Does Tourism Economically Benefit the Poor of Gambian Society?

The focus of this investigation will be to establish if tourism economically benefits the poor of Gambian society. In carrying out this investigation economic linkages between the tourism industry and local community will be explored.

As you can see from the model below, in considering how tourism creates economic benefits for the masses, it is essential that the linkages between the tourism sector and the local economy are developed as they will have the greatest direct impact in terms of poverty reduction and wealth creation for the disadvantaged in developing countries (Ashley 2006).

In doing this leakages, payments made outside the tourist location economy from areas such as imported goods and services that are needed to maintain the tourist industry, must be kept to a minimum (Mitchell & Page 2006). Measures that have been taken to build these linkages between Gambian businesses and tourist sector will be explored, whilst improvements that could be introduced to maximise wealth creation and extend economic opportunity for all will also be considered in this report.

Rationale

The economical development of the poor though links with tourism has been challenged by (France 1997) who suggests that a considerable amount of tourism revenue fails to accrue to local people due to it being leaked out of the local, regional and the national economy.

This view is supported by (Brohan 1998) who claims that research suggests that this revenue leaks out of the local economy due to large foreign owned travel conglomerates monopolising the marketplace. This concept has been challenged by (Bah 2005) who believes that most of the discussions regarding leakage from tourist destinations of developing countries is founded upon the 'erroneous assumptions' that the destination owns the whole value chain, and that without the involvement of multinational tour operators providing services such as marketing the product, there would be no tourists and consequently no value chain.

When considering other perspectives, (Marfit 1983) has also disputed the economic value that tourism provides for developing countries and raises concerns about the costs outweighing the benefits of tourism in developing countries. She has suggested various methods in which these costs could be reduced and sustainability increased (See fig 2). The polarised views of these academics has provided the foundation to examine their theories in the context of evaluating if the poor of Gambian society benefit economically from the linkages made with tourism.

Methodology

The research for this report comprises of interviews with local tourism stakeholders such as hoteliers, restaurant managers, mangers of local business enterprises and local tourism advisers. These were conducted in The Gambia during a fieldwork trip in January 2008. The aim of these interviews was to gain different perspectives and local understanding of the economic benefit that tourism brings to The Gambia and if these benefits economically enhance the ordinary citizens of The Gambia through linkages that have been developed between the tourist sector and the local community.

Existing research of extensive studies carried out in The Gambia in relation to the economic value of tourism has also being utilised in this report. Further reading has also been used to evaluate the issues raised in this report.

Analysis and Interpretation

To put this report into context it is important to emphasis the social and economic condition of The Gambia and its population. The Gambia is one of the world's least developed countries, evidence of this is found in its Human Development Index rank which measure's of three aspects of human development, life expectancy, standards of education and standard of living. The HDI for Gambia is 0.502, which gives the country a rank of 155th out of 177 countries with the same comparative data (UNDP 2008).

Bah and Goodwin 2004) claim that half of the population are living on less than US$1 per day based on information from world development indicators, with most of the population surviving on subsistence agriculture. The fishing sector makes up 8% of GDP and argriculture represents 30% of GDP with ground-nuts being its major cash crop, but even that market is being resticted by competition from America's peanut farmers who are heavily subsidised (Bah & Goodwin 2004).

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