Tourisme et politique de développement économique

Résumé du document

At the beginning of the 1980s, authors started to question the success of mass tourism as a component of development strategies (Britton, 1982; De Kadt, 1979). "Tourism in the developing world has frequently been a double-edged sword, while it may provide a venue for communities and people to augment their income or livelihood, the majority of benefits tend to flow out of them." (Michell and Reid, 2001 : 114) The jobs created were said to be low-skilled, low-paid, and offered little opportunities to climb the social ladder. Furthermore, tourism enclaves recreate colonial schemes of socio-economic and spatial inequalities. Weaver (1988) identified a spatial dichotomy in the Carribean Islands, between a privileged tourist and elite space on the coastline and an unprivileged space in the interior occupied by the less favoured member of the community. The negative impacts of tourism development also ecompass : damage of the environment, loss of cultural authenticity, foreign domination and dependency (Brohman, 1996).
De Kadt (1979) noted that the economic benefits of tourism are often unequally redistributed within the local community, with local elites appropriating the majority of the benefits. This essay will focus on the ways the states can correct these socio-economic inequalities through tourism planning.

Extraits

[...] Nevertheless, at the beginning of the 1980s, authors started to question the success of mass tourism as a component of development strategies (Britton, 1982; De Kadt, 1979). ”Tourism in the developing world has frequently been a double-edged sword, while it may provide a venue for communities and people to augment their income or livelihood, the majority of benefits tend to flow out of them.” (Michell and Reid : 114) The jobs created were said to be low-skilled, low-paid, and offered little opportunities to climb the social ladder. Furthermore, tourism enclaves recreate colonial schemes of socio-economic and spatial inequalities. [...]

[...] Washington, D.C.: Island Press : 89-131 SMITH, V. (1998) Privatisation in the third world : a small-scale tourism entreprises . In Theobald, W. (eds) Global Tourism. London : El Sevier, Butterworth-Heinemann : 205-215 Journals BROHMAN, J. (1996) New directions in tourism for third world development. Annals of Tourism Research : 48-70 BRITTON, S. (1982) The political economy of tourism in the Third World. Annals of Tourism Research : 331-358 BURNS, P.M. (2004) Tourism planning : a third way ? Annals of Tourism Research : 24-43 DESFORGES, L. [...]

[...] Obviously, this attitude is still and will always be promoted by politicians believing in economic growth. Nevertheless, facing the negative impacts described previously, state intervention in tourism planning is nowadays recognised as necessary : “without state intervention, tourism will likely lack the cohesion and direction necessary on the long-term. Unregulated short-term initiatives which serve the narrow interests of powerful forces in the industry may well jeopardize the sustainablility and longer-term tourism potential of many communities upon which majority of interests are based (Brohman : 62). [...]

[...] (2001) Community integration : island tourism in Peru. Annals of Tourism Research : 113-139 REED, M.G. (1997) Power relations and community based tourism planning. Annals of Tourism Research : 566-591 SCHEYVENS, R. (2002) Backpacker tourism and third world development. Annals of Tourism Research : 144-164 SHAW, B., SHAW, G. (1999) sand and sales” : enclave tourism and local entrepreneurship in Indonesia. Current Issues in Tourism : 68-81 TIMOTHY, J.D. (1998) Cooperative tourism planning in a developing destination. Current Issues in Tourism : 52-68 TIMOTHY, D. [...]

[...] As said before, tourism development in Mexico created direct and indirect employment and reduced spatial inequalities, nevertheless mass tourism brought out many negative impacts, and as the World Bank (2005) reports of the Mexican population still lives in moderate poverty, as 18% lives in extreme poverty. As a result, Mexico oriented its tourism development towards ecotourism[5]. In 1988, in association with Belize, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, it launched the Mayan World program, aiming at encouragement and promotion of ecotourism in these countries (Hernandez Cruz et al., 2005). [...]