The Gambian Tourist Value Chain and Prospects for Pro-Poor Tourism

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Tourism in The Gambia: International ‘Best Practice’ in Poverty Reduction & Pro-Poor Growth Through Tourism Draft Report (Friday 22 nd December 2006) Table 2: Five Empirical Studies on the Impact of Tourism on Developing Countries Where How Findings Mauritius, South Africa & Zimbabwe Egypt Tanzania 14 ‘tourism countries’ Indonesia Quantitative empirical desk-top analysis Inputoutput model General Equilibrium Model Crosscountry regression General equilibrium model Tourism is well-linked into the local economy and is overwhelmingly locallyowned, directed and controlled. Tourism has an industrial structure similar to non-tourism goods and services. It has low barriers to entry, is not import intensive and has a pro-poor impact 16 . Impact of international tourism on jobs and economic activity is much greater than suggested in national accounts – as this focuses only on the minority (i.e. 30-40%) of tourist expenditure that takes place in hotels and restaurants. Direct tourism jobs constitute 5.7% of national employment – and 12.6% if indirect and induced jobs are included. Tourism contributes over 10% to national GDP 17 . Tourism has a substantial positive impact on GDP, total welfare, exports and tax revenue. Urban areas will benefit more from tourism expansion than rural areas unless government invests in improving infrastructure – under this scenario the distributional impact of tourism expansion disproportionately benefits the rural areas. The economic performance of the ‘tourism countries’ (i.e. the national economies most heavily dependent on tourism in the world) exceeded the total sample of 143 countries without a tourism specialisation in all categories (OECD, Oil exporters, developing countries, etc from 1980 to 1995. Tourism specialisation appears to be an independent determinant of dynamic growth – which cannot be explained by conventional theory regarding countries saving / investment propensities, openness to trade, or starting from a poorer base 18 . Examined the impact of globalisation (in the form of tariff reductions) as a stand-alone policy and in conjunction with tourism growth. Tourism growth amplifies the positive impacts of globalisation on production and welfare. Tourism receipts mitigate the adverse effects of globalisations – particularly the government deficit and trade balance 19 Tourism is not a panacea for pro-poor development in the South, nor is tourism equally appropriate for all countries. However, on the basis of this analysis, there are reasonable grounds for hypothesising at the macroeconomic level that tourism generally has a benign developmental impact on host countries 20 . 2.3 A Framework for Analysing Pro-Poor Tourism Annex D includes a detailed outline of our framework for analysing pro-poor tourismtogether with examples of international ‘best’ and ‘worst’ practice. This short section simply introduces the skeleton of the framework to help guide the reader through the detailed empirical work from The Gambia. We have drawn many of the practical examples of what works and does not work from the Annex into the text to encourage a comparative perspective to the analysis of tourism in The Gambia. 16 Page, S (1999) Tourism and development: The evidence from Mauritius, South Africa and Zimbabwe Internal ODI Working Paper, ODI, London, UK 17 Tonamy, S and Swinscoe A (2000) The Economic Impact of Tourism in Egypt Working Paper No.40 18 Brau, R; Lanza, A and Pigliaru, F (2003) How Fast are the Tourism Countries Growing? The cross country evidence Presented at the Tourism and Sustainable Economic Development Conference 19-20 th September 2003, Sardinia, Italy 19 Sugiyarto, G; Blake, A and Sinclair, MT (2002) Economic Impact of Tourism and Globalisation in Indonesia Christel DeHaan Tourism and Travel Research Institute, Nottingham University Business School, UK 20 Mitchell, J & Ashley, C (2006) Can tourism help reduce poverty in Africa? ODI Briefing Paper 12
Tourism in The Gambia: International ‘Best Practice’ in Poverty Reduction & Pro-Poor Growth Through Tourism Draft Report (Friday 22 nd December 2006) Our hypothesis is that there are two broad ways that the impact of tourism on the poor can be increased. • Strengthening linkages between tourism and poor people in the local economy; and • Expanding the tourism sector to increase the demand for goods and services provided by everyone – including the poor. 2.2.1 Strengthening Linkages with the Local Economy Strengthening linkages between tourism and the local economy is the one of the most effective ways to promote pro-poor tourism because it directly engages with building linkages between the tourism sector and poor people. Unlike other approaches - where the relationship between tourism and poor people is assumed to be present, so the best way to help the poor is simply to have bigger or more valuable tourism – a linkages approach aims to actually enhance the relationship between tourism and poor people itself. The linkage between tourism and poor people can be strengthened by: • expanding the share of the tourism market that benefits the poor (e.g. assisting informal sector guides as an alternative to conventional excursions); • upgrading the production of the poor for more added value (e.g. supporting the production of better craft for sale to tourists) or • facilitating poor producers to enter the tourism value chain (e.g. helping poor farmers to supply hotels with agricultural products). As outlined in the introduction, a linkages approach borrows many of the conceptual tools of local economic development and seeks out the different ways that benefits can flow from tourism to the local economy and poor people within it. The nature of these benefit flows vary in different places with different types of tourism. Normally this involves looking at people who may benefit directly from tourists expenditure, such as the staff hired to work in hotels and restaurants and those working as taxi drivers, guides, craft market stall holders or communities that have entered into partnership arrangements with tourist investors. In addition, the indirect effects – for instance involving the farmers who access tourist hotel and restaurant agricultural supply chains – can be just as important for the local economy as direct linkages. 2.2.2 Expand the tourist sector As outlined above, there are reasonable conceptual and empirical grounds for a working hypothesis regarding tourism as an inherently pro-poor economic activity. If this is valid then simply increasing the size of the tourism sector - by increasing tourist arrivals, their length of stay or expenditure per day - will benefit increased numbers of poor people. This is an important aspect of pro-poor tourism both conceptually and practically. Regarding the tourism market as a zero sum gain almost inevitably places pro-poor tourism in the role of Robin Hood, seeking to divert resources from rich beneficiaries of tourism to the poor. The practical implications of this have been an artificial separation between propoor tourism and mainstream tourism – to the detriment of both. However, recognising that growing the tourism sector ‘cake’ as a whole will also increase the size of the ‘slice’ enjoyed by the poor encourages an engagement based on mutual benefit between pro-poor tourism and mainstream tourism interest. This is the basis for multi-stakeholder tourism destination forums. It is for this reason that our study of pro-poor tourism in The Gambia will examine obstacles to the development of the tourism sector as a whole and propose a range of practical measures to expand tourism. 13
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The Gambian Tourist Value Chain and Prospects for Pro-Poor Tourism

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