A Critical Approach to Pro-Poor Tourism

One of the main themes of development strategies around the world is poverty reduction. Poverty is the result of the interaction of social, political, and economic processes, then economic growth and income redistribution can not solely resolve this problem. According to some experts, tourism has been a tool for development since the 1970s and its role in reducing poverty, especially poverty as capability, has been considered since the late 1990s. Since then, pro-poor tourism has quickly become a well-known and valuable tool. It has become a way to reduce poverty, so the goal of tourism is to support the poor by improving access of them to the tourism sector and providing them with a source of income. But pro-poor tourism also has its own critics who believe that it is a priority to reduce poverty, and protection is of secondary importance, which in turn harms the environment, the economy and culture. It cannot be argued that this type of tourism can lead to a reduction in poverty in all its dimensions. For this purpose, the present study seeks to combine the two categories of poverty and tourism development. Then it intends to categorize and analyze the challenges of pro- poor tourism in 9 groups with a critical approach through analytical-descriptive method and documentary studies and by analyzing the opinion of experts in this field.