TOURISM BECOMES AN INDUSTRY - Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism - page 11

home in Mexico or Costa Rica often at one-tenth the price of the same treatment in the
United States, vacation included. That is thanks to cooperation in most of these foreign
countries between the ministries of tourism and the ministries of health.
Travel has also become a default fund-raising technique. Every day letters or brochures
are sent out by colleges and universities, bookstores, museums, magazines, public radio
stations, arts and music institutions inviting people to go on a tour or a cruise to have fun
and raise money for a good cause.
Tourism was born and nurtured in Europe, which still depends mightily on foreign vis-
itors, increasingly from China. In 2011, when it was still in the grips of the Great Reces-
sion, Ireland turned to tourism to dig out of debt, earning 9.1 billion euros that year.
Today poor nations see tourism as their best bet out of poverty, second only to oil and
energy as the major engine of development. Thailand is the world's biggest exporter of
rice, yet tourism is its number-one money earner. With that comes political clout. When
Thai protesters wanted to change their government in December 2008, they took over the
airport to keep out tourists, which brought the economy to a halt and victory to the pro-
testers. Costa Rica has turned its wilderness into a venue for highly profitable ecotourism.
As soon as Sri Lanka, and now Burma, began seeing an end to conflict, they opened the
door to a rush of tourists. After the Arab Spring uprising, Egypt sent out a plea to cruise
companies and tour operators to return and kick-start the economy, where one in eight
jobs depend on visitors. Winning status for a temple or old city neighborhood as a World
Heritage Site from UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization, is a guaranteed tourist draw.
The U.N. tourism organization now places poverty reduction as one of its top object-
ives, along with the high-minded ideals of improving international understanding, peace
and prosperity. Since the end of the Cold War and the opening of the world for travel, tour-
ism has become an important source of foreign exchange for the world's poorest nations,
often the only one. While tourism requires some infrastructure, from airfields to modern
highways, it is less expensive than building factories. In theory, poor countries should be
able to use the new revenue from the tourism industry to pay for the infrastructure while
raising standards of living and improving the environment. One hundred of the world's
poorest nations do earn up to 5 percent of their gross national product from foreign tour-
ists who marvel at their exotic customs, buy suitcases of souvenirs and take innumerable
photographs of stunning landscapes.
But just as tourism is capable of lifting a nation out of poverty, it is just as likely to pol-
lute the environment, reduce standards of living for the poor because the profits go to in-
ternational hotel chains and corrupt local elites (what is called leakage), and cater to the
worst of tourism, including condemning children to the exploitation of sex tourism. Like
any major industry, tourism has a serious downside, especially since tourism and travel is
underestimated as a global powerhouse; its study and regulation is spotty at best. Tourism