ABSTRACT
Tourism-based social interventions (SIs) are applied in highly complex contexts, and their evaluation poses methodological and conceptual challenges. The idea of combining the expansion of tourism with economic growth of host countries and communities made sense within the pro-poor growth (PPG) model. In consequence, tourism-based policy designed to trigger development in indigenous/rural communities turns into a highly complex task. From an informal inclusion of tourism projects to support natural protected areas (NPA) management initiatives in the 1980s, the institution then formalised the initiative calling it the Indigenous Tourism Programme in the 1990s. While pro-poor tourism (PPT) is basically concerned with the development of tourism and the eventual and relative benefit of the poor, the discourse of the development agencies proposes the actual use of tourism as a motor for the sustainable development (SD) of the host communities. Since 2007, the Alternative Tourism Programme for Indigenous Areas (PTAZI) is evaluated yearly in its performance and has undergone one programme design evaluation.
