To paraphrase, tourism is money. And big money at that. The income generated by tourism in the form of export earnings is significant for many countries, generating some US$455 billion in 1999, according to the World Tourism Organization. But there's more than that. Tourism also generates jobs, and lots of them. According to another body which studies tourism, the World Tourism and Travel Council, the travel industry provided work for some 200 million people around the world in 1999.

But increasingly, this activity is seriously transforming the economies of many countries, and is having a social impact which is far from totally positive.

Locally, tourism workers and managers are often "imported" by the large international hotel and leisure chains (six of the seven leading multinationals of the sector are North American), which pick up the major part of the profits.

By contrast, local populations benefit only from semi-skilled, poorly paid jobs (cooks, maintenance workers, chambermaids, barmen, gardeners, bus drivers, etc.).

Low pay, hard work

According to a report recently submitted to a tripartite meeting of the International Labour Organization, this sector is known for low pay (for example, in the European Union, it is less than 20 per cent of the average salary), difficult working conditions (irregular schedules, Sunday work, unpaid overtime), and many clandestine jobs.

It has also been established that in many countries, especially in the South, tourism contributes to the exploitation of child labour. Children work as barmen, "fast food" employees, domestics, cooks' assistants, gardeners, laundry workers, informal tour guides, shellfish divers, roving beach vendors, artisanal souvenir makers, etc.

Around the world, some 13 to 19 million young people under 18 years of age work in a profession tied to tourism ¹. In India, for example, there are thousands of young people working as domestics in hotels, children assisting bus drivers, or porters in train stations, airports and hotels. According to a report by the Swiss NGO, Arbeitskreis Tourismus und Entwicklung, there are also 66,000 children between the ages of 5 and 17 working in the tourism industry in the Philippines ².

Finally, the arrival of visitors with pockets full of dollars, and the relaxed atmosphere generally attributed to exotic destinations, encourages the development of the sex trade, and adult women are not its only victims; the coalition ECPAT (Coalition on Child Prostitution and Tourism), based in Bangkok, has shown that tourism is a factor in the accelerating sexual exploitation of minors. In Cuba, for example, most of the "jineteras" (prostitutes) are minors, and just one "client" represents in dollars the equivalent of three months of a teacher's salary. In Cambodia, more and more young girls are employed in cabarets and "karaokes" frequented by Chinese and occidental visitors. In certain tourist destinations (Cancun in Mexico, Fortaleza in Brazil, Pattaya in Thailand, Manila in the Philippines, etc.), income from "sex tourism" benefits people engaged in an entire chain of activities (managers of bars and cabarets, middlemen, guides, hotel staff, taxi drivers, etc.). It is estimated that two million children in the world are victims of sexual exploitation for profit, and that tourism is partly responsible for this.

More widely, the contact of rich tourists with the poor populations of developing countries constitutes a social shock. The local culture succumbs to commercial gain. Tourism brings about "dollarization" of trade, which impoverishes inhabitants who have local money and drives them to profit from the tourist trade. In one Caribbean country, the tripling of tourists in six years, along with a general condition of shortages, drove qualified professionals (doctors, teachers) to leave their jobs to become unlicenced taxi drivers - paid in dollars.

By speeding up the abandonment of traditional patterns of production, tourism also leads to the abandonment of activities guaranteeing autonomy. New activities stimulate activities that promote dependence. In Jerba, Tunisia (with 800,000 tourists per year), the construction of a large number of hotels has rapidly reduced the amount of agricultural land, to the point where the island produces only 10 per cent of its food requirements. And this is far from an isolated example.

Environmental impact

Tourism also affects the economies of the host countries to the extent that they directly incur infrastructure costs (for airports, roads, water mains, electricity, etc.) and the cost of waste treatment. Tourist complexes generate tons of rubbish (a single cruise ship produces 70,000 tons of trash every year, according to the United Nations Environment Programme).

Tourism also has disastrous effects on the natural environment, especially when natural resources are already insufficient. Showers, swimming pools and watering of lawns can destroy water reserves, and often tourists ignore the fact that the local populations lack water for their personal use and for irrigation.

The artificial implantation of golf courses has been a disaster in several countries (the Philippines, Indonesia, etc.) intensifying the shortage of water, leading to the expropriation of small peasant farms and deforestation, to the point where it has given rise to an international resistance movement, the "Global anti-golf network" ³.

Also, the chaotic invasion of hotel construction has often modified the balance of nature, and the erosion of the coastline has become critical in a number of countries (Tunisia, India, the Philippines). Even the rapid development of "eco-tourism" conceals ambiguous realities; it sometimes contributes to financing the preservation of protected rural zones and the subsistence of local populations. But it also has perverse effects when it leads to demographic pressure and high maintenance costs in a region which cannot afford it, which is the case, for example, of the fragile Galapagos Archipelago in Chile.

The French association, Transverses, which campaigns for responsible tourism, estimates that tourism cannot further sustainable development if it only responds to the needs of tourists, and ignores local repercussions. "Actually, the introduction of tourist activities results from agreements between the States and tourism industry leaders, but the local populations are never consulted," explains Dora Valayer, the head of Transverses.

The association cites, for example, the expulsion of the Masai tribe from their lands in Tanzania to create a place for safaris. Similarly, the association, Equations ⁴, denounces the eviction of fishermen from a coastal zone of Kerala, India, in order to establish a mega tourist complex using 47 million litres of water per day, and producing 58 tons of daily trash. "Not only should the populations be consulted in advance, but they must become true actors in sustainable local development," pleads Transverses ⁵.

Yet, there are signs of change. A growing number of NGOs are campaigning for a tourism "ethic", demanding that the professionals respect indigenous populations and the environment, use ecologically friendly transportation, respect social rights, boycott totalitarian countries (notably Myanmar), and inform travellers about this (organizations such as Earthwise Journeys, the International Bicycle Fund, Partners in Responsible Tourism, the Responsible Tourism Network, or the Sustainable Tourism Research Interest Group).

In 1995, a "Charter of Sustainable Tourism" was also published in Lanzarote, Canary Islands, Spain, primarily at the initiative of the World Tourism Organization and international organizations.

Globalization in the hotel, catering and tourism industry:
From finding jobs in the off-season
to dealing with secondhand smoke

GENEVA - Issues ranging from creating jobs in the off-season, to dealing with food safety, secondhand smoke and HIV/AIDS were brought up at a tripartite meeting on human resources development, employment and globalization in the hotel, catering and tourism (HCT) sector held on 2 to 6 April 2001.

Participants also discussed the impact of globalization on the HCT sector both for developed and developing countries and the need for cooperation between them as well as the social partners to ensure that the benefits of sectoral globalization brought a maximum of benefits to all.

Participants called on the ILO to take the following measures:

• Gather data on human resource policies, the international movements of workers and the impact of migrant labour, in order to determine if any measures should be taken to assist in the integration of migrant workers and to combat discrimination.

• Publish targeted reports on a regular basis.

• Collect and disseminate good practices and benchmarking methodologies for the sector.

• Design a system for training and skill development for the sector, particularly for the benefit of developing countries.

• Assist, in cooperation with UNAIDS, member States to develop training programmes for the sector on HIV/AIDS prevention and strategies for the social integration of workers affected.

• Continue to develop the labour accounting system as a supplement to tourism satellite accounts;

• Conduct a comparative study on measures to promote employment in the HCT sector during the low season, including vacation programmes for senior citizens, and to assess the impact of such programmes on different types of tourism.

• Produce data on workers' health in order to identify the risks associated with the sector (e.g, secondhand smoke, alcohol consumption, drug use, HIV/AIDS), and to produce information on nationwide or local measures implemented in certain countries, or by certain employers, to deal with the specific hazards.

The issues in this sector, which were highlighted in the background report prepared by the Office, in the discussions in the plenary sessions and in the panel discussions on socially sustainable tourism development, gender questions and social dialogue, make this sector an ideal candidate for addressing decent work issues. The issues of gender (women make up 70 per cent of the labour force in the sector), youth employment (half the workers in the sector are up to 25 years old), migrant labour, child labour (particularly one of the worst forms - child sex tourism), the high and increasing rate of subcontracting and outsourcing with its potential implications for the conditions of employment of the workers concerned, the high rate of part-time, temporary or casual and seasonal employment, issues of socially sustainable tourism development and the very low rate of unionization in the sector, are at the heart of the decent work agenda. The HCT sector's high potential for growth and for employment creation, and its importance in the economy of so many countries, developed, transition and developing, was recognized. It is now up to the Office to follow up on these very important conclusions and resolutions.

Report on the Tripartite Meeting on Human Resources Development, Employment and Globalization in the Hotel, Catering and Tourism Sector, 2-6 April 2001.

Many small associative structures in Hong Kong themselves propose small-scale equitable and sustainable tourist activities. They generally include fair payment of local benefits, an opening to local realities and exchanges with the inhabitants, and the financing of a local social or environmental project. This is the case of the associations Djembé in France, Global Exchange in the United States (travel based on social and cultural themes. URL: www.globalexchange.org) the Annapurna Conservation Area Project, which uses its trekking fees to protect the environment of Nepal, or the Namibian Community Based Tourism Association, which promotes tourism respecting the local communities of Namibia.

So "alternative" touristic offers are spreading, but real change will come with an awareness of the tourist himself, so that he will demand social guarantees on the part of the tour operators. "One sees, for example", recalls Transverses, "trade unionists who campaign all year long to improve working conditions, then go on vacation abroad in hotels where the employees are exploited." The association concludes that only truly informed citizens can make their vacations an "individual thoughtful act", instead of being satisfied to be simple "buyers of dreams".

- Bénédicte Manier is a journalist based in Paris, specializing in social rights.

¹ Black, Maggie: In the Twilight Zone: Child workers in hotels, tourism and catering industry (Geneva, ILO), 1995.

² Plüss, Christine: Quick Money, Easy Money: A report on child labour in tourism (Bale), 1999.

³ Global anti-golf network: http://utenti.tripod.it/dossierisarenas/golf.htm.

⁴ Equations: www.equitabletourism.org

⁵ The NGOs Transverses and Arbeitskreis Tourismus und Entwicklung (www.akte.ch) are members of the "Third World European Network" (TEN), an international network whose other members are the Associazione RAM in Italy, the Fondation Retour (www.do.nl/retour) and L'Informatie Verre Reizen in the Netherlands, Respect in Austria, the Studienkreis für Tourismus und Entwicklung (www.studienkreis.org) and Tourism Watch (www.tourism-watch.org) in Germany, and the Ecumenical Coalition on Third World Tour.