The travel industry has been warned to guard against being duped into contributing to poverty in Cambodia in the mistaken belief it is making a contribution to responsible tourism.
Michael Horton, founder of Cambodian non-profit organisation ConCERT, speaking at World Travel Market’s Responsible Tourism forum, said he opposed operators who encouraged travellers to visit and donate to orphanages.
Horton said tourist visits to orphanages in Siem Reap were contributing to the problem of child poverty because some owners kept children dirty and under-fed to encourage donations.
He also said that 72 percent of children in orphanages were not orphans but merely came from poor families, and described the movement of children across the country to institutions where tourists visit as “simply internal child traffickingâ€.
Keynote speaker at the forum was Leo Hickman, author of ‘The Final Call,’ a controversial book which is critical of the global travel and tourism industry’s social, economic and environmental footprint.
“There is some good that comes out of tourism, but what I discovered is that this ‘good’ is sadly a rare commodityâ€, said Hickman.
“Tourism is a very lop-sided deal in its current form whereby the buyers – the tourist – get by far a better deal than the sellers – the people living in the destinations.â€
