Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
different countries. The economic weight of tourism exports in LDCs, mea-
sured as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), varies from as high as
31.1% in the Maldives, to as low as 1-2% in such countries as Bangladesh,
Burkina Faso and Zambia (Sharpley, 2009a: 340-341). There are many more
places where tourist activity is all but non-existent due to long-standing polit-
ical unrest and violent conflict, as in the case of Afghanistan, Eritrea and the
Democratic Republic of Congo, or indeed where for reasons other than con-
flict the infrastructure for tourism barely exists, as in Bhutan, the Central
African Republic and Equatorial Guinea.
Notwithstanding variations in the scale and characteristics of tourism
development across the LDCs, together with the fact that the geographic and
social distribution of benefits which have accrued from international tourism
are unevenly distributed (see Harrison, 1995b: 4-8), there is little doubt that
tourism has provided many LDCs with a valuable source of income and
employment in the absence of significant levels of industrialisation and a
diversified economic base. Such benefits notwithstanding, Sharpley (2009a:
338) highlights what he terms the 'fundamental paradox' of tourism devel-
opment in poor countries, especially in those classified by the United Nations
as
least
developed countries
3
:
Despite the apparently successful growth of tourism in a number of
LDCs that possess the potential to develop a tourism sector, wider socio-
economic development has almost without exception, been limited.
One of the principal advantages of tourism as an export sector resides in the
fact that it has traditionally been less subject to the immense array of tariff
barriers which often prevent merchandise exports from the developing coun-
tries penetrating lucrative Western markets, despite proclamations to the
contrary by the World Trade Organisation (see Dasgupta, 1998: 151-156).
Indeed, international tourism has also been one of the few sectors in which
'less developed' states with weaker, less industrialised economies, have con-
sistently achieved trade surpluses (which rose from US$6 billion to US$62.2
billion during the period between 1980 and 1996). Moreover, it has enabled
their governments to stabilise their foreign currency receipts and provide
some protection against price fluctuations in merchandise export sectors
(UNCTAD, 1998: 4). Indeed, were it not for earnings from the tourism sector
in 1986, Barbados would have registered a net balance of trade deficit of
US$315 million rather than the US$324 million surplus it actually managed
to achieve (Allen, 1996: 63).
Yet, according to latest figures from the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP), much of the Africa and South Asia still suffer from
chronic under-development, poverty, famine and reduced life-expectancy
(UNDP, 1999). In particular, the least developed countries, whose real
GDP per capita fell from 4.1% per annum to 2.6% between 2008 and 2011
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