Potentials of Tourism to Poverty Reduction

Tourism in the developing world has great potentials in raising living standards in rural areas because the customer comes to the product creating opportunities for direct sell, social interaction including other benefits like donations to the community with the attractions. No wonder the MDG’s identified tourism development as a significant contributor to poverty alleviation. In this regard also, the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy I & II documents equally identified tourism as key to livelihood enhancement particularly in rural areas where poverty is more severe. In this book, hotel facilities in Wa Municipality were assessed to examine their pro-poor impact. Furthermore, three communities with tourism attractions located in three different districts were equally surveyed to assess tourism’s contribution to livelihood enhancement in the study area. The book finally recommended that making tourism rural-oriented was a sure way to giving the visitor a new experience and efforts must be made not to depart from this norm.