Tourism and Development

Money in, and money that stays

Tourism is the strategy most often written about badly, because the obvious measure is the wrong one. Arrivals are not development. A country can receive more visitors every year and see very little of what they spend, and the question that matters is not how many came but how much of their money stayed. Think about where a holiday is actually paid for. An all-inclusive package is bought from a company abroad, in the visitor's own currency, before anybody sets off. The flight belongs to an airline that may be foreign owned. If the hotel is foreign owned, its profits leave. If the food served in it is imported, the payment for that leaves too. The visitor can arrive, spend a fortnight, and leave behind wages and little else. That outflow is what geographers call leakage, and reducing it is the whole game. A cruise call is the same problem compressed. The ship carries thousands of people who eat and sleep on board, come ashore for a few hours, and sail before dinner. Every one of them counts on the arrivals figure. Jamaica is the example used throughout this module. It is DoRevision's editorial choice rather than something the specification requires, since AQA names no place for any case study, and a school teaching a different example can carry the same argument across unchanged. Independent since 1962, with a Tourist Board established in 1955, Jamaica has been at this longer than almost anywhere in the region, and both the problem and the responses are unusually well documented there.

Six terms, and the first two decide the answer

The first is where the money goes and the second is where it goes instead, and together they are how a tourism answer is judged.

Follow one holiday payment

Six stages trace what happens to the money paid for one package holiday. Put them in order from the visitor's first payment to what finally reaches the island.

• The holiday is booked abroad and paid to a company in the visitor's own country
• A share goes to the airline, which may be based anywhere
• The remainder reaches the hotel, whose profits leave again if its owners are overseas
• The hotel spends part of it on imported food, drink and furnishings, and that payment leaves too
• What is left pays wages, local suppliers and local taxes, and this is the part that stays
• Those wages are spent again on the island, supporting people who never see a tourist

Why are arrivals the wrong measure?

A country reports record visitor numbers and little change in local incomes. Which explains it best?

• Because arrivals count people rather than money retained. A package bought abroad, a foreign airline, an overseas-owned hotel sending its profits home and imported supplies can each remove a share before anything reaches the island, so the number arriving can rise while the amount staying does not. What matters for development is the proportion retained and how widely it circulates once it is there.
• Because the visitors are not spending enough while they are there.
• Because tourism creates only seasonal jobs and nothing else.
• Because governments tax tourism too lightly to benefit from it.

What it brings, where it leaks, what holds it

The node asks you to judge strategies on sustainability and on who genuinely benefits, so the three columns are arranged to answer exactly that. Every entry in the third column is a real dated response.

Match each arrangement to what it does for development

Ask who gains, and for how long

This node asks you to judge a strategy on sustainability and on who genuinely benefits, and tourism is where that question bites hardest, because the same industry can be a good answer or a poor one depending entirely on how it is arranged. So write about arrangements, not about tourism. "Tourism helps development" and "tourism exploits poorer countries" are both unmarkable, because each is true of some arrangements and false of others. An enclave resort supplied by imports and a guesthouse buying food from the next valley are not the same strategy wearing different clothes; they retain wholly different shares and they spread them to different people. Two further tests. Which timescale does it act on? Tourism earns foreign currency in the present and changes no structural condition on its own, so it reaches the trajectory only where the earnings are deliberately converted into something durable, through training, infrastructure or linked industries. And what happens when the visitors stop? A hurricane, a downturn or an outbreak empties the hotels without notice, so a country leaning heavily on one industry is carrying a development risk as well as an economic one. Last, the register this node insists on. Explain, never blame. A country that developed tourism did so because the alternatives available to it were narrower, not through some failure of imagination, and the people working in the industry built it rather than waiting inside it.

Complete the tourism and development record

Jamaica became independent in _____, and its Tourist Board had already been established in 1955, so the industry there is older than the modern state. The all-inclusive format, in which everything is paid for before departure, was pioneered on the island from _____. Two responses aimed at keeping more of the money: a fund financed by a levy on arriving visitors, created in _____, and a network launched in _____ to connect hotel demand to local farming and manufacturing. The industry has also had to absorb shocks nobody controls, among them the hurricane that struck the island in September _____.

Spot the three sound tourism statements

Select the THREE statements that could stand as they are in an answer.

• What matters for development is the share of visitor spending retained in the country rather than the number of visitors, since a package bought abroad can take much of it before anybody travels.
• A hotel sourcing food from island farms starts a chain of local payments that an identical hotel importing the same food does not, which is why linkage policies matter more than hotel size.
• The foreign currency arrives immediately while nothing structural shifts on its own, so the long-term path moves only where those earnings are deliberately turned into skills, infrastructure or supplying industries.
• Tourism is a reliable way for a poorer country to develop because it brings in money from wealthier countries.
• Tourism exploits poorer countries and holds back their development.
• Cruise passengers benefit a destination more than staying visitors because so many of them arrive at once.

A 9-mark evaluation, marked

Assess the extent to which tourism can reduce the development gap. Use a named example. [9 marks] Jamaica, independent since 1962 and with a Tourist Board dating from 1955, shows both what tourism can do and what limits it. The clearest benefit is that it earns foreign currency quickly and provides work that does not depend on higher education, in hotels, transport, construction, guiding and food, in a country where other formal employment is harder to come by. Infrastructure built for visitors, such as airports, roads and water supply, is used by residents as well, and the condition of beaches, reefs and historic sites becomes something worth protecting because it is the product being sold. The limit is that arrivals and benefit are not the same thing. A holiday bought as an all-inclusive package, a format pioneered on the island from 1981, is paid for abroad before the visitor leaves home, and further shares go to a foreign airline and, where the hotel is foreign owned, to its owners. Imported food and furnishings remove more. A cruise call concentrates the same problem, since passengers eat and sleep aboard and are ashore for a few hours, and Jamaica opened a dedicated cruise terminal at Falmouth in 2011. The question is therefore always what share stays and who receives it. Jamaica has acted on precisely that. The Tourism Enhancement Fund, created in 2004 and financed by a levy on arriving visitors, directs money into tourism-related projects and training, and the Tourism Linkages Network, launched in 2013, was designed to connect hotel demand to island farming and manufacturing so that supplying a hotel becomes a local business rather than an import order. Both are attempts to turn present earnings into something that lasts, which matters because tourism by itself acts on the present and changes no structural condition. My judgement is that tourism can reduce the gap substantially, but the arrangement decides it rather than the industry. Where ownership is local and supply chains run inland, the retained share and the spread of benefit are both high; where the holiday is bought abroad and the hotel imports its food, the arrivals figure rises and little else does. It also carries a risk the other strategies do not, since a hurricane such as the one that struck the island in September 1988, a downturn or a health emergency empties the hotels without warning, so a country leaning heavily on it is exposed in a way a more varied economy is not. What earned the marks: a named example with dated institutional detail; benefits and limits explained as mechanisms rather than listed; the retained share used as the organising idea; two real responses given with their dates and purposes; a judgement that turns on the arrangement rather than on the industry; and the vulnerability named as a development risk.

Find the two that would cost marks

Five sentences from answers about tourism and development. Two would lose credit for how they argue rather than for being factually wrong. Tap those TWO.

• Tourism is a good way for poorer countries to develop because wealthy visitors bring their money with them.
• What counts is the share of the spending that stays, since a package paid for abroad takes much of it before anybody travels.
• These countries are dependent on wealthier visitors choosing to come and cannot do anything for themselves.
• A hotel buying vegetables from island farms pays a farmer who pays a supplier, and none of that money leaves.
• An industry that a hurricane or an outbreak can empty without warning carries a development risk as well as an economic one.

Build the judgement sentence

Assemble a sentence that judges the arrangement rather than the industry.

Four choices for a tourism ministry

Each is a decision about arrangement rather than about whether to have tourism. Follow the retained share.

• A large new resort will import most of its food because island farms cannot yet guarantee the volumes or the delivery schedule.
• A cruise line offers to double the number of calls at a port, which would raise the arrivals figure sharply.
• Nearly all the country's hotels are on one stretch of coast, and inland districts see almost none of the income.
• A hurricane season closes much of the industry for several months and the government is deciding what to do with the recovery funds.

Assess the strategy

Using a named example, assess how far tourism can reduce the development gap. [9 marks]

• Retained share is the idea the whole answer hangs on
• When a policy or a format began
• Both the benefits and the outflows
• What would have to happen for tourism to reach the trajectory
• The exposure that comes with depending on tourism