How Does Tourism Help to Reduce Poverty in Developing Countries

¶ … tourism reduce poverty? Formulate Analyze Collect Compose Revise/Edit Risk Factors: The only risk factors involved in writing this paper are coordinating time so that I am not stretched too thin for any one class. At the same time I must balance school work with class work and so that is another factor to consider. Budgeting time incorrectly is the greatest risk factor.

To mitigate this risk, I will devise my schedule for the next month at work so that there are no surprises in this area and everything will be clear. The only other apparent risk factor is in not finding sufficient material to help me collect data, comprehensively understand the subject area, or find enough information on the topic to provide for clear analysis. However, from a survey of databases, it appears that this subject has been researched in the past, so a literature review should yield strong results.

Can Tourism Reduce Poverty? A Study in Hospitality Management and Socio-Economic Theory Abstract The issue of whether tourism can reduce poverty is a complex one that needs special attention. The United Nations have stated that tourism can help to benefit economic development but some researchers are critical of this assertion, indicating that there is no real evidence of correlation.

This paper provides a literature review of three studies that examine the relationship between poverty and tourism to see if there is a way to better understand how the latter impacts the former. The findings suggest that there are several variables that need to be considered before the subject can really be understood completely.

Those variables consist of power structure, relationships between the host country and power brokers outside the country, whether the host government is strong or weak, and whether the community is dependent upon foreign investment or if it is able to provide the necessary infrastructure to bring in tourism on its own. Introduction The question of whether tourism can reduce poverty is relevant to the hospitality industry because tourist destinations depend upon the hospitality industry in order to survive and draw business.

Governments of developing nations can promote tourism in order to reduce poverty, for example, in regions like Kenya or Southeast Asia. Warm hospitality is a common sense way to attract visitors to places where they have never been but may like to go. The key to this study would be to examine how hospitality, tourism and poverty are related so as to arrive at a better assessment of the interaction.

The purpose of this topic is to provide a literature assessment of the relationship between tourism, hospitality and poverty reduction in various countries around the world so as to draw out themes and concepts that can help students and researchers to better understand the relationship. The findings of this study will be relevant to developing countries, their governments and hospitality managers/sectors within these regions.

Literature Review The study by Spenceley and Meyer (2012) focuses on the relationship between tourism and poverty reduction in "less economically developed countries" by reviewing community-based tourism projects and "power relations between global players and local communities" (p. 297).

The study suggests that various factors and variables involved in this highly-complex relationship require further research and the researchers point to a variety of areas that should be studied more deeply, such as "the importance of private-sector business practices that contribute to poverty reduction" and "how inequitable power relations and weak governance can undermine efforts" (p. 297).

The study is valuable overall for its contribution to the literature on the subject but especially for highlighting these areas that need further attention so that researchers' understanding of the way tourism and poverty reduction interrelate can be broadened and deepened. Manyara and Jones (2007) examine the need for tourism as a support for economic development in their study of Kenyan-based community enterprises. However, what this study finds is that local tourism efforts are unsustainable without outside money and "white investment," which the researchers find "inadequately addresses community priorities" (p. 628).

Thus, this study shows that while tourism is expected to support development in Third World countries, according to the UN, the reality is that "foreign resource control and heavy reliance on donor funding" leads to "neocolonialism" and causes developing nations to be dependent upon the developed world. The study calls for a more "sustainable development" program in Kenya so as to avoid the conditions that lead to neocolonialism, as this condition tends to benefit the colonizing countries rather than the host nation.

This study is also helpful because it highlights the need to consider several factors when discussing the relationship between tourism and economic development, and in particular it assesses a need to utilize domestic partnerships in terms of providing an adequate structure of hospitality management as opposed to international partnerships, because with the latter the host country is more likely to experience exploitation and dependency upon the outsider country than effecting on its own the skills and ability to provide a welcoming and enjoyable stay for tourists.

The study by Hummel, Gujadhur and Ritsma (2013) adopts a contrarian point-of-view in that it highlights the "dearth of evidence of tourism's contribution to poverty reduction" in Asia (p. 369). The researchers show that while tourism has been promoted as a factor in economic development, there needs to be seen more evidence of the positive impact. The study examines cases in Lao, Bhutan, and Vietnam to show how the non-profit organization SNV has attempted to assist in the development through the agency of tourism.

The focus of the project of SNV is to enlist the aid of the private sector and from this perspective it registers its positive outcomes. However, the study offers some practical solutions to boosting the positive benefits of tourism for developing communities, and for this reason it is a helpful analysis of the subject of tourism and economic development. These solutions can be positively impactful for the local.