Some Evidence for Tourism Alleviating Poverty

Tourism is an important economic sector for many developing countries\ud (Mitchell & Ashley, 2010). This is especially true for Small Island Developing States\ud (SIDS) with limited alternative development options. Although ‘pro-poor tourism’\ud (PPT) has been widely supported by practitioners across the United Nations World\ud Tourism Organization (UNWTO), international and bi-lateral aid agencies, governments,\ud and non-governmental organizations, the research community has been\ud debating on the effects of tourism on development (Sharpley & Telfer, 2002) and\ud poverty alleviation (Mitchell & Ashley, 2010) for years. While the PPT approach has\ud received many criticisms (Harrison, 2008) due to the deficiency in systematic\ud analysis of the relationship between tourism and poverty reduction and empirical\ud evidence on how tourism contributes to alleviating poverty, some researchers have\ud been making efforts in collecting empirical evidence on this issue (Mitchell &\ud Ashley, 2010). This note presents some evidence that tourism enhances human\ud development and reduces poverty in SIDS by analyzing the correlations between\ud tourism intensity and several human development indicators