Beyond Pro-Poor Tourism: (Re)Interpreting Tourism-Based Approaches to Poverty Alleviation in Vanuatu

Abstract

In Vanuatu—a least developed country in the south-west Pacific region—the villages of Mangaliliu and Lelepa Island in the north-west region of Efate (known collectively as the Lelema communities) are attempting to alleviate conditions of poverty through a communally owned and managed tour enterprise known as Roi Mata Cultural Tours. This paper critically examines the ways in which the Lelema communities are (re)interpreting globalised tourism-based approaches to poverty alleviation—addressed here under the rubric of pro-poor tourism (PPT)—in terms of notions that reflect local realities and locally valued measures of poverty reduction. The approach advocated in this paper adopts a more local or grassroots perspective on PPT as a means of generating a more nuanced understanding of the scope for PPT initiatives within Vanuatu. The current international discourse of PPT fails to address or comprehend the more complicated and contingent forces operating at the local level in polities such as the independent Melanesian states. An approach to PPT which emphasises grassroots perspectives is proposed that promotes local cultural reconfigurations of tourism through a process of glocalisation. However, without the implementation of broader support structures, mechanisms and networks, these glocalised business models will struggle to compete in the global market economy and to meet local community expectations.