People often wonder how tourism could possibly benefit the common man in a third world country for example where the proceeds are more than likely to go to the government and it spends as it sees fit. How could a bunch of foreigners visiting national parks, and mountains, and doing water sports at a place near a poor uneducated man’s home supposed to help, especially since they are not paying him to do all these things. The tourists is also wondering how they could possibly be helping the locals by paying for African safari tickets, or park entry fees.
The summarized question is how can countries maximize the impact of tourism to achieve sustained growth and development? The kind that is beneficial to even the locals who might not necessarily be involved in the industry.
The answer for Tanzania lies in the development of a full tourism value chain.
According to the World Bank latest sixth Tanzania Economic Update edition entitled ‘The Elephant in the Room, Unlocking the potential of the tourism industry for Tanzanians,’ tourism can enhance multiple-linked activities through its interactions with the transportation, agricultural and traditional handicrafts sectors, significantly benefiting a large range of local businesses.
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Historical attractions: Bagamoyo[/caption]
It further states that a well-developed tourism industry has some subtle benefits. By raising the global profile of a country, it can generate an increased awareness of that country’s natural, human and other assets, which could play a role in attracting foreign investors.
In order to derive maximum benefits from tourism, Tanzanian policy-makers should focus on complementary issues such as diversification; intensification and improvements to governance.
Kilwa[/caption]
It involves the development of a higher level of integration between the tourism industry and other local businesses. If well managed, tourism provides multiple opportunities for economic development and employment growth through the establishment of linkages within and between sectors. For example, tourism revenues are released into the local economy when hotels or lodge operators buy goods and services from local suppliers.
This impacts the agricultural and fisheries sectors, enabling them to serve as suppliers to the tourism industry. It also breeds an entrepreneurial market for goods such as traditional handicrafts. In addition, hotels use a portion of their revenues to pay wages to workers, who may come from local communities.
Tourism industry workers, particularly if they come from local communities, will spend their wages to the benefit of the surrounding community. In many countries, local suppliers provide basic building materials to the tourism industry, spurring growth in construction services and light manufacturing. For example rather than hotels importing some of their furniture, they could use local suppliers.
The challenge is to build the capacities of local communities so that their members are able to provide goods and services to different segments of the market, particularly the high-end segment that currently comprises the bulk of tourism in Tanzania.
What Tanzania needs to effectively implement integration in tourism is development of skills, and also to build better linkages between buyers and suppliers. This means vocational training programs need to be well developed and standardized to ensure better matches between the skills developed by these institutions and those demanded by industry.
Cooperation between tourism operators and local communities can also create direct and functional economic linkages. While the ability of tourism sector operators to support the establishment of linkages with local business enterprises depends on the size and capacity of the domestic economy, it is important to take advantage of backward linkages that tourism typically has with sectors such as agriculture, construction and light manufacturing.
By implementing some or all of these strategies benefits of tourism might slowly begin to show even in the minority groups of people. This framework could apply to any East African country.]]>
