Tourism, Culture and Development

How much does tourism change a village? What effects does tourism have on a culture? Can tourism help a poor remote community to develop? How can a village have the benefits tourism offers without the problems it can cause? These are the questions that have grown in me over the past 20 years, fed by questions from the villagers to whom I introduced tourism.

Only a handful of backpackers had ever passed through Wogo in 1989 when I began taking small groups of tourists to stay with the villagers. Village stays were not only a resounding success for the tourists but also for the villagers. They became the unique selling point of our tours and our business success was laid on the foundations of our visits to Wogo. But in the long term, what would be the impact of introducing tourism to this village? And how could the villagers benefit from the growing numbers of tourists that came to their village?