the role of tourism in natural resource management in the okavango ...

exchange, investment, income and employment promises of tourism as they
restructure away from traditional monocrops. As a result, at the start of the Twenty
First Century, tourism has increasingly become the industry of choice for
modernising underdeveloped nations, and in part, alternative, foreign, Third World
holiday experience has become the vacation choice of conventional mass tourism
(McElroy and de Albuquerque, 1996; Ghimire, 2001; Hall, 2005).
Certain authors, such as Noronha (1977) and de Kadt (1979) use a three-stage
period to describe the development of mass tourism in a particular destination.
Firstly, a few tourists 'discover' the destination; secondly, in response, local
entrepreneurs provide facilities to accommodate the growing number of visitors; and
thirdly, 'institutionalisation' or mass tourism follows, when the further development of
tourism facilities tends to come under the control of both public and private agencies
rooted outside the local community, and very often, outside the country. This three
phase sequence is, however, far from inevitable, as the last phase may overlap with
the first in the case of major developments, such as with the Mexican Cancun
project, where infrastructure and hotels were built in an area with no prior tourism
development by national public institutions.
Mass tourism was considered 'best practice' by the tourism industry, by the tourists
and by the host countries in the 1970s and early 1980s (Poon, 1993). However,
even though destination countries reaped benefits, particularly in terms of foreign
exchange earnings, few succeeded in avoiding at least some of the damaging
effects of the industry, such as destruction of natural habitats and pollution. It has
been the attitude of tourists, who continue to demand traditional types of holidays in
large numbers, as well as the commercial aims of those engaged in the industry and
the failure of developers and host governments to see beyond the short term, that
have resulted in the continued dominance of mass tourism and created obstacles to
the spread of alternative, more sustainable approaches (Croall, 1995).
It does, however, appear that the era of unchecked exploitation of the environment
by the tourism industry is no longer unquestioned, and there are signs that more
sensitive developments are beginning to emerge (Poon, 1993; Limb and Dwyer,
2001; Fennel, 2003). But mass tourism is unlikely to disappear, since those who
demand risk-free holidays at relatively low cost will continue to comprise a large
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