Surf tourism, sport development and community building: Exploring the nexus in remote Papua New Guinea

This research explores the introduction of a commercial sport tourism venture into a remote community in Papua New Guinea (PNG), and addresses the question, how can sport tourism be used to promote community building in a developing country? The venture specifically focuses on surf tourism, and commenced operation in late 2009 with a mandate to facilitate community development. The surf tourism sector is an integral part of the multi-billion dollar global surfing industry (Buckley, 2002), and surf tourists are defined as individuals who travel to destinations for the express purpose of riding surfboards (Dolnicar & Fluker, 2003). Much surf tourism involves comparatively wealthy Western surfers travelling to remote parts of developing nations. Indeed, Ponting, McDonald and Wearing (2005) argue that surf tourism is now an important economic driver for thousands of communities in numerous countries.