Making tourism work for poverty alleviation

Making slum tourism work to alleviate poverty and increase visibility of communities   

 Dr Fabian Frenzel has investigated whether and how tourists’ curiosity for impoverished neighbourhoods, communities and slums can help to mitigate against the bad reputation or ‘territorial stigma’ from which slums often suffer, and contribute towards empowering residents. The research has provided a better understanding of the agency of tourism. These findings have underpinned training of small scale tourism operators, such as community groups, neighbourhood associations and associated tour guides from the community. Research also influenced development of novel touristic offerings, products and raised awareness of tourism’s potential to mitigate poverty among wider user groups such as NGOs working in slums and professional tour operators from outside slum areas. Recently Dr Frenzel has supported community favela tourism providers to address some of the challenges following the reduction of tourism numbers because of Covid-19. In the project 'Lockdown Stories’, several of Rio’s community tourism operators now offer forms of Virtual Tourism.