According to Hospitality Newswire (requires free subscription), african governments expect that the growth of tourism in that continent helps in the reduction of poverty. Those of you who follow this blog, know that I’m pretty eskeptical on this kind of affirmations. It’s true that the growth of tourism creates work in the private sector, and many times serve to enhace the importance of certain urban areas. But, on the other side, it requires of important investments in infrastructure, made by the public sector. How are these investments financed? In many cases, with more foreign debt, as the Hospitality Newswire states.

Not to mention some occasional situations that favors tourism, such as the raise of dollar exchange rates in certain countries, which benefits the arrival of tourists who find lower costs. Couldn’t this be considered almost an implicit susbsidy? Other activities are damaged by a high exchange rate.

Does tourism growth provoke what some economists call “leak effect”? That is, that higher incomes in this sector help others, through the raise of the demand of products and jobs. But these effects are, surely, limited to some sectors. Can tourism really help to fight poverty? Very unlikley, without income redistribution policies, more and more regressive at most part of world. As I previously commented about the touristic appreciation of certain city areas (in the entries titled “touristic bubbles”, here and here, spanish only), public investment in tourism sometimes ends up sinking certain uban areas in the total darkness, when leaving them apart from touristic circuits. Particularly, in the United States of America, for example, these areas are usually the poorest and the ones that have the highest difficulties in infrastructure.

I don’t think you can mecanically say tourism fights poverty. Under certain circumstances, it can help to reinforce inequalities.