Enhancing the Pro-Poor Benefits of Tourism at ‘Bottom of Pyramid

Tourism has become one of the world’s most important instruments for economic prosperity, employment generation and community empowerment. It stimulates growth through sustainable enterprise creation, livelihood generation, foreign exchange revenues, reducing poverty and inequality, preserving natural and cultural heritage, and upgrading infrastructure particularly in remote and backward areas. Tourism, if properly planned and managed, can be one of the most promising sectors for achieving a more economically, socially and environmentally sustainable future. Ideally, tourism should be non-exploitative, equitable and sustainable. The conceptualization of Brokers-Locals-Tourists (BLT) model reveals that tourism dynamics depend on these three kinds of actors in tourism value chain (TVC). But in reality, communities at Bottom of Pyramid (BoP), faced many challenges viz. poverty and desperation, lower Human Development Index, social decay, political chaos, non-empowerment, poor infrastructure, diminishing control over the natural resource, persistent threats of eviction from their natural habitat, inequality in distribution of wealth and opportunities and exclusion from participation in development process. Who really benefits from tourism? How can we improve the process of tourism development and enhance its benefits at ‘Bottom of Pyramid (BoP)’ in rural and /or peripheral region?