ABSTRACT
Official reports mention that Brazil, India and South Africa have potential to become some of the most visited places in the world. Perhaps more than any other sector, tourism is largely seen as a missed opportunity, an almost unexplored field to be opened up. Despite these and other obvious common traits and generalizations (such as those that inform the BRICS 1 label and the recent hosting of sports mega-events 2 ), sociohistorical particularities impose different marketing strategies on the tourism sector in the broad sense and on poverty tours in particular. How public authorities capitalize on touristic poverty provides an excellent example of competing governmental rationalities, their similarities and discontinuities over space and time.
