Tourism In Developing Countries. The Path Towards Sustainable Development And Its Interaction With The Local Communities, The Environment And The Human Factor

This paper summarizes the arguments and counterarguments within the scientific discussion on the issue of tourism in developing countries. The main purpose of this literary analysis is to underline the importance and to shed some light on how government's policies, environmental issues, corporate social responsibility and growth strategies impact in tourism development in developing countries. Also, the paper tries to explain in which way tourism development in such countries impacts in their poor local population. Systematization literary resources and approaches for solving the problem of poverty alleviation in developing countries via the tourism development indicate that although according to some researchers tourism development can be a powerful tool in poverty alleviation, there are other researchers who tend to believe that the phenomenon has an opposite direction. Social development leads to tourism development. After investigation of the topic, the authors of the paper concluded that tourism development need the local authorities' assistant in order to be able to alleviate poverty. Rules needed to be implemented, otherwise in cases like the medical tourism etc. the results could be stressful as they can lead to an increase of the wealth of specific only social groups, leaving the real poor ones outside. The topics investigation was carried out in the following logical sequence: Firstly, the authors underlined some important points about tourism in general and especially in developing countries. They continued with a reference to environmental paragons involved. They stressed the notion of “tourism for the poor” and continued with the role of the local authorities only to end up with a debate of whether tourism development lead to social growth or vise-versa? The results of this literary analysis indicate that further investigation is needed in order to understand clearly the answer to the above mentioned debate. This answer is crucial as it will lead us towards the right direction by let us understand if we need to start from the within (growth of the local society which will lead to tourism development), or the other way around. This paper can be the springboard for the researcher of the future towards the deeper understanding of the problem in question. The paper has as its main target to show a path way towards poverty alleviation in developing countries by the use of tourism as the vehicle which will carry it out.