Towards a New Political Economy of Global Tourism Revisited - Tourism and Development: Concepts and Issues - page 299

'locked into' fixed costs associated with tourism-related infrastructural devel-
opment, led to worsening terms of tourism trade precisely at the moment
when international tourism was beginning to expand in many other coun-
tries, thus intensifying competition. Despite the fact that countries with
more diversified economies, such as Kenya, have been able to reduce the leak-
ages from tourism to some extent (Dieke, 1995: 79), Sindiga (1999) warns
that it is important to disaggregate tourism by sector in order to get a more
accurate picture of the manner in which income accrues to the local popula-
tion. Thus, for example, foreign leakages in the all-inclusive beach tourism
sector are generally higher (62-78%) than, for example, safari tourism (34-
45%) which relies more on independent, locally-run tour companies, tour
guides and rangers (Madeley, 1996: 21). These disparities are also reflected in
the polarisation of the territorial distribution of benefits. In Kenya, 91% of
tourism revenues accrued to Nairobi and Mombasa in 1981, leaving a mere
9% for the rest of the country (Rajotte, 1987: 84-85). Leakages have been
further exacerbated by neoliberal policies designed to favour growth and com-
petitiveness via the attraction of inward foreign direct investment (FDI) and
increased economic integration of developing countries into global markets.
In Fiji, leakages remain in excess of 60% while the majority of tourism ven-
tures are either foreign owned or indeed joint ventures (Schilcher, 2007: 181).
Notwithstanding the increased regionalisation of investment flows and
the varying degrees of participation by an indigenous capitalist bourgeoi-
sie in their domestic tourism industries, notably in Zambia (Teye, 1986) and
Zanzibar (Meyer, 2011), Brown (1998) argues that a combination of oligopo-
listic corporate control by transantional tourism corporations (TTCs) and inef-
fectual state intervention/regulation continues to sustain an unequal model
of tourism development whose benefits flow predominantly to a privileged
minority of state officials and well-placed local capitalists in the host coun-
tries and TTCs based in the 'North'. Indeed by 1975, 47% of all hotels under
transnational control were located in LDCs and, by 1978, only one hotel
chain (the Indian-based Oberoi chain) out of the top 26 hotel chains was
based outside the advanced capitalist countries (Dunning & McQueen,
1982: 72-74). By the mid-1990s, an estimated 13 TTCs, encompassing tour
operations, airlines, travel agencies and hotels, exerted a substantial degree
of control over much of the global tourism industry (Madeley, 1996: 8).
Sinclair et al. (1995: 60) also point out that despite significant moves towards
the indigenisation of hotel ownership in Kenya, the majority of middle and
upper-category hotels are still predominantly run as joint ventures with
foreign companies. By the early 21st century, there was foreign equity par-
ticipation in up to 70-80% of major hotels in Kenya's principal tourist loca-
tions even if less than 20% of these were owned outright by foreign capital
(Endo, 2006: 602).
Despite continued high levels of foreign ownership and/or management
of tourism facilities in sub-Saharan Africa and, indeed, elsewhere across