Travel Reference
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inviting places for tourists to visit without degrading their environments.
The most sustainable forms of tourism espouse principles such as balance,
harmony, holistic development, participatory growth and stakeholder
empowerment, to name but a few (Garrod & Fyall, 1998; Sharpley, 2000a).
Empowerment lies at the core of sustainable development and is an
underlying principle that should guide community-based tourism (Mbaiwa,
2005a; Salazar, 2012; Timothy, 1999; Timothy & Tosun, 2003; see also
Chapter 6). Scheyvens (1999, 2002b) identifies several different types of
empowerment in tourism settings, including economic, political, social and
psychological, all of which are crucial to balanced growth and social har-
mony. Access to jobs, the use of indigenous knowledge in tourism planning,
resident satisfaction, improved quality of life and social solidarity indicate
signs of an empowered community. Positive development is a powerful
manifestation of empowered communities and can be seen from these same
perspectives: economic development, political development, social develop-
ment and psychological development. Examining all of these types of devel-
opment is beyond the purview of this chapter, so these have been narrowed
to focus on economic and social development.
Economic Development
There are many ways of understanding economic development. Sen (1983)
noted that it is not synonymous with economic growth. Instead, economic
growth is but one element of economic development, which includes longer-
term efforts to sustain actions to enhance human standards of living in
quantitative and qualitative terms. Most global perspectives on economic deve-
lopment include social and political elements, such as security, infant mortal-
ity, literacy, health and human capital. Tourism is habitually targeted by
countries and regions as a means of achieving development goals by generating
economic growth (Dwyer
et al.
, 2010) and is frequently, and erroneously, viewed
as a panacea for socio-economic ills, particularly in regions that are struggling
in other sectors. Tourism can, however, be singled out as part of a broader
economic development agenda in conjunction with other industrial sectors,
such as agriculture, forestry, mining, education and banking. It is favored by
many places for its potential to provide employment, deliver a relatively quick
return on investment, eliminate poverty, augment tax coffers, increase foreign
exchange earnings, and diversify local, regional and national economies.
Given the prominent place of heritage in the larger tourism system, the
fact that heritage tourists tend to stay longer in the destination and spend
more than the average tourist (Timothy, 2011), it is no surprise that most
destinations have an interest in promoting their cultural assets for tourism.
Heritage-based tourism is big business, and its value is recognized by increas-
ing numbers of destinations (Hatton, 1999; Madden & Shipley, 2012; Shipley &
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