Abstract
Alternative forms of tourism development from its conventional approach such as community-based tourism (CBT) and pro-poor tourism (PPT) are proposed to be specifically relevant to alleviate poverty and facilitate the development of disadvantaged community members. The intention of this review paper is to show, despite an apparent similarity, that there are indeed substantial differences between CBT and PPT. While CBT is an alternative to conventional mass tourism and it prioritises control by disadvantaged community members and the benefits of the tourism sector within a social justice perspective with redistributive aims, PPT originated, sustained and is sustained by the neoliberal system and its work does not offer great possibilities of changing the status quo. This, in effect, increases the inequality gap. The paper concludes that the tourism sector properly and holistically fosters social justice and redistributive measures to decrease the inequality gap and further proposes PPT strategies needed to take a CBT direction guiding the tourism sector as a whole.
Highlights
For a substantial period, it has been proposed that ‘capitalism had become a world system’ (Barratt Brown, 1995; De Martino, 2003) and neoliberal discourse has become ubiquitous in interpreting how life is understood (Harvey, 2007)
Objections can be made to the supposition that neoliberalism decreases inequality
pro-poor tourism (PPT) essentially maintains and perpetuates the status quo of the way the tourism sector is structured and managed; while community-based tourism (CBT), on the other hand, works towards the restructuring of the tourism sector through alternative development strategies that favour a rebalancing of the tourism industry towards more equitable control and benefits of local people
Summary
It has been proposed that ‘capitalism had become a world system’ (Barratt Brown, 1995; De Martino, 2003) and neoliberal discourse has become ubiquitous in interpreting how life is understood (Harvey, 2007). At the same time, concerning the UNWTO approach, it has been argued that ‘despite the UNWTO’s green and pro-poor agenda, it is basically following a neoliberal approach and its main aim is still to promote economic growth through tourism’ (van der Duim, 2008) Within this context, it is relevant to highlight the ‘propoor’ concept genesis that ‘has its roots in the modernization and neo-liberal theories in development studies, the essence of which was to infuse Western values and systems on the so-called ‘Third World’ countries’ through specific discourse used and propagated by international institutions despite their distance from the real world (Jamieson & Nadkarni, 2009). The same World Bank document proposed the need of scaling-up CDD where ‘scaling up’ is defined as seeking ‘to reach the greatest possible number of poor people, and to
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