Semana Santa in Ayacucho brings many visitors...but do they offer help or harm to developing communities?

After I spoke last week with British teacher Sue Allsworth about living and working in Peru, I started to wonder if all these gringo visitors were bringing help or harm to the country. What are tour operators doing to make sure that travelers to South American don’t exploit or damage the local communities they visit?

To find out more, I got in touch with Lloyd Boutcher. He’s Director of Latin American Operations at Sunvil, a specialist tour operator with a 5-star rating from Britain’s Association of Independent Travel Operators:

“When we’re operating programs, the first step is looking at who our suppliers are and who we’re operating through. We pick a local partner, trying to give some of the smaller guys a chance. With these smaller operations, there’s a chance for us to craft the product and differentiate it. In turn, they tend to contract freelancers and spread the tourism revenue around among drivers, guides and other locals.” Of course, this kind of close work with local people is even more sensitive when the communities involved are indigenous.

For Lloyd’s clients, a stay in a remote jungle lodge is far better than a night in a Marriott – but the challenge is to preserve a culture even while opening it up to foreign travelers. Lloyd gives the example of the Napo Wildlife Centre in Ecuador’s Amazon basin,

“Of a tribe of 200 people, only eight wanted to set up the centre. It was hard for them to make a case, but the centre has been a huge success, both commercially and in terms of preserving the tribe’s identity. Now the whole community is behind the scheme.  Of course, it’s a tricky start with indigenous communities sometimes. When a group of travelers were trying to spot a howler monkey in the trees, a local guide thought he was being helpful by killing one with a blowpipe!”

In addition to their own guidelines for work with local communities, Sunvil also contributes to the Travel Foundation, a charitable organization that works on behalf of the UK travel industry. In Brazil, the Foundation collaborates with Estrela, a local charity which runs community tours to benefit inner-city residents. Both Lloyd at Sunvil and Georgina Davies of the Travel Foundation highlighted Estrela as a shining example of an operation where the balance between the interests of tourists and the local community is just right.

“Some favela tours [like the one described here by former La Vida Idealist editor Celeste Hamilton] have a terrible reputation – they’re really exploitative,” Lloyd told me. “I’ve walked away from such tours, but with Estrela the overall aim is to benefit local communities and bring together people of different cultures.”

Georgina Davies of the Travel Foundation added: “Estrela’s tours are a very special alternative to the usual beach and carnival experience of Salvador and for local people they provide a chance to learn new skills, give something back to their community and ultimately increase their income. Tourism is a unique form of trade in that it is largely free of the tariff barriers which often prevent poor communities trading themselves out of poverty. We support efforts to maximize the potential of tourism to alleviate poverty and help traditional ways of life and skills to thrive.”

Matt Finch is an educational consultant from the U.K. and is currently working at the San Domingo Savio primary school in Peru. For more on his experiences, check out his blog. To learn more about Sunvil,Estrela and the Travel Foundation, please click the embedded links.

Where I volunteer, in the community of Pucará, most people live off small-scale agricultural production. But the community has plans to construct a paradero along the main road, which would house a community-run visitor center, restaurant and Internet cafe. From there, local guides can take visitors on hikes through some of the most stunning and biodiverse forests in the world. According to the Intag Cloud Forest Reserve website, this area contains “approximately 15-17% of the world’s plant species and nearly 20% of its bird diversity (1,666). For both groups, the endemism is astonishingly over 40%.” Across the street, the Intag Spanish School already employs local youth as Spanish teachers. It offers immersion lessons to travelers while providing an economic incentive for the town’s young people to remain in Pucará.

From what I can see, there is a deliberate strategy taking shape here. That’s good, because ever since tourism began to pick up in the 1990s, tourists have concentrated exorbitant wealth in a handful of locations. (Quito, Baños and the Galápagos Islands come to mind.) And even within a city like Quito, travelers tend to favor La Mariscal District (aka Gringolandia) and El Centro Histórico. If they venture out into the country’s national parks, tour companies often make deals with specific lodges and guides, bypassing local communities. It’s a serious problem and one worth addressing: how can the average traveler help protect the natural environment and respect the communities he or she visits? Well friend, have we got some links for you!

If you’re interested in minimizing your environmental impact and providing direct financial benefits for local people and conservation efforts, check out these helpful resources below:

- The International Volunteerism Resource Center, provided by the folks at Idealist.org, can help you make informed decisions about volunteering abroad.

- The International Ecotourism Society (TIES) is committed to helping organizations, communities and individuals promote and practice the principles of ecotourism.

- Responsible Travel offers sustainable travel ideas and locally distinctive, authentic holidays that are better for destinations and local communities.

- Volunteer South America regularly updates a list of hundreds of free and low-cost volunteer programs. If you’re thinking of volunteering in South America, look no further.

- Tourism Concern fights exploitation in tourism and campaigns for more ethical, fairly traded forms of tourism.

Check out these posts by other La Vida Idealist bloggers for more on the environment and sustainability in Latin America.