Ethical issues

Partly due to cultural clashes and loss or change in indigenous identity and values that tourism brings about in host destinations, tourism can create more serious situations where ethical and even criminal issues are involved.

• Crime generation: Crime rates typically increase with the growth and urbanisation of an area, and growth of mass tourism is often accompanied by increased crime. The presence of a large number of tourists with a lot of money to spend, and often carrying valuables such as cameras and jewellery, increases the attraction for criminals and brings with it activities like robbery and drug dealing. Repression of these phenomena often exacerbates social tension. In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, tourists staying in beachside five star resorts close to extremely poor communities in hillside "favelas" (shantytowns) are at risk of pickpockets and stick-ups. Security agents, often armed with machine guns, stand guard nearby in full sight, and face aggressive reactions from locals who are often their neighbours when they go home. Tourism can also drive the development of gambling, which may cause negative changes in social behaviour.
• Child labour: studies have shown that many jobs in the tourism sector have working and employment conditions that leave much to be desired: long hours, unstable employment, low pay, little training and poor chances for qualification. In addition, recent developments in the travel and tourism trade (liberalisation, competition, concentration, drop in travel fares, growth of subcontracting) and introduction of new technologies seem to reinforce the trend towards more precarious, flexible employment conditions. For many such jobs young children are recruited, as they are cheap and flexible employees.
• Prostitution and sex tourism: The commercial sexual exploitation of children and young women has paralleled the growth of tourism in many parts of the world. Though tourism is not the cause of sexual exploitation, it provides easy access to it. Tourism also brings consumerism to many parts of the world previously denied access to luxury commodities and services. The lure of this easy money has caused many young people, including children, to trade their bodies in exchange for T-shirts, personal stereos, bikes and even air tickets out of the country. In other situations children are trafficked into the brothels on the margins of the tourist areas and sold into sex slavery, very rarely earning enough money to escape. A study in Kalutara, Sri Lanka, found that out of 100 schoolchildren 86 children had had their first sexual experience aged 12 or 13, the majority with a foreign tourist.

Based on UNEP Production and Consumption Unit Tourism Programme