
The Very Real World of 'Slum Tourism' - prostoalex
http://www.cntraveler.com/stories/2016-03-15/inside-the-very-real-world-of-slum-tourism
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jlg23
This is not only problematic with slums, also with native villages in various
parts of the world.

For me this boils down to the question: Is it better to build a school or
library with the profits or is it better to give them to the people and let
them decide whether they want a library or rather better housing, equipment or
whatever. Most tour operators do the first, pocketing most of the money in the
process.

In Suriname, people pay up to 800 Euro for a 3 day tour to visit a native
village in the jungle. It is claimed that the profit benefits the villages.
But a lot of these tours are organized by people who get European salaries, so
are the aid projects. To put this into perspective: In the capital, a full
meal can be had for 2.5E, a hotel room for less than 20E. One tour operator
openly admitted (after a few beer) that they don't have an incentive to
actually heighten the standard of living in those villages because "who would
book a tour to see people in modern houses with TV?"

In some parts of the Amazon one has to take a boat for hours to find people
who still live the original lifestyle. Everybody within a shorter distance
basically lives from tourism. "See Amazonian village for 2 days! Fly in, stay
in a hotel, go by boat to the village the next day, go piranha fishing, sleep
in hammock, go back, stay in hotel, fly back." The problem is that the
villagers just make a little bit more but never enough to make real progress,
most of the profits again go to the tour operators.

I have traveled both of these regions extensively and have found tour
operators that are really interested in bringing wealth to those communities.
But they are rare, very rare.

