Toward a Model of Just Tourism: A Proposal

Abstract

Inequality is growing within and between countries. Tourism is a growing sector affecting lives, with a vibrancy of its own and malleable structures that can benefit a majority, if social justice and equality are the goals. Cooperatives are one of these structures, and have the potential to drive a development trajectory that delivers a just tourism. We define just tourism as a form of tourism that delivers the most benefits to its members—for themselves and by themselves—representing a form of accumulation from within. This article is based on secondary data and is a conceptual paper. It posits a coop hotel model, which harnesses the hope of spreading the cooperative model for its finer qualities of providing job security to workers, happiness, democratic participation, decision making functions, self-governance, empowerment, openness, retention of capital within the community, the pursuit of both economic social goals, resilience, and importantly, the emphasis on community contribution and matters of sustainability. Community-based tourism and cooperatives have interlocking values such as local control, local/self-management, and being steeped in the local context. The coop hotels model, which is the main contribution of this article, suggests the creation of mother hotel coops, with coop sisters and coop children in pursuit of social justice for a just tourism.