International Tourism in the Global South: Revealing an Extractive Development Process

Hosting international tourism remains a key development strategy for many Global South countries to generate economic growth, government revenue and employment. However, this conventional wisdom can be contested: tourism may instead be seen as an extractive process that disrupts livelihoods, ecosystems and host economies. UN Sustainable Development Goal 8 highlights tourism as a key industry supporting inclusive economic growth and ‘decent work’. However, this ideal is often hard to achieve. Destinations struggle to retain significant economic benefits because of high levels of economic leakage overseas and weak linkages with local economies. To begin to shift tourism's balance of power and reduce this extractive process of profits flowing from the Global South to the North, policy interventions are urgently needed. We argue that, given sufficient political will, inclusive growth policies can be designed to reduce economic leakages, facilitate local ownership and further develop economic linkages within host economies.