¿El turismo es una opción para “aliviar” la pobreza?

Abstract

Currently there are 1200 million people worldwide living in extreme poverty. For these circumstances, tourism has seen as an opportunity to alleviate poverty in rural communities. There are many features of tourism as an economic activity that makes it particularly interesting for low-income countries and disadvantaged communities that people inhabit; thus, the objective of this study was to analyze through the review of national and global case study reports, if tourism impacts in reducing poverty in rural communities where the activity occurs. Among the main findings, which are consistent with the approaches of Gascon (2011), is that the focus of tourism benefits a small group of the community, the rest gets marginal income that does not allow them to think of tourism as an option to improve their conditions, seeing migration as a more profitable opportunity. Thus, the approach pro-poor tourism (PPT) did not fight for equality, and may even represent problems for a portion of the population, as poverty and marginalization depends less on the amount of income earned but on the position of the individual within the social structure. As noted by theorists of "social exclusion", a person or social group may own or have access to the means to survive, but being marginalized in the fields of political, cultural and economic decision.