Tourism and Basic Needs
Should poorer countries develop their tourist industry when the basic needs of their own people are not met?
Poorer countries should consider developing their tourist industry as they are predominantly agricultural, have sharply limited development prospects in the near future and tend to be heavily dependent on official development assistance as almost everything requires money. Tourism is an attractive tool that could solvooe these problems as the developing countries could invest in this industry to reap massive amount of profits which could speed up the development of the country’s economy and allow the basic needs of people to be met.
Tourism is considered to be the most tactical approach for economic development, specifically in the poorer countries. When viewed as an export industry of the 3Gs, ‘ Get them in, Get their money and Get them out’, tourism has the greatest tendency to assist developing countries to move away from a dependency on agriculture and also, diversifying its sources of revenue. According to the World Economic Forum (WEF)’s study on tourism and travel, tourism industry creates most jobs in developing countries and their foreign earnings leapt from less than US$50 billion in 1990 to more than US$260 billion in 2007. With such vast amount of revenue, this could jumpstart the local economy and provides quick capital injection. Furthermore, in the case of having inefficient or corrupted government, the tourism industry can also provide one source of direct earning to the poor people. Therefore, poorer countries should place the development of their tourist industry as their main priority because it would address the problem of insufficient funds and to better caters the basic needs of their own people.
Basic needs of people often include food, clothing and medicine. Others are clean water and sanitation, adequate levels of nutrition, access to primary health care and basic education. To achieve all these, the government has to invest
Poorer countries should consider developing their tourist industry as they are predominantly agricultural, have sharply limited development prospects in the near future and tend to be heavily dependent on official development assistance as almost everything requires money. Tourism is an attractive tool that could solvooe these problems as the developing countries could invest in this industry to reap massive amount of profits which could speed up the development of the country’s economy and allow the basic needs of people to be met.
Tourism is considered to be the most tactical approach for economic development, specifically in the poorer countries. When viewed as an export industry of the 3Gs, ‘ Get them in, Get their money and Get them out’, tourism has the greatest tendency to assist developing countries to move away from a dependency on agriculture and also, diversifying its sources of revenue. According to the World Economic Forum (WEF)’s study on tourism and travel, tourism industry creates most jobs in developing countries and their foreign earnings leapt from less than US$50 billion in 1990 to more than US$260 billion in 2007. With such vast amount of revenue, this could jumpstart the local economy and provides quick capital injection. Furthermore, in the case of having inefficient or corrupted government, the tourism industry can also provide one source of direct earning to the poor people. Therefore, poorer countries should place the development of their tourist industry as their main priority because it would address the problem of insufficient funds and to better caters the basic needs of their own people.
Basic needs of people often include food, clothing and medicine. Others are clean water and sanitation, adequate levels of nutrition, access to primary health care and basic education. To achieve all these, the government has to invest