Abstract

Tourism is today considered as a crucial employment sector in many developing countries. In the growing field of historical tourism research, however, the relationships between tourism and development, and the role of international organizations, above all the UN, have been given little attention to date. My paper will illuminate how during the 1960s tourism first became the subject of UN policies and a praised solution for developing countries. Examples from expert consultancy missions in developing countries such as Ethiopia, India and Nepal will be contextualized within the more general debates and programme activities for heritage conservation and also the first UN development decade. Drawing on sources from the archives of UNESCO, as well as tourism promotion material, it will be possible to understand how tourism sectors in many so-called developing countries were shaped considerably by this international cooperation. Like in other areas of development aid, activities in tourism were grounded in scientific studies and based on statistical data and analysis by international experts. Examining this knowledge production is a telling exercise in understanding development histories colonial legacies under the umbrella of the UN during the 1960s and 1970s.

Highlights

  • Tourism is today considered as a crucial employment sector in many developing countries

  • Like most of the modernist hotel designs projected in tourism development plans, this hotel compound was never realized, and until very recently the few hundred Western tourists visiting Lalibela every year had to make do with more basic accommodations, just as the thousands of pilgrims who are visiting the site to this day.[2]

  • As regards UNESCO and the experts working as consultants on these missions, the tourism assistance offers a glimpse of the mechanics and workings of the international system during a crucial growing period

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Summary

Introduction

Tourism is today considered as a crucial employment sector in many developing countries.

Results
Conclusion
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