Tourism performed in slums has been raising the interest of researchers and generating controversial opinions regarding its objectives. For this reason, the present study aims to verify the impacts of the slum tours in the host communities by analyzing the pre-concepts and ideas associated with this tourism activity through the collection of data attained by the application of a survey, comparing it with the results obtained during the visits to the slums of Rocinha and Santa Marta. For its validity, the research performed by different authors are used as a guidance reference allowing the reader to have a broader perspective of the phenomena here presented. As for the obtained results, the study shows that the benefits of the tours for those communities can be divided in tangible (offers economic advantages) and intangible (offers change in perspective and reduction of the prejudice).
TopIntroduction
From the prehistory to tourism take-off era, as discussed by Lickorish and Jenkins (1997), tourism has suffered several modifications. Initially, just practiced by a restricted part of the society (rich, educated and/or by people belonging to the aristocracy), it has evolved into a business that englobes a great number of adepts.
With the technological development and the changes on the needs of the population, the creation of new tourism experiences was required to satisfy the most adverse wishes and curiosities, providing an authentic sensation in an (un)known environment.
“Talaya (apud Ramiro, 2004) shows that the behavior of the tourist has followed new trends bringing major changes, and the main ones are the most active and versatile entertainment, the search for experiences, fragmentation of the trips that are increasingly more frequent and shorter, more direct sales channels with the increasing use of the internet, greater demand for customized products defined by the very tourists, greater need for information, and segmenting markets and destinations. (Rezende, 2014, p. 358)”
It is in this scenario that the conception of a new form of tourism has arisen: the reality tourism.
It appears as a response to the demands of tourists seeking for innovative tours that challenge and change their perception of the world, by encouraging the visitors to reconsider their prejudices/pre-concepts related to places affected by social inequality and/or disasters. It is divided in two main categories: dark tourism – focused on visiting places in which occurred natural disasters and/or historical places famous for several deaths; and social tourism – focused on visiting to places with social disadvantages (Freire-Medeiros, 2014; Nisbett, 2017).
As part of the second category, focus of this paper, the practice of tourism in places filled with poverty are not new, dating back to the English Victorian Period (Frenzel et al., 2015; Tavares et al., 2018). However, it was only a century later, in the early nineties, that this type of tourism gained a greater attention by the world population.
The slums in India, townships in South Africa and favelas in Rio de Janeiro started presenting a higher transit of people coming from different areas of the globe interested to see the life in these communities, being exposed to a reality very different to the one they are used to (Freire-Medeiros, 2006, 2008, 2014; Frenzel et al., 2015, Tavares et al., 2018). Freire-Medeiros (2007) states that this type of practice summarizes the premises of the two types of reality tours – it allows an altruistic and politically correct engagement as well as motivates the feeling of adventure and enchantment, since it is an authentic-exotic-risky-tragic experience.
Frenzel et al. (2015, p. 237) defines it as a “mass tourism phenomenon occurring only in a few destinations and a niche form of tourism in a growing number of other destinations (…)”. In the city of Rio de Janeiro, the crescent movement of tourists in slums became a topic in several studies, generating questionings such regarding the usage of poverty as a form of tourism and its outcomes for the local host community (Freire-Medeiros, 2014).
Considering the popularity of tourism trend mentioned above, this present research has the objective to explore the experiences provided by the “Favela Tour” and their impacts in the host communities. For this, this study has been divided into different sections to provide a global understanding of the following topics: history of tourism (from its creation to its new trends), history of the slums in Brazil, and development of the slum tourism (pre-concepts, tourism process and its effects in two Brazilian communities).
For the maturing of the investigation, the slums of Rocinha and Santa Marta, both located in the city of Rio de Janeiro, were visited and used as objects of study, due to their good reputation in tourism sector. In addition to it, an online survey has been implemented to demonstrate the image pre-established and compare the answers to the reality observed in tourism experience.
The data collected through the tours in those areas and the survey were then analyzed, providing information to verify if this type of tourism can be considered positive or negative to the host community, as it will be shown on the next sections.