Poverty reduction or alleviation

Scroll down for posts that have been tagged with “poverty reduc­tion” as it relates to travel & tour­ism des­tin­a­tions and travel & tour­ism industry stakeholders.

Tags are inform­al. The “Good Tour­ism” Blog tries not to get bogged down with ter­min­o­logy and defin­i­tions. If you dis­agree with tags applied (or not applied) to a post, feel free to com­ment on it or any post you think has been incor­rectly or insuf­fi­ciently tagged. “GT” encour­ages good-faith debate and discussion.

‘Jouissance’: The pleasure & pain of ‘ethical donor tourism’ in Africa

and January 18, 2022
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Zebra stripes at Dikhololo Game Reserve, Brits, South Africa. Photo by David Clarke (CC0) via Unsplash. https://unsplash.com/photos/sN6d60TySV0

Some of the very wealthy among us love to live large in Africa’s mag­ni­fi­cent land­scape, to observe (and hunt) its icon­ic wild­life. While they are there it is good that they give gen­er­ously to eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment, phil­an­throp­ic, and con­ser­va­tion pro­jects, no? Are we miss­ing some­thing? Aca­dem­ics Stasja Koot and Robert Fletch­er think so.  It’s a “Good […]

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For the sake of the world’s poor, might the risk of overtourism be worth it?

April 20, 2021
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Passport, camera, money ... go. By bjwhite66212 (CC0) via Pixabay. https://pixabay.com/photos/camera-passport-money-travel-6117369/

From a facil­it­at­or of poten­tially dam­aging masses to a mere tinker­er at the eco­nom­ic mar­gins of a place, travel & tour­ism can be any­thing a des­tin­a­tion chooses it to be.  In this “Good Tour­ism” Insight, Peter Smith sug­gests that mass tour­ism may offer more to the world’s poorest stake­hold­ers than many com­ment­at­ors acknow­ledge. [Thanks to Jim Butcher for […]

Read More For the sake of the world’s poor, might the risk of overtourism be worth it?

Tourism’s democratic deficit

February 25, 2021

There's more than one way. By geralt (CC0) via Pixabay.

Travel & tour­is­m’s host com­munit­ies need altern­at­ive vis­ions for devel­op­ment and the power to choose between them, accord­ing to lec­turer and writer Jim Butcher. It’s his second “Good Tour­ism” Insight. Eth­ic­al tour­ism is strongly asso­ci­ated with ‘com­munity empower­ment’ and ‘loc­al par­ti­cip­a­tion’. But how does this relate to the import­ant debates raging about nation­al demo­cracy: populism, […]

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Travel & tourism’s ‘critical’ rethink and its imperative shift to circular economics

February 18, 2021
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Maya Bay, Koh Phi Phi Leh, Thailand in 2014. By 2017, tsome 3,500 people visited the beach made famous by The Beach. Image by Nicolas Vollmer (CC BY 2.0) via Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maya_Bay_boats.jpg overlaid by a question mark by geralt (CC0) via Pixabay. https://www.freeimg.net/photo/1633662/questionmark-who-where-how

For the sake of grow­ing well-being and shar­ing the tour­ism com­mons with the great­er major­ity, cir­cu­lar eco­nom­ic approaches to travel & tour­ism must replace neo­lib­er­al cap­it­al­ist growth mod­els. To make that argu­ment, research­er Phoebe Ever­ing­ham takes a crit­ic­al the­or­et­ic­al approach. It’s a “Good Tour­ism” Insight. [Thanks to Joseph M Cheer for invit­ing Dr Ever­ing­ham to […]

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How can vocational education contribute to women’s empowerment in hospitality & tourism?


At EGBOK, the students, both men and women, undergo comprehensive classes on women’s empowerment and gender equality, going into various social and gender issues such as marriage, love, relationships, child rearing and financial matters. Image (c) 2017 Chris RJ Anderson Photography. Supplied by ASSET‑H&C.

Every­one work­ing in travel & tour­ism and the hos­pit­al­ity sec­tor should be appro­pri­ately val­ued, paid, and recog­nised. With fresh research in hand, Soph­ie Hart­man, Nguyễn Thị Thu Thảo, and Võ Thị Quế Chi from the Asso­ci­ation of South­east Asi­an Social Enter­prises for Train­ing in Hos­pit­al­ity & Cater­ing (ASSET‑H&C) explain how voca­tion­al edu­ca­tion and train­ing can […]

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Why are travel & tourism workers growing mushrooms in rural Sri Lanka?

December 10, 2020
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Oyster mushroom abstraction. Image (CC0) via Pikrepo.

Susan Eardly and Dinesh Pathir­ana are empower­ing rur­al Sri Lankan fam­il­ies pre­vi­ously reli­ant on tour­ism income to devel­op sus­tain­able busi­nesses. In this “Good Tour­ism” Insight, Ms Eardly dis­cusses funguses and answers the ques­tion: “Why fungi?”  (Thanks to “GT” Friend Richard Shep­ard for the intro­duc­tion.) Sri Lanka, the trop­ic­al island set like a pearl in the Indian […]

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