Tourism

ODI work on tourism aims to close the gap between poverty and economic growth, seeking answers to two fundamental questions: how does tourism affect the poor and how can tourism development be changed to increase net benefits to poor people?

We aim to do this by informing and inspiring policies and practice to enable the private, public and non-governmental sectors to work together more effectively in the following areas:

• Measuring the impact of tourism on the poor: The economic impacts of tourism on the poor can be broadly categorised as occurring through three pathways: direct impacts; indirect impacts; and dynamic impacts.
• Sector-specific corporate engagement - The tourism industry: how can small-scale entrepreneurs and established businesses and public sector policy-makers strengthen pro-poor impacts, and how can markets in tourism can be made more accessible for the poor.
• How to counter tourism's negative impacts: responses and policy advice on the trade-off between benefits and other negative impacts – such as climate change and environmental degradation at the destination.
• Challenging assumptions and improving action on tourism and poverty: From coining the term ‘pro-poor tourism’, with partners, in 1999, to today’s advocacy of a value chain approach to tourism as a way to scale up impacts, we have sought to test assumptions and improve thinking and action.