Mobile money for promoting conservation and community-based tourism and ecotourism in underdeveloped regions

ABSTRACT

Mobile phone money can develop tourism in a new way, such as through e-traveller’s cheques and e-credit cards, to bring about as cashless an economy as possible. While this will facilitate tourism, it will also help the poor to gain more from marginal savings, and promote funding of environment-friendly technology that is at the same time tourist-friendly, such as community reverse osmosis water filtration plants that will provide cheaper and cleaner water than bottled one in remote and underdeveloped regions. Similarly, mobile money-facilitated tourism can help eliminate use of polythene bags in environmentally sensitive regions such as the Indian Himalayas. Such synergies can be explored by further studies of e-money-driven tourism.

KEYWORDS:

• Finance
• inclusion
• ecology
• conservation
• mobile
• Himalayas

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Sagar Singh is an anthropologist who has been associated with the Centre for Tourism Research and Development, Lucknow, India, since 1988. He specialises in tourism anthropology and tourism ecology, besides tourism marketing and management.