GATS - the General Agreement on Trade in Services - promotes world trade liberalisation. With the expansion from trade in commodities under GATT to trade in services under GATS, the tourism sector has increasingly been affected by these liberalisation processes.
What does this imply for tourism in developing countries, in terms of
- Market position of service providers in developing countries in an international competitive environment?
- Options for self-determined development?
- National sovereignty?
- Participation of the local population?
- Safeguarding of human rights?
- Environmental protection and sustainable resource use?
Jörg Seifert-Granzin (Werkstatt Ökonomie/Germany) and Samuel Jesupatham (Indian Social Institute/India) examine these questions in their study "Tourism at the Crossroads".The publication is the product of a study project, initiated and commissioned by Tourism Watch/Germany and EQUATIONS/India, which is aimed at facilitating a constructive international debate on the impact of liberalisation in tourism.
The study has been published by 'Entwicklungspolitik' (Magazine on Development Issues) of the German Protestant News Agency as epd-Entwicklungspolitik: Materialien No.VI/99.