Tourism and Poverty Reduction

Tourism can reduce poverty in developing countries. But tourism growth is not universally inclusive of the poor. This book provides an overview of a broad array of analyses of how tourism affects poor people. It draws on international evidence throughout, but provides particular insights into Africa and other less developed countries. Tourism can reduce poverty in developing countries. But tourism growth is not universally inclusive of the poor. Moreover our understanding of how tourism affects the poor is largely based on partial and superficial analysis. Researchers from different disciplines and practitioners with different objectives generally work in splendid isolation from each other and from the mainstream of development economics. Detailed economic analysis remains buried and is rarely challenged for policy implications, let alone poverty implications. This book provides an overview of a broad array of analyses of how tourism affects poor people. First, it pulls these together to identify three main pathways by which impacts on poverty can be delivered. Second, it reviews the empirical evidence on the scale and significance of impacts within each pathway, exploring where comparisons can be made and where they cannot. Finally, it considers the different methods used to gather and collect data, and implications for how we should work in the future. Tourism and Poverty Reduction draws on international evidence throughout, but provides particular insights into Africa and other less developed countries. It makes a major contribution to a more coherent, cross-disciplinary and sensitive approach to the tourism-poverty debate.

Over the past decade, there have been an increasing number of publications that have analysed and critiqued the potential of tourism to be a mechanism for poverty reduction in less economically developed countries (LEDCs). This book showcases work by established and emerging researchers that provides new thinking and tests previously made assumptions, providing an essential guide for students, practitioners and academics. This book advances our understanding of the changes and ways forward in the field of sustainable tourism development. Five main themes are illustrated throughout the book: (1) measuring impacts of tourism on poverty; (2) the need to evaluate whether interventions that aim to reduce poverty are effective; (3) how unbalanced power relations and weak governance can undermine efforts; (4) the importance of the private sector’s use of pro-poor business practices; and (5) the value of using multidisciplinary and multi-method research approaches. Furthermore, the book shows that academic research findings can be used practically in destinations, and how practitioners can benefit from sharing their experiences with academic scholars. This book was based on a special issue and various articles from the Journal of Sustainable Tourism.