Global tourism has been one of the most dynamic and growing economic sectors during the last 50 years. With a proved powerful capacity of resilience against economic crisis and officially supported positive economic predictions of continuing growing for the first half of the 21st century (UN-WTO, 2013) (Figure 4), this old but healthy globalized market has produced positive and negative effects over the developing territories where it has landed. In the specific case of Ecuador, the last decade has been characterized by an intensive and strong public investment in tourist infrastructure and international marketing in order to attract something of the flows from this huge global market.
Especially, it is positively accepted in developing countries
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Other positive effects of international tourism in the territories are: the creation of new formal and informal workplaces; the contribution to decrease rural-urban migration; the improvement of the monetary incomes for local families; the increase of accessibility to low-skilled jobs for low-income natives; the exchange of cultures, ideas and lifestyles; the local and international promotion of the local identity and culture; the improvement of local resilience against economic crises or natural disasters (Schulte, 2003) (UN-WTO, …show more content…
Source: Internet.
The informality of the labour market and the volatility of global tourism chains contribute to foster the dependency and vulnerability instead of producing development (Madeley, 2001). During the last 30 years, national governments of developing countries with high levels of biological diversity have been considering tourism as a panacea to improve social and economic development. Nevertheless, the effects of tourism in these territories seem to be more negative than positive (Madeley, 2001) (Mbaiwa, 2005).
Nowadays, the Ecuadorian national government is promoting the replacement of its traditional dependency from primary exportation (petroleum, agriculture and fishing) by international tourism as the “new way to achieve local sustainable development” (Schulte, 2003) (Madeley, 2001) (SENPLADES, 2013; Schulte, 2003). According with the governmental Good Living National Plan (GLNP) in 2020 Ecuador should be supporting its national budget on the exportation of biological technology and ecotourism services. Additionally, the current Ecuadorian Constitution (2008) was the first to establish special rights for nature as a strategic national resource, which should be protected and preserved (SENPLADES,