Tourism for Good – Ensuring local people benefit

© Melanie Dretvic, Unsplash

Responsible tourism is about creating great places to live as well as to visit. This involves ensuring that tourism is a positive experience for local people, by creating meaningful, equal, respectful and positive interaction between local people as hosts and tourists as guests; ensuring that local communities play an active part in the planning, development and management of tourism; that the authenticity and integrity of cultural traditions are not compromised; and that local people are able to derive benefit from visitors to the places in which they live, by strengthening local supply chains so that they have more opportunities to participate in it.

Whilst tourism can generate significant revenue flows at national and local destination level, challenges relate to ensuring that the communities where tourism activity takes place are also able to benefit from it. For example, economic leakage (the amount spent on imported goods and services to meet tourists’ requirements) can be significant, meaning that only a fraction of the income from tourism stays in and benefits the locality, region or country where tourism activity takes place. Strengthening the local tourism value chain and assisting local businesses and entrepreneurs (in particular micro, small and medium enterprises), to access it, is a way to boost local economic linkages through, for example, participation in excursion itineraries, homestays, farm visits, culinary tours, outdoor and nature-based activities, cultural experiences and guided walks, as well as creating links between tourism and other sectors such as agriculture, handicrafts and arts and culture.

Many ABTA Members have developed practices to boost the local economic impact of their operations, including local sourcing policies, using local and family-owned accommodation, incorporating stops at local restaurants, markets, food stalls and handicraft producers into their tours and excursions, supporting community-based and social enterprises, partnering with local ground agents and operators and employing local staff such as guides and drivers.

© Joris Visser, Unsplash

Ripple Score

The Ripple Score was introduced in 2018 by G Adventures as a means to transparently show how much of travellers' money was staying in the local economy. Looking at all in-destination expenditure, including accommodation, transport, guiding and restaurants, over 640 trips were audited and given a score out of 100, representing the percentage of money spent in destination that is spent with a locally-owned business. The higher the Ripple Score, the greater the benefit to the local community. Across these tours, G Adventures has an average Ripple Score of 93, meaning that 93% of the money G Adventures spends in destination to operate tours goes to local businesses and services.

Flavours from the fields

The objective of the project, a TUI Care Foundation initiative delivered by the Travel Foundation, is to help rural, small-scale producers in south-west Turkey to benefit from tourism. The aim is to create more secure and sustainable livelihoods for farmers and small-scale producers in the Muğla region, by facilitating the local supply of traditional ingredients and delicacies to hotels, restaurants and gift shops. Tourism is booming in coastal areas, and this project is helping to spread the benefits to rural inland areas, enabling small businesses to tap into the tourism supply chain and customers to enjoy locally made artisanal foods.

OVER-DEPENDENCE ON TOURISM

The COVID-19 shutdown has highlighted the vulnerability of destinations and communities whose economy is particularly dependent on tourism – for example, 90% of the economies of some Greek islands come from tourism and in Antigua and Barbuda 91% of employment is in the sector. Over-dependence can be an issue where tourism has replaced other traditional livelihood activities such as agriculture or fishing, which cannot be quickly or easily revived; where – as in many destinations – it is a seasonal activity. Tourism recovery activities will need to focus on increasing resilience and diversification, to equip destinations to withstand future challenges. Product diversification, extending market appeal and developing tourism as one sector in a broad-based economy will be key to this.

The importance of diversification

Ol Pejeta, a conservancy in Kenya, works to conserve wildlife, provide a sanctuary for great apes and to generate income through wildlife tourism and complementary enterprises for re-investment in conservation and communities. They recognise the importance of diversification and avoiding over-reliance on tourism: “Tourism is a fickle business – we could lose tourism overnight – so we have to build in a strategy to manage that risk. And we’ve done that by introducing and managing other businesses within the conservation space. For example, livestock keeping further supplements and expands our revenue base, meaning that we always have the ability to pay for the fixed costs of conservation irrespective of what happens to tourism.”

Derived from: ‘Tourism for Good. A roadmap for rebuilding travel and tourism’ (pages 56 & 57), a report by ABTA (click for full report)