main element of an ecotourism scheme

Paper long abstract:

To find appropriate answer to it continuing loss of the Tata somba dwellings, we conducted survey which findings underscored the need to include Tata Somba as main element of an ecotourism scheme. In the diagnostic and planning phase, ECO-BENIN team paid considerable attention to awareness raising and opinion building. First of all, we learned how social organisation worked and people who are leader for innovation facilitation. Then, discussions about which activities will be done to reduce poverty and help Tata dwellings conservation. Population had to be made aware of the technical feasibility of ecotourism but also of the risks local realities were presenting: unique attraction in process of disappearance, poor living standards, low education level, no running water and electricity. Given those facts, the only realistic option seemed to be the development of small-scale and low-budget type of tourism based on catering and housing in families (home stay), short hiking trails within the village and in the surrounding nature and day-long handicraft workshops. The presentation of this model as the most suitable and also desirable model went along with numerous village meetings, explaining again and again the idea of community-based ecotourism and expected outcomes from it. The support team invested a lot of time and work in managing ecotourism product with their cultural structures and in convincing the population that tourism is a high-risk business, that it can highly volatile with its development often depending on external factors nobody can influence.