ABSTRACT
Tourism is often touted as a route out of poverty for those communities and nations which embrace it and promote it. It is particularly touted in this way by First World governments, companies and tourism organisations like the WTO/OMT and WTTC. Increasingly over recent years, First World development agencies and United Nations agencies have also come to accept that the industry can be seen as a vehicle for alleviating poverty. This may or may not be due to the failure (now obvious to some but not to all) of the neoliberal development model around the Third World. Three decades of following the prevailing dogmatic belief in comparative advantage, whose promoters, the IMF, WTO/OMC, World Bank and G8 governments, have forced Third World countries to produce tropical goods and to exploit their natural resources, have given rise to increases in poverty and inequalities. Hence the perceived need for change and the relatively recent use of the tourism industry as a ‘new’ mechanism either for continuing the exploitation or for addressing its failings. Hence too the recent rise to prominence of pro-poor tourism initiatives.
