The ethics of tourism
: Some are appalled at tourists reappearing in Phuket after the tsunami. But others, starting with the head of Lonely Planet, say that getting tourist dollars to those economies are vital. I was reading a story at Australia’s The Age and another Jeff Jarvis (not me, not the jazz musician, the Australian Jeff Jarvis I run across on eGoogles now and again) says:
Jeff Jarvis, a Monash University academic and tourism industry researcher whose particular interest is how the largesse of Western tourists impacts on developing countries, has no doubt. “This is a time for people to be foot soldiers for development aid – to get off the sofa and book their next holiday to Thailand or Sri Lanka,” he says. “To support the people in the bar and selling T-shirts on the beach and working in the restaurants.”
Jarvis, director of the graduate tourism program at the National Centre for Australian Studies at Monash, argues that tourism is a major force of development worldwide – and becoming ever more important. “People don’t realise what happens to the money they spend on holiday. That for them to go and spend a couple of thousand dollars in a developing country would be the equivalent of someone spending tens of thousands of dollars in Australia. Tourism can be a vital weapon in the war against poverty.”
