Tourism: A Vehicle for Development? - Tourism and Development: Concepts and Issues - page 5

The overall purpose of this topic is to address these and other questions
by, in particular, establishing and exploring the links between the discrete yet
interconnected disciplines of tourism studies and development studies. In this
first chapter, therefore, we consider the concepts of and inter-relationship
between tourism and development, thereby providing the framework for the
application of development theory to the specific context of tourism in
Chapter 2 and the more specific issues in subsequent chapters.
Tourism and Development
As suggested above, tourism is widely regarded as a means of achieving
development in destination areas. Indeed, the raison d'être of tourism, the
justification for its promotion in any area or region within the industrialised
or less developed world, is its alleged contribution to development. In a sense,
this role of tourism has long been officially sanctioned, inasmuch as the then
World Tourism Organisation (now UNWTO, to distinguish it from the
World Trade Organisation) asserted in its 1980 Manila Declaration on World
Tourism that:
world tourism can contribute to the establishment of a new international
economic order that will help to eliminate the widening economic gap
between developed and developing countries and ensure the steady accel-
eration of economic and social development and progress, in particular in
developing countries. (WTO, 1980: 1)
Interestingly, and reflecting the organisation's broader membership and
objectives, the focus of the UNWTO continues to be primarily on the con-
tribution of tourism to development in the less developed countries of the
world. In this context, tourism is seen not only as a catalyst of development
but also of political-economic change. That is, international tourism is
viewed as a means of achieving both 'economic and social development and
progress' and the redistribution of wealth and power that is, arguably, neces-
sary to achieve such development. (It is, perhaps, no coincidence that, in
1974, the United Nations had also proposed the establishment of a New
International Economic Order in order to address imbalances and inequities
within existing international economic and political structures). This imme-
diately raises questions about the structure, ownership and control of inter-
national tourism, issues that we return to throughout this topic.
The important point here, however, is that attention is most frequently
focused upon the developmental role of tourism in the lesser developed,
peripheral nations. Certainly, many such countries consider tourism to be
a vital ingredient in their overall development plans and policies (Dieke,
1989; Telfer & Sharpley, 2008) and, as Roche (1992: 566) comments, 'the