Ambiguities and difficulties in partnership relations: the case of ‘fair tourism’ in Western Africa

Abstract

In France, a few tour operators gathered together to form the Association for Fair and Solidarity Tourism (ATES), created with the intention of using tourism to contribute to the development of certain destination areas through the implementation of fair relationships with the host communities. Although ‘fair tourism’ is an emerging theme in research on tourism, and the subject of an increasing number of studies, especially on the Fair Trade in Tourism in South Africa certification initiative, very few academic studies have focused on partnership relations, the difficulties they face and their influences on the fairness of the resulting tourism. With the help of field work investigating ATES members and their partners in Senegal, Mali and Burkina Faso, we highlight, understand and interpret the relationships encountered by the partners in this North–South cooperation and the factors that are likely to influence it. We found that fair-tourism projects face the same issues, and are likely to give rise to the same failures, as development projects. One major difficulty results from the idealisation of the partner, which inevitably leads in turn to a mismatch between the expected and the actual behaviour of the actors involved.

Keywords:

• fair tourism
• partnership relations
• development
• North–South cooperation

Acknowledgements

The fieldwork for this research was funded by a grant from the Ile de France Region through the ‘Partenariat Institutions-Citoyens pour la Recherche et l'Innovation’ (‘Partnership Institutions-Citizens for Research and Innovation’). We thank Alain Girard for his insightful comments, as well as the reviewers for the relevance of their remarks.

Notes

Retrieved October 23, 2012, from http://www.tourismconcern.org.uk/principles-and-definitions.html.

We retain the following definition of development: ‘the social processes induced by voluntarist acts aimed at transforming a social milieu, instigated by institutions or actors who do not belong to the milieu in question, but who seek to mobilize the milieu’ (Olivier de Sardan, 2005).

According to the 10 imperative criteria required by ATES, at least 3% of tourism turnover has to be dedicated to this fund. In 2009, the total turnover of the ATES members reached 7,442,341 €, including more than 290,000 € for the development fund (www.tourismesolidaire.org/images/documents/barometre-ates-2010.pdf)

Not to be confused with the ordinary meaning of the word in the political language.

This model and the ensuing difficulties are presented in Girard and Schéou (2012).