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Pro-Poor Economic
Development
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Tourism can significantly add value to the production of the goods and services that the SMEs offer to the tourists. The strategy for linking effective and quality tourism
services with SMEs is critically important for economic growth and poverty reduction.
Tourism developers and
promoters are marketers. The elements of their marketing activities include creation of
products and services that entice visitors to linger and seek leisure activities that will
part them from their money. All these activities have direct linkage with job creation and
poverty reduction
Many countries have defined its
macroeconomic, structural and social policies and programs in their Poverty Reduction
Strategy Papers (PRSPs) for the promotion of growth and reeducation of poverty through
tourism. The World Travel and Tourism Council estimates that the industry employs
approximately 1 in 9 people around the world, and high rates of growth are expected.
Employment in the industry is often attractive in areas where there is significant
unemployment and underemployment. |
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The following countries have included tourism
very explicitly in their development agenda:
Cambodia notes the importance of
tourism as a source of non-skilled wage income as well as formal salaries;
Malawi emphasizes the benefits
of tourism to poor people in the form of improved infrastructure, enhanced security, off-farm
diversification;
Mozambique highlights the role
tourism in stimulating the use of local goods and services;
Nepal sees tourism as a good
mechanism for rural diversification and national income;
Zambia highlights the benefits
of tourism in training, local involvement, and integration of the informal sector.
The benefits of tourism
not only include employment, economic growth/GDP contributions, foreign exchange earnings and
private sector investment, but importantly it benefits poor people. Tourism can strategically
assist on the development of, and support to, small enterprises, linkages with other economic
sectors – particularly agriculture and fisheries, the importance of minimizing or mitigating
negative environmental impacts and the enhancement of local culture. Within the focus on
employment, there is also an acknowledgement of the importance of local jobs.
The money the tourism industry generates is
money from outside, that are injected into the local economy and stays in the hands of the
tens of thousands of people it employs directly or indirectly, from the bellboy to the owner
of a small inn, from the fast-food bars to the tour operator, from the restaurant owner to the
waiter, from transport agencies to local handicraft producers. |
