Tourism and people

• Displacement : Local communities are sometimes forced off their land for tourism development. In Barbados, most of the west coast is owned by large corporations who have made the beaches private property, causing many Barbadians to be displaced and preventing access to fishing areas. Between 1978 and 1998, the Masai in Kenya lost more than 1.5 million acres to tourism and farming. In 1990, 5,200 residents of Pagan, Burma, were evicted from their homes to make way for tourist development. They were given US$3 compensation each and a patch of infertile land 7km away. As part of a partly EU-funded tourism project, San Bushmen in Botswana were evicted from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in 2002 and moved to a new location which contained none of the plants that the hunter-gathering San relied upon. They continue to campaign to regain access to their ancestral lands. 2004 has seen the forced displacement of hundreds of indigenous people from the inner states of India, in Chhattisgarh, due to government plans to bring tourism to the area through the development of a national park.
  

• Child labour: The International Labour Organisation estimates that between 13 and 19 million children under the age of 18 work in tourism. This amounts to between 10-15 per cent of the total worldwide tourism labour force.
  

• Handicrafts: Handicrafts offer an important avenue for women, the poor and indigenous communities to earn income from tourism. A 1990 study by Rashtriya Bank in Nepal found that 14.7 per cent of tourist spending went on shopping, mainly for handicrafts.
  

• Distorting local economies: Tour guides and drivers in Bali can earn between US$400 and US$500 per month, compared with a teacher's monthly salary of US$100-150.
  

• Sex tourism: The Thai ministry of public health recorded 65,000 sex workers in 1997, but ILO cites unofficial figures of 200,000 to 300,000. It has been estimated that there are as many as 250,000 children (under-18s) in Thailand, and up to 400,000 in India, working in the sex tourism industry (ECPAT). In a study of 100 schoolchildren in Kalutara, Sri Lanka, 86 had their first sexual experience aged 12 or 13 - the majority with a foreign tourist.

Many jobs in tourism are low-paid with long, unsociable hours.
Many jobs in tourism are low-paid with long, unsociable hours.

• Porters in Nepal, a country which in the past has heavily relied on income generated from trekking, typically earn £2-3 a day. Most of the estimated 100,000 porters in the country are employed on a casual basis, while the recent Maoist insurgency has caused tourism to plummet, proving devastating to their work. Porters die every year due to the effects of altitude and inadequate clothing. In a study of Nepalese porters, 45 per cent had experienced medical problems on treks. The International Porter Protection Group (www.ippg.org) and Tourism Concern (www.tourismconcern.org.uk) campaign for better conditions for porters. Porters in Tanzania have launched a union to fight against similar injustices (www.kilimanjaro-union.com), while the porters working on the Inca Trail are being helped by campaign group the Inka Porter Project (www.peruweb.org/porters).
  

• A survey by the Association of British Travel Agents (Travel Industry Rewards Survey, 1999) found workers in the UK tourist industry earned up to 22 per cent less than the national average. Only 65 per cent of employees said they were offered a company pension scheme, compared to the UK average of 95 per cent.

Leakage means income from tourism that leaves the destination country. The World Bank estimates that 55 per cent of international tourism income in the South leaves the country via foreign-owned airlines, hotels and tour operators, or payments for imported food, drink and supplies. Studies in individual countries have put the figure for leakage even higher - 75 per cent in the Caribbean (DBSA) but as little as 25 per cent for large economies such as India.

• A 1993 study by the World Resources Institute in the Annapurna region of Nepal found that only 10 per cent of the cost of visitors' holidays remained in the local area.
  

• Two-thirds of the income from tourism in the Mediterranean - the world's largest tourist destination - returned to less than 10 tour operators from northern Europe. (WWF)
  

• In 1996, a survey found that 57 per cent of Costa Rica's hotels and resorts were foreign-owned, despite laws prohibiting foreign-owned companies from owning coastal properties (Anne Becher, quoted in Honey). In Indonesia in 1997, 90 per cent of 4-star hotels were foreign-owned.

Globally, 46 per cent of the tourism workforce are women, compared to an average of 34-40 per cent for the world's workforce as a whole. On average, women working in tourism earn 79 per cent of what men earn, and work 89 per cent of the hours men work - i.e. they are paid less and are more likely to be part-time. Women are much less likely than men to be found in managerial positions and tend to be found in the hotel, catering and restaurant sectors. (Gender & Tourism: Women's Employment and Participation in Tourism, UNED-UK Project Report, 1999)

This section was compiled by Mark Mann, author of The Gringo Trail and Tourism Concern's Community Tourism Guide.

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