Pro-Poor Tourism as a Mechanism of Social Innovation and Empowerment

Pro-poor Tourism is a concept that emerged in the early 2000’s as a means of fostering the development of sustainable tourism and as a means of ensuring the benefits of this were felt by local populations. Whilst the efficacy of pro-poor tourism and the impact that it makes for communities has been questioned over the last two decades, with research focus on how its impacts on communities and how it is operationalised, there has been less of a focus on the underpinnings of what pro-poor tourism is (or should be) from a theoretical perspective. In particular, there remains a lack of understanding as to what constitutes pro-poor tourism from a sociological perspective. In this review paper, the concept of social innovation is used to theoretically explain the mechanisms for successful implementation of pro-poor tourism initiatives, as a means of empowerment. The paper illustrates how pro-poor tourism can act as a means for empowering the poor and achieving sustainable development agendas, by utilising ‘strong tradition’ social innovation approaches in order to enable social action that can refigure societal power structures.