Pandemic ‘offers chance to rethink slum tourism’

Restrictions on travel during the coronavirus pandemic should act as a pause to re-evaluate “slum tourism” – a popular option for gap-year students, researchers have said.

Analysis of Tripadvisor reviews from tourists visiting impoverished urban areas in South Africa suggests they regularly misrepresent townships as places of great hope, which creates a skewed understanding of poverty.

Researchers at Bath University analysed more than 400 reviews for the townships of Langa and Imizamo Yethu, outside Cape Town.

Tourists regularly produced optimistic descriptions, describing townships as productive, vibrant cultural spaces, rich in non-material assets, inhabited by happy and hard-working people.

Only four reviews remarked on water, sanitation or sewerage and two noted most residents live without toilets or running water in their homes.

Overall, reviews represented residents as satisfied with their circumstances, with several even remarking the children had better lives than those from privileged backgrounds.

Lead researcher Monique Huysamen, from Bath University, said: “Over recent years slum tourism has thrived across the world, fuelled by growth in international travel, rapid urbanisation, and of course deepening levels of global inequality.

“We found that tourists’ reviews lead to a skewed representation of poverty and its causes, certainly in South African townships.

“With much international travel currently on hold due to Covid-19, now is the time to rethink and re-evaluate our own future tourism practices.”