Capacity building and adaptive governance may enhance conditions required to develop community tourism that is resilient, sustainable and adaptable in small nations such as Belize and Dominica and the Caribbean region as a whole. This paper explores the perceptions of key community-tourism stakeholders in Belize and Dominica towards major externally funded community-tourism development projects that were undertaken in those countries. Strong dissatisfaction with communication, learning and meetings between government and communities was expressed by local interviewees. In both cases evidence suggested a need for a tourism extension agency akin to an agricultural extension agency. A model for a multi-actor, multi-scale mechanism to introduce a networked extension service for the Caribbean region is also presented.