Fair Trade in Tourism - a marketing tool for social transformation?

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter critically analyses the potential of a Fair Trade Tourism label to address issues of inequality and injustice in international tourism in less economically developed countries (LEDCs). It starts by presenting the backdrop of unfair, unequal, neocolonial exchange that has given rise to the present capitalist tourism economy, and exploring issues of corporate power and the problems of unfair international trade agreements. It then explores tourism certification in general before examining Fair Trade certification in particular. The International Network on Fair Trade in Tourism, set up in 1999 by the UK non-governmental organization Tourism Concern, is used as a case study to highlight the outcomes of an international multi-stakeholder consultation process on Fair Trade in Tourism conducted between 1999 and 2002. The purpose of the case study is to illustrate the complexities of developing an international consensus on the key criteria for such a concept; and to emphasize the need for shifting the decision-making process on trade justice from a Eurocentric to a polycentric approach, originating from within the communities that it aims to benefit.