ABSTRACT
Other differences are perhaps less significant. Cleverdon and Kalisch argue that tourism is fundamentally different from traditional fairly traded commodities in that the ‘product’ – tourism – is intangible and invisible and is a multisectoral service activity incorporating diverse activities and sectors such as transport and agriculture. Of course, while the degree of complexity in tourism compared with fair trade commodities is beyond doubt, the production and distribution of commodities such as bananas also use a diverse range of services from the non-agricultural sector, not least the logistic chains necessary to get products from producer to consumer (Cook, 1993). Although such products may be ‘simple’, the multiple service chains involved are not.
