ABSTRACT
In 1963, Katherine Whitehorn in the UK Guardian wrote: ‘The only unspoilt village is the one no outsider has ever visited, not even you.’ While this is extreme in its denial of the dynamic element and benefits of social integration and acculturation, it makes the point about the effect of visitors and tourists on local communities. Nearly forty years on, there is a vast body of work that demonstrates that local communities in Third World countries reap few benefits from tourism because they have little control over the ways in which the industry is developed, they cannot match the financial resources available to external investors and their views are rarely heard. This chapter focuses on these local communities which receive tourists and looks at their levels of power, control and ownership of tourism.
