Tourism and Poverty Alleviation
Tourism is well placed to play a positive role in the alleviation of poverty, providing an opportunity for growth in employment and prosperity in many developing countries, including in remote rural areas with few other livelihood alternatives. In 2004 The Tourism Company prepared in influential report for the UN World Tourism Organisation, called Tourism and Poverty Alleviation, Recommendations for Action. This identified 7 different ways in which the poor can benefit directly or indirectly from tourism spending, which have been widely used as a basis for policy making and action.
Since then we have been involved in a number of missions to developing countries, including Ethiopia, Kenya and Vietnam, to identify practical tourism projects within poor communities. We have continued to use this experience to advise UNWTO and other development assistance agencies on linking tourism to poverty alleviation and the UN Millennium Development Goals.
