Tourism and development at work: 15 years of tourism and poverty reduction within the SNV Netherlands Development Organisation

Abstract

Over the last 20 years, international development agencies like SNV Netherlands Development Organisation have hesitantly become involved in tourism. This paper explains the complex and rarely researched political and technical issues behind the working practices, drivers and beliefs of an aid agency seeking to alleviate poverty via tourism development. Based on insiders’ commentaries and documentary sources, it presents five phases of the conceptual and material ordering of tourism within SNV. The phases took SNV from opposition to tourism work, through Community-Based Tourism (CBT), expansion, links to Millennium Development Goals, working in partnership with the private sector and an overall increasing need to deliver defined short term results – to closure. It explains how and why tourism became an important part of development work and how changing policy discourses and practices of international and national organisations influence the way tourism is practised as part of development work. It shows that SNV itself stimulated strong international debates about tourism and development. It concludes that relations between tourism and development remain highly contested and require the continual production of “success”. SNV is now gradually closing its poverty reduction through tourism work. The paper reflects on lessons that might be learned from the SNV story.

工作中的旅游和发展：荷兰SNV发展组织中15年的旅游和贫困削减

在过去的20多年里，国际发展机构，例如荷兰发展组织SNV毫无疑问地参与在旅游活动中。该文章解释了一个资助机构在通过旅游发展来寻求减低贫困的工作实践，驱动力和信念背后的复杂和少见的研究型政治和技术问题。根据内行人的评述和文献资料，该文章提出了SNV里的旅游的概念性和物质性的五大阶段。这些阶段将SNV通过社区为主的旅游(CBT)扩展到与世纪发展目标相联，并与私企的合作，和总体提升的达到短期效果的需求，来从相反的方向发展到旅游工作。文章解释了旅游是如何和为何成为发展工作的重要部分，并且国际和国家组织的不断变化的政治谈话和实践是如何影响旅游在作为发展工作中的一部分时如何实际操作的。文章也指出SNV本身促进了旅游和发展的强有力的国际讨论。结论总结旅游和发展之间的关系是一直高度相互竞逐性的，并要求持续创造“成功”。SNV通过旅游工作逐渐达到贫困减低。该文章反映了从SNV故事中能学到的一些经验。

Keywords:

• pro-poor tourism
• development
• capacity development
• development impact
• SNV Netherlands Development Organisation
• aidnography

关键词:

• 扶贫旅游
• 发展理论
• 可持续性发展
• 社会经济影响
• 荷兰SNV发展组织

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John Hummel

John Hummel has worked in tourism, poverty reduction and sustainable development for almost 20 years. He was a tourism adviser for the SNV Netherlands Organisation in several countries of the Himalaya, the Mekong and the Balkans. He is currently a PhD candidate with the Cultural Geography Group at Wageningen University, the Netherlands.

Rene van der Duim

René van der Duim is a Special Professor in Tourism and Sustainable Development at the Cultural Geography Group at Wageningen University. His research focuses on the relationships between tourism, conservation and development in sub-Saharan Africa.