Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
In 2005, international tourism receipts for developing countries
(low income, lower and upper middle income countries)
amounted to US$203 billion. Tourism is one of the major
export sectors of developing countries, and is the primary source
of foreign exchange earnings in 46 of the 49 Least Developed
Countries.
This claim for poverty alleviation is particularly significant to concerns about
the climate change impact of tourism, as it is often used as a justification of
high-impact long-haul flights between source countries and destinations in the
least developed countries (LDCs), as, for example, in the Gambia (Torres and
Momsen, 2007). This has led some to question whether pro-poor tourism is
an appropriate justification for continued growth in aviation (Nawjin et al,
2008). The argument in support of pro-poor tourism has been used to under-
mine attempts to increase the costs of flying through taxation or other
measures (Gössling, Peeters and Scott, 2008). However, the relationship
between poverty alleviation and tourism remains poorly understood and
mostly contested in the literature (Hall, 2007b; Zhao and Brent Ritchie,
2007).
Pro-poor tourism has emerged as a strategy to increase the benefits of
tourism for poor people (Pro-Poor Tourism Partnership, 2009). Whilst the
concept is accepted uncritically in some quarters, several authors have
explored the tourism potential for poverty alleviation in the LDCs and drawn
a number of negative conclusions (Nawijn et al, 2008; Scheyvens, 2009).
Whilst international tourism has been growing, the LDCs have experienced
much slower growth, or even negative growth rates, and the overall share of
international tourism in LDCs was less than 1 per cent of global tourism
receipts in 2003 (Nawijn et al, 2008). In reality, most international tourism
involves western visitors travelling to other western countries, particularly in
Europe (Hall, 2007b; Scheyvens, 2009; Urry, 2000; World Tourism
Organization, 2008). Hall (2007b) therefore questions the development poten-
tial of tourism without significant shifts in tourism flows to the LDCs.
LDCs frequently fail to provide the stable economic and political climate
needed for sustained tourism development (Nawijn et al, 2008). Thus, while
tourism may lead to economic development in a destination area, there is
evidence that governments, particularly in the LDCs, find it difficult to redis-
tribute this wealth (Nawijn et al, 2008). Tourism businesses, with the
exception of a few niche enterprises, are not aiming to alleviate poverty but to
make reasonable financial returns, and this might be at the expense of LDCs
(Scheyvens, 2009). This is particularly given the huge global diversity of
destinations LDCs tend to compete on cost; thus, tourism in LDCs is essen-
tially dependent on wealth inequities between the West and the South (Nawijn
et al, 2008; Scheyvens, 2009). Thus, in a global context, very little of the
economic benefits of tourism accrue where they are most needed to alleviate
poverty.
This is by no means an extensive review, but the fundamental argument
remains. There needs to be a much more nuanced understanding of poverty
