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Abstract
Tourism, a major global economic activity, is now growing fastest in the South. Promoted as a means of development since its modern beginnings, its benefits for developing countries remain debatable at best, even with the evolution of new, eg ‘pro-poor’ (ppt), forms of tourism and the advent of codes of practice and a more ethical approach among some consumers. It is, however, impossible to isolate tourism from the wider systemic processes against which it takes place. This introductory paper discusses some of the themes highlighted by the papers in this collection. They include the extent to which ppt may make a positive contribution to development, issues of control over the industry, the effects of climate change and tourism's relation to structural inequalities of power.
Notes
1 UN Declaration of Human Rights, 1948, Article 12.
2 UN World Tourism Organization (wto), ‘2007: full steam ahead for international tourism—latest unwto World Tourism Barometer’, press release, at www.unwto.org/media/news/en/press_det.php?id=1501&idioma=E, accessed 10 January 2008.
3 wto, World Tourism Barometer, 5 (2), June 2007, p 8.
4 wto, Tourism Highlights 2005, Madrid: wto, at www.world-tourism.org/facts/eng/pdf/highlights/2005_eng_high.pdf, accessed 15 December 2005.
5 Julie Finch, ‘Indian tourists worth more to London than Japanese’, Guardian, 7 May 2007.
6 wto, World Tourism Barometer, p 11.
7 Derek Hall & Frances Brown, Tourism and Welfare: Ethics, Responsibility and Sustained Well-being, Wallingford: cabi, 2006, pp 29–31.
8 For more on the way core–periphery distinctions are blurring globally but sharpening locally, see Frances Brown, ‘Dynamics of core and periphery in tourism: changing yet staying the same!’, Tourism Recreation Research, 31 (1), 2006, pp 79–81.
9 Peter Murphy, quoted in Tamara Ratz & Laszlo Puczko, The Impacts of Tourism: An Introduction, Hämeenlinna, Häme Polytechnic, 2002, pp 55–56.
10 See, for example, SG Britton, ‘The political economy of tourism in the Third World’, Annals of Tourism Research, 9, 1982, pp 331–358; E Hong, See the Third World While it Lasts, Penang: Consumers' Association of Penang, 1985; Polly Pattullo, Last Resorts: The Cost of Tourism in the Caribbean, London: Cassell, 1996; E D'Sa, ‘Wanted: tourists with a social conscience’, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 11 (2–3), 1999, pp 64–68; and Tourism Concern, Sun, Sand, Sea and Sweatshops, London: Tourism Concern, 2004, at www.tourismconcern.org.uk/campaigns/ssss, accessed 2 May 2005.
11 See, for example, Emanuel de Kadt, Tourism: Passport to Development?, Oxford: Oxford University Press; John Lea, Tourism and Development in the Third World, London: Routledge, 1988; and David Harrison (ed), Tourism and the Less Developed World, Wallingford: cabi, 2001.
12 Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics, Berkeley, CA: California University Press, 1990, p 40.
13 Observer, 23 March 1997.
14 Further discussion is provided by Gössling et al and by Wilkinson in this issue.
15 Colin Hunter, ‘Sustainable tourism as an adaptive paradigm’, Annals of Tourism Research, 24 (4), 1997, pp 850–867; Richard Sharpley, ‘Tourism and sustainable development: exploring the theoretical divide’, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 8 (1), pp 1–19; and Brian Wheeller, ‘Ecotourism/egotourism and development’, in CM Hall & S Boyd (eds), Nature-based Tourism in Peripheral Areas: Development or Disaster?, Clevedon: Channel View, 2005, pp 263–272.
16 C Ashley, C Boyd & H Goodwin, Pro-Poor Tourism: Putting Poverty at the Heart of the Tourism Agenda, London: Overseas Development Institute, 2000.
17 J Remenyi, ‘Poverty and development: the struggle to empower the poor’, in D Kingsbury, J Remenyi, J McKay & J Hunt (eds), Key Issues in Development, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, pp 190–220.
18 The British graffiti artist Banksy has demonstrated a belief that tourists can make a difference in Palestine with his murals (painted on parts of the Israeli-built separation wall in the West Bank) depicting, among others, a dove in a flak jacket. In December 2007 he brought a group of colleagues from around the world to Bethlehem both to encourage tourism as a support for the town's flagging economy and to highlight the plight of Palestinians to visitors. Amnesty magazine, January/February 2008.
19 The official 2002 UN wto definition of a tourist is someone ‘travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business or other purposes not related to the exercise of any activity remunerated from within the place visited’. This would certainly cover one-year exchange, diploma or masters students, as well as those enrolled for a PhD visiting but not residing at the relevant institution while writing it up. It would not cover those engaged in a full bachelor's degree, though the concept of the ‘permanent tourist'—usually applied to second home owners and those who retire to destinations previously visited on holiday—might.
20 Hall & Brown, Tourism and Welfare.
21 In correspondence with the authors.
22 These sorts of trade-off are also discussed in Gössling et al in this issue.
23 See Barnett in this issue.
24 This discussion draws on Jim Butcher & Peter Smith, ‘“Making a difference” through volunteer tourism’, unpublished draft prepared for this volume, which unfortunately could not be completed as a result of the lead author's illness.
25 Chris Brown, quoted in K Simpson, ‘Dropping out or signing up? The professionalisation of youth travel’, Antipode, 37 (3), 2005, pp 447–469.
26 ‘Sri Lanka tourism revives slowly’, International Herald Tribune, 7 July 2005, at www.iht.com/articles/2005/07/06/bloomberg/sxlanka.php, accessed 17 January 2008; and ‘One year after tsunami, Sri Lanka tourism bounces back gradually’, People's Daily Online, 19 December 2005, at http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200512/19/eng20051219_229201.html, accessed 17 January 2008.
27 The notion that small islands are particularly developmentally disadvantaged has been not unconvincingly challenged by Godfrey Baldacchino, however. See Baldacchino (ed), ‘Exploring sub-national island jurisdictions', The Round Table (special issue), 95 (386), 2006.
28 Lee in this issue, emphasis added.
29 John Urry has done a lot of work to this end. See the revised edition of his The Tourist Gaze, London: Sage, 2002; and Urry, Consuming Places, London: Routledge, 1995.