In all developing countries, tourism has shown itself to be a highly labourintensive activity that opens up opportunities for the small businesses that are engaged in or provide products and services to the tourism industry. Its impact is particularly strong in the local farming and fishing industries, handicrafts and even the construction industry. In these countries, tourism constitutes exceptionally fertile ground for private initiative. It serves as a foothold from which the market economy can expand and flourish. And above all, it creates many jobs: jobs in small and medium-sized enterprises as well as work for the self-employed; jobs for the poor, jobs for women, for indigenous communities, for unskilled as well as highly skilled workers. It creates jobs at resorts as well as in isolated rural areas, in handicrafts and in ecotourism.
Furthermore, in all of these countries, we can see the crucial contribution of tourism-generated foreign exchange receipts to the balance of payments. Such revenues reduce the country’s foreign debt and their dependence on a single export sector, in most cases a raw material with low value and fluctuating price. Contrary to an oft-repeated misconception, tourism revenues in most developing countries are much larger that the induced imports or repatriation of benefits that it may generate.
Due to the above reasons, tourism can play a major role in improving the standard of living of people and help them lift themselves above the poverty threshold.
Unfortunately, a large part of the tourism potential of many of these countries remains untapped due to several limiting factors, especially the lack of infrastructure and communications systems, deficiencies in the organization of public services, new information technology skills or in human resource development. Also, the insufficient diversification of certain economies, especially in the case of island countries, as well as the failure to take into account specific aspects of tourism development, increases the risk of leakages and prevents the full benefits of tourism spending’s multiplier effect from fully materializing. We therefore hope that this Summit leads to greater awareness of these considerations, which will allow us to do much better.