slum tourism

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Inside the Controversial World of Slum Tourism

People have toured the world’s most marginalized, impoverished districts for over a century.

Hundreds of shanty towns line the riverbanks, train tracks, and garbage dumps in the Filipino capital—the most jammed-packed areas in one of the world’s most densely populated cities. Around a quarter of its 12 million people are considered “informal settlers.”

Manila is starkly representative of a global problem. According to the United Nations , about a quarter of the world’s urban population lives in slums—and this figure is rising fast.

Rich cultural heritage brings visitors to Manila, but some feel compelled to leave the safety of the historic center sites to get a glimpse of the city’s inequality. Tour operators in the Philippines —as well as places like Brazil and India —have responded by offering “slum tours” that take outsiders through their most impoverished, marginalized districts.

Slum tourism sparks considerable debate around an uncomfortable moral dilemma. No matter what you call it—slum tours, reality tours, adventure tourism, poverty tourism—many consider the practice little more than slack-jawed privileged people gawking at those less fortunate. Others argue they raise awareness and provide numerous examples of giving back to the local communities. Should tourists simply keep their eyes shut?

Around a quarter of Manila's 12 million people are considered “informal settlers."

Rich cultural heritage brings visitors to Manila, but some feel compelled to leave the safety of the historic center sites to get a glimpse of the city’s inequality.

Slumming For Centuries

Slum tourism is not a new phenomenon, although much has changed since its beginning. “Slumming” was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in the 1860s, meaning “to go into, or frequent, slums for discreditable purposes; to saunter about, with a suspicion, perhaps, of immoral pursuits.” In September 1884, the New York Times published an article about the latest trend in leisure activities that arrived from across the pond, “‘Slumming’ will become a form of fashionable dissipation this winter among our Belles, as our foreign cousins will always be ready to lead the way.”

Usually under the pretense of charity and sometimes with a police escort, rich Londoners began braving the city’s ill-reputed East End beginning around 1840. This new form of amusement arrived to New York City from wealthy British tourists eager to compare slums abroad to those back home. Spreading across the coast to San Francisco, the practice creeped into city guide books. Groups wandered through neighborhoods like the Bowery or Five Points in New York to peer into brothels, saloons, and opium dens.

Visitors could hardly believe their eyes, and justifiably so. “I don’t think an opium den would have welcomed, or allowed access to, slummers to come through if they weren’t there to smoke themselves,” Chad Heap writes in his book Slumming: Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife , 1885–1940 . Recognizing the business opportunity, outsiders cashed in on the curiosity by hiring actors to play the part of addicts or gang members to stage shoot-’em-ups in the streets. After all, no one wanted the slum tourists to demand a refund or go home disappointed.

Smokey Tours does not allow participants to take photos, but this policy proves difficult to enforce.

The city of San Francisco eventually banned such mockery of the poor, the New York Times reported in 1909: “This is a heavy blow to Chinatown guides, who have collected a fee of two dollars each. The opium smokers, gamblers, blind paupers, singing children, and other curiosities were all hired.”

Tours also brought positive results, as Professor of History Seth Koven highlights in his research of slumming in Victorian London. Oxford and Cambridge Universities opened study centers in the late 19th-century to inform social policy, which was only possible by seeing the underprivileged neighborhoods firsthand.

Popularity waned after World War II with the creation of welfare and social housing—then rose again in the 1980s and 1990s as those state provisions declined and labor demands increased.

Presenting Poverty

Plastic arrives from all over India to the dark alleys and corrugated shacks of Dharavi in Mumbai —the second-largest slum on the continent of Asia (after Orangi Town in Pakistan ) and third-largest slum in the world. Ushered around by the company Reality Tour and Travel , tourists see a thriving recycling industry which employs around ten thousand to melt, reshape, and mould discarded plastic. They stop to watch the dhobiwallahs , or washermen, scrub sheets from the city’s hospitals and hotels in an open-air laundry area.

In a TripAdvisor review, one recent participant from Virginia appreciated the focus on community. “It was great to hear about the economy, education and livelihood of the residents,” she writes. “The tour group doesn't allow photography or shopping which I think is really important. It didn't feel exploitative, it felt educational.”

One traveler from London commented on the extremity of the scene. "Had to stop after about 20 minutes into it due to the overbearing nature of the surroundings. The tour is not for the faint hearted. I would've liked a few more disclaimers on the website to warn us about the nature of it." Another guest from the United Kingdom expressed disappointment over the so-called family meal. “This was in the home of one of the guides and, whilst his mum made lunch a delicious meal that we ate in her house, she didn’t eat with us so it wasn’t really what I had expected from a family lunch (or the photos promoting such on the website).”

Smokey Tours enters the Manila North Cemetery, inhabited by some of Manila's poorest people.

Children jump from grave to grave in the city’s largest cemetery.

Reality Tours hopes to challenge the stereotypical perception of slums as despairing places inhabited by hopeless people. The tour presented slum residents as productive and hardworking, but also content and happy. Analyzing more than 230 reviews of Reality Tour and Travel in her study , Dr. Melissa Nisbett of King’s College London realized that for many Dharavi visitors, poverty was practically invisible. “As the reviews show, poverty was ignored, denied, overlooked and romanticized, but moreover, it was depoliticized.” Without discussing the reason the slum existed, the tour decontextualized the plight of the poor and seemed only to empower the wrong people–the privileged, western, middle class visitors.

With good intentions, the company states that 80 percent of the profits benefit the community through the efforts of its NGO that works to provide access to healthcare, organize educational programs, and more. Co-founder Chris Way spoke to National Geographic after his company surged in popularity from the sleeper hit Slumdog Millionaire . “We do try and be as transparent as possible on our website, which does allay many people’s fears.” Way personally refuses a salary for his work.

No Two Cities Alike

The main question should be: Is poverty the central reason to visit?

Other cities take different approaches to slum tourism. In the early 1990s, when black South Africans began offering tours of their townships—the marginalized, racially-segregated areas where they were forced to live—to help raise global awareness of rampant human rights violations. Rather than exploitation inflicted by outsiders, local communities embraced slum tourism as a vehicle to take matters of their traditionally neglected neighborhoods into their own hands.

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Some free tours of favelas in Rio de Janeiro provided an accessible option to the crowds that infiltrated the city during the World Cup and Summer Olympics, while most companies continue to charge. Tour manager Eduardo Marques of Brazilian Expeditions explains how their authenticity stands out, “We work with some local guides or freelancers, and during the tour we stop in local small business plus [offer] capoeira presentations that [support] the locals in the favela. We do not hide any info from our visitors. The real life is presented to the visitors.”

Smokey Tours in Manila connected tourists with the reality facing inhabitants of a city landfill in Tondo (until 2014 when it closed) to tell their stories. Now the company tours around Baseco near the port, located in the same crowded district and known for its grassroots activism. Locally-based photographer Hannah Reyes Morales documented her experience walking with the group on assignment for National Geographic Travel. “I had permission to photograph this tour from both the operator and community officials, but the tour itself had a no photography policy for the tourists.” With the policy difficult to enforce, some guests secretly snapped photos on their phones. “I observed how differently tourists processed what they were seeing in the tour. There were those who were respectful of their surroundings, and those who were less so.”

All About Intention

Despite sincere attempts by tour operators to mitigate offense and give back to locals, the impact of slum tourism stays isolated. Ghettoized communities remain woven into the fabric of major cities around the world, each with their individual political, historical, and economic concerns that cannot be generalized. Similarly, the motivations behind the tourism inside them are as diverse as the tour participants themselves. For all participants involved, operators or guests, individual intentions matter most.

The Baseco neighborhood is located on the Pasig river near the city port, but lacks access to clean drinking water.

Better connections between cities allow more people to travel than ever before, with numbers of international tourists growing quickly every year. While prosperity and quality of life have increased in many cities, so has inequality. As travelers increasingly seek unique experiences that promise authentic experiences in previously off-limits places, access through tours helps put some areas on the map.

Travel connects people that would otherwise not meet, then provides potential to share meaningful stories with others back home. Dr. Fabian Frenzel, who studies tourism of urban poverty at the University of Leicester, points out that one of the key disadvantages of poverty is a lack of recognition and voice. “If you want to tell a story, you need an audience, and tourism provides that audience.” Frenzel argues that even taking the most commodifying tour is better than ignoring that inequality completely.

For the long-term future of these communities, the complex economic, legal, and political issues must be addressed holistically by reorganizing the distribution of resources. While illuminating the issue on a small scale, slum tourism is not a sufficient answer to a growing global problem.

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Slum tourism: What is it and how does it work?

Slum tourism is, believe it or not, a real type of tourism . Yep, you got that right- people go to slums whilst on holiday. But, why? In this article I will introduce you to the concept of slum tourism and tell you what it’s all about. Interested to learn more? Read on…

What is slum tourism?

Slum tourism definitions, what is white saviour syndrome, what does a slum tour involve, positive impacts of slum tourism, negative impacts of slum tourism, the ethics of slum tourism, slum tourism in south africa, slum tourism in brazil, slum tourism in india, slum tourism in indonesia, slum tourism in africa, slum tourism: conclusion, further reading.

Slum tourism is essentially when people visit slums – or, more widely, poverty stricken areas – as a form of tourism. This will generally be in a foreign country, one they are visiting as a tourist on holiday or on a business trip. It has also been referred to as ghetto tourism and poverty tourism.

In ‘ Theorizing Slum Tourism ’, researchers Eveline Dürr and Rivke Jaffe described slum tourism as follows: 

‘ Slum tourism involves transforming poverty, squalor and violence into a tourism product. Drawing on both altruism and voyeurism, this form of tourism is a complex phenomenon that raises various questions concerning power, inequality and subjectivity. ‘

While this describes slum tourism, it doesn’t necessarily define what it actually is. Bob Ma of the University of Pennsylvania says this:

‘ Slum tourism is one of the fastest-growing niche tourism segments in the world, but it is also one of the most controversial. The United Nations defines a slum as, “a run-down area of a city characterized by substandard housing and squalor and lacking in tenure security” (UN, 2007). Slum tourism is the organization of tours in these areas. As a niche segment, slum tourism is distinguished from developmental tourism, which is a broader term that includes tourism in any region that is undergoing development. ‘

Slum tourism as charity tourism

Some people engage in charity tourism – visiting slums or areas of high poverty with the intention of ‘making things better’. This is also sometimes called volunteer tourism . You can see this on Children In Need in the UK, for example, where we see videos of people heading to various underdeveloped areas of Africa to build schools or install wells for fresh water access etc. You can pay (a lot of) money to do this yourself through various organisations.

People do this as it is within human nature to want to help people who have less than we do. But it is also, of course, a chance to see somewhere new and explore a different culture . It can also be a great way to boost your CV. This means that taking part in slum tourism isn’t a purely selfless act, and this is why it can sometimes be frowned upon.

Studies show that slum tourism can have negative impacts on local communities – the use of unskilled labour, for example, and the taking of jobs that could ultimately have gone to local people. There is also usually no long term commitment involved, and of course there is the concept of white saviour syndrome.

The following extract comes from De-constructing the ‘White Saviour Syndrome’: A Manifestation of Neo-Imperialism by Felix Willuweit:

‘With the recent widespread of protests for black civil rights and against racism across the Western world, the topic of white prejudice has risen to the centre of public attention, of which one manifestation is the so-called ‘White Saviour Syndrome’.   Whether it is Ed Sheeran posing for ‘Comic Relief’ with a number of black children (Hinsliff, 2019), Madonna adopting children from Malawi (Hinsliff, 2019), or students going on adventures advertised for ‘young philanthropists’ within a multi-million dollar gap-year industry (Bandyopadhyay, 2019), numerous cases of altruistic acts of ‘White Saviours’ can be found throughout popular culture in the global North.’

Whereas these practices follow an altruistic narrative, they are commonly criticised as serving to satisfy a ‘White Saviour Syndrome’, the phenomenon in which a white person “guides people of colour from the margins to the mainstream with his or her own initiative and benevolence” which tends to render the people of colour “incapable of helping themselves” and disposes them of historical agency (Cammarota, 2011: 243-244).

So what does slum tourism involve? Many tour operators offer literal ‘slum tours’ as part of their packages, and of course you can visit slum areas alone as they are just parts of various areas. AfricanTrails.co.uk, for example, have a page discussing slum tours and they state that some of their packages do offer slum visits in Kenya, Uganda, Namibia and more.

Reality Tours and Travel are another company offering slum tours. As the company name suggests, they hope to offer a ‘realistic’ side to the places tourists visit. Based in India , a country with a lot of poverty, their slogan is ‘USING TOURISM TO CHANGE LIVES’. They say: Our ethical and educational Dharavi slum tours give visitors a unique glimpse into everyday life for many Mumbaikars while breaking down the negative stereotypes associated with slums. 80% of the profits from every tour are invested back into the community through the programs of our NGO, Reality Gives , and most of our guides are from the community.

Slum tourism has some positives to it. It gives people an insight into how poverty can affect people – humans are curious by nature, and if you are not living in poverty yourself, or never have, then it can be hard to imagine what it is really like. Visiting a slum whilst on holiday is like opening a window to another life, however briefly. 

It is also a chance to provide an income to people living in slums, if the tour involves some sort of opportunity to purchase goods or donate money. And with some tours, as you can see from Reality Tours and Travel above, the booking cost goes into improving the community.

Of course, there are negatives impacts associated with slum tourism too. The main one is that it treats those who live in slums as though they are in a zoo, dehumanising them so tourists can see what it’s like before swanning off back to their hotel and other luxuries. Some would go so far as to argue that they are a form of ‘ human zoo ‘. These tours portray poverty as something exotic, rather than a very real danger to the lives of the people impacted by it. It is also questionable how far the money trickles down. With people paying for organised tours, how sure can we be that real people are accessing the money?

Looking at the pros and cons it is clear that there is an ethical question surrounding slum tourism . People who live in poverty and live in slums are real people. We need to ask ourselves whether it is fair for them to be paraded around in front of us as part of an organised tour that we are paying a company to go on.

Some questions we should ask ourselves when looking to engage in slum tourism, courtesy of slumtourism.net, are:

• To what extent does slum tourism provide an income and positive visibility for people in deprived areas? 
• Which stakeholders are involved in slum tourism and who profits most? 
• How are guided tours organised or composed?  
• What are the geographical scopes of slum-tourism and which place does it occupy in the new mobility system? 
• Where does slum tourism fit in a globalised world of tourist consumption?

It is similar to visiting remote tribes, in a way, just as I explain in my article about the long neck tribe in Thailand . Tourists coming in from outside to view life in a slum through a western lens for a few minutes… does this paint a fair picture of slums?

Slum tourism destinations

There are various places around the world where slum tourism is prevalent. Here are some examples-

Slum tourism exists across South Africa . Here it is also known as township tourism – in SA, townships are the underdeveloped urban areas, generally populated by people of colour as a fall out from the Apartheid era. Apparently, around 25% of visitors to Cape Town engage in township tours. This city alone has around 40-50 township tour operators.

Slum tourism in Brazil equates to ‘favela tours’. Favelas are slums or shanty towns built on the outskirts of major cities across Brazil, and many people visit them for tourist purposes while on holiday in this beautiful country. Favelas are known to be dangerous areas. They are rife with crime, violence and drug dealing, but thousands of tourists every month visit these areas with curiosity.

As mentioned above when I spoke about Reality Tours and Travel, India is a prime spot for slum tourism due to the high levels of poverty here. The film Slumdog Millionaire put Indian slums onto the screens of millions of people, many of whom became keen to see it for themselves on a trip to India. There are around 15,000 people visiting the Dharavi slum each year alone.

Jakarta is home to a slum where families of 5 squeeze into ‘houses’ no bigger than the average western bathroom. They survive on pennies, and welcome tourists into their homes to see what it is like. Jakarta Hidden Tours is run by Ronnie. He’s a charity worker who donates half of his profits to the local community in an attempt to improve their lives.

Across Africa there are poor and underdeveloped communities. Slums tend to exist in Kenya and Uganda, for the most part. AfricanTrails say:

Going on an Africa slum tour is a great way to see what life is like for the majority of residents in a specific African town or city. Visitors can see how people live and the work they carry out in order to provide for their families. Slum tours are not purely filled with misery, the towns often have vibrant communities with shops, schools and market stalls.

I t is easy to forget that there are people living in these conditions, as it is not something you see every day, so for many, Africa slum tours are a real eye-opening experience. Visitors leave the area with the intention of donating to charities, helping those living in these places. Slum tours give the chance for tourists to interact with others from different backgrounds and see the true beauty of Africa and its people.

To conclude, slum tourism occurs around the world, and has done since Victorian times in England. Back then, the aristocracy would visit the capital’s poorest areas for voyeuristic and/or philanthropic purposes. And still it continues. People are, of course, eager to see another way of life. Often they believe that they are helping, and visiting people at their lowest can be a great way to remind you that really, you don’t have it all that bad. The ethics are questionable, but there are definitely ways you can visit a slum without it being a negative thing.

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Lecturer in the Political Economy of Organisation, University of Leicester

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From 2012-2014 Fabian Frenzel was a Marie-Curie Fellow and has received funding from the European Union to conduct his research on slum tourism.

University of Leicester provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK.

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Back in Victorian times, wealthier citizens could sometimes be found wandering among London’s poorer, informal neighbourhoods, distributing charity to the needy. “Slumming” – as it was called – was later dismissed as a morally dubious and voyeuristic pastime. Today, it’s making a comeback; wealthy Westerners are once more making forays into slums – and this time, they’re venturing right across the developing world.

According to estimates by tour operators and researchers , over one million tourists visited a township, favela or slum somewhere in the world in 2014. Most of these visits were made as part of three or four-hour tours in the hotspots of global slum tourism; major cities and towns in Johannesburg, Rio de Janeiro and Mumbai.

There is reason to think that slum tourism is even more common than these numbers suggest. Consider the thousands of international volunteers, who spend anything from a few days to several months in different slums across the world.

The gap year has become a rite of passage for young adults between school and university and, in the UK, volunteering and travel opportunities are often brokered by commercial tourism operators. In Germany and the US, state sponsored programs exist to funnel young people into volunteering jobs abroad.

International volunteering is no longer restricted to young people at specific points in their lives. Volunteers today are recruited across a wide range of age groups . Other travellers can be considered slum-tourists: from international activists seeking cross-class encounters to advance global justice, to students and researchers of slums and urban development conducting fieldwork in poor neighbourhoods.

Much modern tourism leads richer people to encounter relatively poorer people and places. But in the diverse practices of slum tourism, this is an intentional and explicit goal: poverty becomes the attraction – it is the reason to go.

Many people will instinctively think that this kind of travel is morally problematic, if not downright wrong. But is it really any better to travel to a country such as India and ignore its huge inequalities?

Mapping inequality

It goes without saying that ours is a world of deep and rigid inequalities. Despite some progress in the battles against absolute poverty, inequality is on the rise globally . Few people will openly disagree that something needs to be done about this – but the question is how? Slum tourism should be read as an attempt to address this question. So, rather than dismissing it outright, we should hold this kind of tourism to account and ask; does it help to reduce global inequality?

My investigation into slum tourism provided some surprising answers to this question. We tend to think of tourism primarily as an economic transaction. But slum tourism actually does very little to directly channel money into slums: this is because the overall numbers of slum tourists and the amount of money they end up spending when visiting slums is insignificant compared with with the resources needed to address global inequality.

But in terms of symbolic value, even small numbers of slum tourists can sometimes significantly alter the dominant perceptions of a place. In Mumbai, 20,000 tourists annually visit the informal neighbourhood of Dharavi , which was featured in Slumdog Millionaire. Visitor numbers there now rival Elephanta Island in Mumbai – a world heritage site.

Likewise, in Johannesburg, most locals consider the inner-city neighbourhood of Hillbrow to be off limits. But tourists rate walking tours of the area so highly that the neighbourhood now features as one of the top attractions of the city on platforms such as Trip Advisor . Tourists’ interest in Rio’s favelas has put them on the map; before, they used to be hidden by city authorities and local elites .

Raising visibility

Despite the global anti-poverty rhetoric, it is clear that today’s widespread poverty does benefit some people. From their perspective, the best way of dealing with poverty is to make it invisible. Invisibility means that residents of poor neighbourhoods find it difficult to make political claims for decent housing, urban infrastructure and welfare. They are available as cheap labour, but deprived of full social and political rights.

Slum tourism has the power to increase the visibility of poor neighbourhoods, which can in turn give residents more social and political recognition. Visibility can’t fix everything, of course. It can be highly selective and misleading, dark and voyeuristic or overly positive while glossing over real problems. This isn’t just true of slum tourism; it can also be seen in the domain of “virtual slumming” – the consumption of images, films and books about slums.

Yet slum tourism has a key advantage over “virtual slumming”: it can actually bring people together. If we want tourism to address global inequality, we should look for where it enables cross-class encounters; where it encourages tourists to support local struggles for recognition and build the connections that can help form global grassroots movements. To live up to this potential, we need to reconsider what is meant by tourism, and rethink what it means to be tourists.

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Inside the Very Real World of 'Slum Tourism'

Hurricane Katrina left physical and emotional scars on New Orleans, and America, but nowhere was its impact more devastating than the city’s Lower Ninth Ward. Three years after the storm, in October 2008, the district was still pockmarked with half-demolished homes and patches of overgrown grass. It was also dotted with artworks, site-specific installations by the likes of Wangechi Mutu and her Ms Sarah House . Those works formed part of the city’s inaugural art biennial, Prospect New Orleans , bringing tourists to drive and wander through the area in droves. But visitors were caught in an uncomfortable paradox, their art viewing underpinned by the backdrop of one of America’s poorest neighborhoods—or what was left of it.

Locals stood by as various VIPs peered at Mutu’s work. When one of the arterati mustered up courage enough to ask if she minded the influx of gawkers, she shrugged and dodged the question. “It’s nice to have the art here, because it means people are coming to see more than just our ruined homes.” Not everyone reacted to the incomers with such neutrality, though—take one hand-painted sign erected in the neighborhood post-Katrina, that read:

TOURIST Shame On You Driving BY without stopping Paying to see my pain 1,600+ DIED HERE

Both reactions are understandable, and spotlight the uneasy distinction locals in the area might have drawn between being viewed rather than feeling seen. Is it wrong, though, to go beyond the sightseeing mainstays of somewhere like the French Quarter and into a corner of the city that might be blighted or underprivileged as these visitors did? It’s an awkward, but intriguing, question, and one that underpins a nascent niche in travel. It has been nicknamed ‘slum tourism,’ though it’s a broad umbrella term travel that involves visiting underprivileged areas in well-trafficked destinations. Such experiences are complex, since they can seem simultaneously important (bringing much-needed revenues, educating visitors first hand) and inappropriate (a gesture of misunderstanding fitting for a modern-day Marie Antoinette).

Indeed, even those who operate in the field seem to struggle to reconcile those divergent urges. Researching this story, there was resistance, suspicion, and even outright hostility from seasoned slum tourism vets. Deepa Krishnan runs Mumbai Magic , which specializes in tours around the city, home to what’s estimated as Asia’s largest slum; here, about a million people live in ad hoc homes a few miles from Bollywood’s glitz (it’s now best known as home to the hero of Slumdog Millionaire ). "The Spirit of Dharavi" tour takes in this settlement, a two-hour glimpse into everyday life aiming to show that the squalor for which it’s become shorthand is only part of Dharavi story. It’s also a hub of recycling, for example, and home to women’s co-op for papadum-making. Organized as a community project, rather than on a commercial basis, all profits are ploughed back into Dharavi. Yet pressed to talk by phone rather than email, Deepa balked. “I’ve been misquoted too often,” she said.

The organizer of another alt-tourism operation was even more reluctant, and asked not to be quoted, or included here, at all. Its superb premise—the formerly homeless act as guides to help visitors see and understand overlooked corners of a well-trafficked city—seemed smartly to upend tradition. Rather than isolating ‘the other,’ it shows the interconnectedness of so much in a modern city. The fact that both of these firms, whose businesses fall squarely into such non-traditional tours, are so squeamish about the topic is instructive—and reassuring for the rest of us when we’re conflicted about whether or not it’s ethical to treat deprivation as a distraction.

Call it poorism, misery tourism, poverty tourism—it still smacks of exploitation.

The contemporary concept of slum tourism dates back about 30 years, according to Ko Koens, Ph.D., a Dutch academic who specializes in this field and runs slumtourism.net . The South African government began bussing municipal workers into townships like Soweto in the 1980s, he explains, intending to educate them on no-go areas within their fiefdom. “International tourists, mostly activists, who wanted to show their support [for township-dwellers] started doing these tours, too. And after apartheid ended, the operators who were running them for the government realized they could do them commercially.” (It’s now a vital part of the country’s tourism economy, with some estimates that one in four visitors to the country book a Township Tour. )

Simultaneously, tourists were beginning to explore the slums or favelas of Rio de Janeiro. These are the shantytowns that six percent of Brazil’s population calls home. Bolted to the steep hills overlooking the waterfront mansions where wealthy Cariocas chose to live, these higgledy piggledy shacks perch precariously, as if jumbled in the aftermath of an earthquake. From here, the idea of slum tourism began spreading across the world, from Nairobi to the Dominican Republic, and of course, India. Mumbai Magic isn’t alone in operating tours of Bombay’s Dharavi slums—there are countless tours available of areas that now rival the Marine Drive or the Gateway of India as local attractions.

Yet though it’s a thriving new niche, many travelers remain squeamish about the idea. In part, of course, it’s thanks to the words "slum tourism," yet none of the alternatives seem any less confrontational. Call it poorism, misery tourism, poverty tourism—it still smacks of exploitation. There are also safety concerns, too: After all, Brazil supplied almost half the entries in a recent list of the world’s 50 most dangerous cities , not to mention that the world’s latest health crisis is headquartered in the stagnant waters on which the favela residents rely. The sense of being an interloper, or that such deprivation is Disneyfied into a showcase solely for visitors, is an additional factor—especially when spoofish ideas like Emoya’s Shanty Town hotel , a faux South African slum that offsets discomforts like outdoor toilets with underfloor heating and Wi-Fi, turn out not to be Saturday Night Live skits.

Muddled motivations add to the discomfort; one in-depth study found it was pure curiosity, rather than education, say, or self-actualization, that drove most visitors to book a trip around the Dharavi slums. One first-hand account by a Kenyan who went from the slums of Nairobi to studying at Wesleyan University underlines those awkward findings. “I was 16 when I first saw a slum tour. I was outside my 100-square-foot house washing dishes… “ he wrote. “Suddenly a white woman was taking my picture. I felt like a tiger in a cage. Before I could say anything, she had moved on.” He makes one rule of any such trips all too clear: If you undertake any such tours, focus on memories rather than Instagram posts.

Suddenly a white woman was taking my picture. I felt like a tiger in a cage.

The biggest challenge, though, is the lack of accreditation. It's still a frustratingly opaque process, to gauge how profits made will directly improve conditions in that slum, admits Tony Carne, who runs Urban Adventures , a division of socially conscious firm Intrepid Travel. His firm is a moderated marketplace for independent guides—much like an Etsy for travel—and offers a wide range of slum tours around the world. Carne supports some form of regulation to help reassure would-be clients of a slum tour’s ethical credentials. “The entire integrity of our business is sitting on this being the right thing to do,” he says, though he also predicts a shift in the business, likely to make such regulation unnecessary. Many charities have begun suggesting these slum tours to donors keen to see how and where their money is used, outsourced versions of the visits long available to institutional donors. He is already in to co-brand slum tours with several major nonprofits, including Action Aid via its Safe Cities program; Carne hopes that such partnerships will reassure travelers queasy about such tours’ ethics and finances. “Everyone from the U.N. down has said poverty alleviation through tourism can only be a reality if someone does something,” he says. “It will not solve itself by committee. It will solve itself by action.”

Carne’s theory was echoed by my colleague Laura Dannen Redman, who visited the Philippi township in Cape Town under the aegis of a local nonprofit. It was a private tour, but the group hopes to increase awareness to bolster the settlement’s infrastructure. She still vividly recalls what she saw, half a year later. “The homes were corrugated iron, but tidy, exuding a sense of pride with clean curtains in the windows. But there was this one open gutter I can't forget. The water was tinged green, littered with what looked like weeks’ worth of garbage—plastic wrappers and bottles and other detritus. It backed the neighborhood like a gangrenous moat," she says. "They deserve better. It does feel disingenuous, shameful, even if you’re there to learn and want to help. But the end result was motivating. We did feel called to action, to pay more attention to the plight of so many South Africans.” In the end, perhaps, it isn’t what we call it, or even why we do it that matters—it’s whether the slum tourism experience inspires us to try to make a change.

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Slum Tourism: What Is It, and Is It Okay?

Slum tourism, also sometimes referred to as "ghetto tourism," involves tourism to impoverished areas, particularly in India , Brazil, Kenya, and Indonesia. The purpose of slum tourism is to provide tourists the opportunity to see the “non-touristy” areas of a country or city.

While slum tourism has gained some international notoriety in recent years, it is not a new concept. In the mid-1800s, rich Londoners would travel to the squalid tenements of the East End. Early visits began under the guise of “charity,” but over the next few decades, the practice spread to the tenements of U.S. cities like New Yorkand Chicago . With demand, tour operators developed guides to tour these impoverished neighborhoods.

Slum tourism, or seeing how the other half lived, died off in the mid-1900s, but regained popularity in South Africa due to apartheid. This tourism, though, was driven by the oppressed Black South Africans who wanted the world to understand their plight. The success of the movie "Slumdog Millionaire" brought India’s poverty to the world’s attention and slum tourism expanded to cities like Dharavi , home to India’s largest slum.

Modern tourists want an authentic experience, not the white-washed tourist zones that were so popular in the 1980s. Slum tourism meets this desire, offering a look into the world beyond their personal experience.

Safety Concerns

Like it is in all areas of tourism, slum tourism can be safe, or not. When choosing a slum tour, guests should use due diligence to determine if a tour is licensed, has a good reputation on review sites and follows local guidelines.

For instance, Reality Tours and Travel , which was featured on PBS, takes 18,000 people on tours of Dharavi, India each year. The tours highlight the slum’s positives, such as its infrastructure of hospitals, banks and entertainment, and its negatives, such as the lack of housing space and bathrooms and mounds of garbage. The tour shows guests that not everyone has a middle-class home, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have a vibrant life. Further, 80% of proceeds from the tours are pumped back into community improvement projects.

Unfortunately, other companies, taking on similar names and logos, offer “tours” that don’t showcase the positives and negatives but exploit the community. They don’t pump funds back into the community, either.

Because there is no standard for slum tour operators yet, tourists need to determine for themselves whether a particular tour company is acting as ethically and responsibly as it claims.

Brazil’s favelas , slum areas that are typically located on the outskirts of big cities like  São Paulo , draw 50,000 tourists each year. Rio de Janeiro has by far the most slum tours of any city in Brazil. Slum tourism of Brazil’s favelas is encouraged by the federal government. Tours provide an opportunity to understand that these hill communities are vibrant communities, not just drug-infested slums portrayed in movies. Trained tour guides drive tourists to the favela by van and then offer walking tours to highlight local entertainment, community centers, and even a meet with people who live there. Generally, photography is prohibited on slum tours preserving respect for the people who live there.

The government goals for touring favelas include:

• explaining the economy of a favela (employment, welfare, rental markets and more)
• highlighting the infrastructure of the favela (hospitals, shopping, banking, fashion, and entertainment)
• touring schools and community centers
• touring community projects
• interacting with the citizens and visits to their homes
• enjoying a meal at a local restaurant

While Brazil has carefully structured its program for slum tourism, concerns remain. Despite regulations and guidelines, some tourists take photos and share them on social media. Whether for shock value or in an effort to enlighten the world to the plight of people in slums, these photos can do more harm than good. Some tour operators, likewise, exploit tourists, claiming that their tours support local businesses without actually giving back to the community. Perhaps the greatest concern, though, is that when slum tourism goes wrong, real lives are impacted.

Responsible slum tourism depends on government guidelines, ethical tour operators, and considerate tourists. When these come together, tourists can have  safe travel experiences, gain a wider worldview and communities can benefit.​

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Slum Tourism | Meaning, History, Impact and Examples

Imagine walking through narrow alleys, observing vibrant communities living amidst challenging conditions, and gaining firsthand insight into the resilience of human spirit. This is the essence of slum tourism, a rapidly growing phenomenon that offers tourists a glimpse into the lives of those residing in some of the world’s most impoverished areas. However, slum tourism is a double-edged sword, sparking intense debate over its ethical implications and socio-economic impact. 

Understanding Slum Tourism

Slum tourism involves guided tours through impoverished urban areas, where tourists observe daily life, interact with residents, and learn about the challenges faced by these communities. These tours, often organised by local or international companies, aim to provide an authentic experience of slum life while promoting cultural exchange and awareness.

Historical Context

The roots of slum tourism can be traced back to the 19th century, when affluent Londoners visited the city’s impoverished East End to observe the living conditions of the poor. Similar practices were noted in New York’s Five Points neighbourhood, where wealthy individuals toured the slums out of curiosity or a desire to understand social issues. However, modern slum tourism as we know it gained momentum in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, particularly in countries like Brazil, India, and South Africa.

Evolution of Slum Tourism

Over the years, slum tourism has evolved from informal excursions into structured, organised tours that promise a deeper understanding of poverty and resilience. This evolution has been driven by several factors, including globalisation, increased interest in social justice issues, and the growing demand for experiential travel.

Popular Destinations

Today, slum tourism is prevalent in many parts of the world. Some of the most popular destinations include:

• Dharavi, Mumbai, India: Often dubbed Asia’s largest slum, Dharavi attracts thousands of tourists annually who seek to understand its complex social and economic dynamics.
• Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Known for its favelas, Rio offers tours that showcase the vibrant culture and community spirit of these neighbourhoods.
• Township Tours, South Africa: Tours in Cape Town and Johannesburg provide insight into the historical and socio-economic challenges faced by residents of townships like Soweto and Khayelitsha.

Ethical Controversies

The rise of slum tourism has sparked significant ethical debates, with critics and proponents presenting compelling arguments.

Exploitation vs. Empowerment

One of the primary criticisms of slum tourism is that it exploits the poverty of residents for the entertainment of wealthy tourists. Critics argue that these tours can be voyeuristic, turning human suffering into a spectacle. On the other hand, proponents contend that slum tourism can be empowering, providing much-needed income and economic opportunities for local communities.

Authenticity and Respect

Questions of authenticity and respect are central to the debate. Detractors claim that slum tours often present a skewed or romanticised view of poverty, sanitising the harsh realities to make them palatable for tourists. Additionally, there are concerns about the invasion of privacy and dignity of residents, who may feel objectified or disrespected by the constant presence of outsiders.

Impact on Local Communities

The impact of slum tourism on local communities is a complex issue. While some residents may benefit economically from the influx of tourists, others may feel marginalised or resentful. The presence of tourists can also lead to gentrification, driving up prices and displacing long-term residents.

Socio-Economic Impact

Despite the ethical controversies, slum tourism can have significant socio-economic impacts on both residents and tourists.

Economic Benefits

One of the most tangible benefits of slum tourism is the economic impact on local communities. Tour operators often employ local guides, providing job opportunities and income. Additionally, tourists may spend money on local crafts, food, and services, boosting the local economy. In some cases, slum tourism has also led to infrastructure improvements and increased access to social services.

Awareness and Advocacy

Slum tourism can also raise awareness about poverty and social issues, inspiring tourists to become advocates for change. By witnessing the challenges faced by residents firsthand, tourists may be more likely to support charitable organisations or initiatives aimed at addressing poverty and inequality. Furthermore, slum tourism can challenge stereotypes and misconceptions about impoverished communities, fostering greater empathy and understanding.

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Examples and Case Studies

Dharavi, mumbai, india.

Dharavi, often portrayed in popular media as a sprawling slum, is a hub of economic activity and entrepreneurial spirit. Slum tours in Dharavi offer a glimpse into its vibrant informal economy, showcasing industries such as pottery, recycling, and leather production. These tours highlight the resilience and ingenuity of residents, challenging negative perceptions of slums as merely sites of poverty and deprivation.

Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Rocinha, one of Rio’s largest favelas, is a focal point for slum tourism in Brazil. Guided tours through Rocinha emphasise the community’s rich cultural heritage, including its music, dance, and art. These tours also provide insight into the social and political issues faced by favela residents, fostering a deeper understanding of the complexities of urban poverty in Brazil.

Soweto, Johannesburg, South Africa

Soweto, a township with a profound historical significance, is a key destination for slum tourism in South Africa. Tours in Soweto often include visits to landmarks such as Nelson Mandela’s former home and the Hector Pieterson Memorial, providing a historical context to the socio-economic challenges faced by township residents. These tours highlight the intersection of history, culture, and social justice, offering a multifaceted perspective on life in Soweto.

Responsible Slum Tourism

Given the ethical controversies and potential negative impacts, it is crucial to approach slum tourism with sensitivity and responsibility. Here are some guidelines for responsible slum tourism:

Ethical Tour Operators

Choose tour operators who prioritise the well-being and dignity of local communities. Ethical operators engage with residents in a respectful manner, provide fair wages to local guides, and reinvest a portion of their profits into community development projects.

Meaningful Engagement

Engage with local communities in a meaningful and respectful way. Avoid taking intrusive photographs or treating residents as mere objects of curiosity. Instead, focus on building genuine connections and understanding the complexities of their lives.

Support Local Businesses

Support local businesses by purchasing crafts, food, and services from community members. This not only boosts the local economy but also empowers residents to take control of their economic futures.

Advocacy and Action

Use your experience to advocate for positive change. Share your insights with others, support organisations working to address poverty and inequality, and consider volunteering or donating to initiatives that benefit slum communities.

Slum tourism is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon that straddles the line between exploitation and empowerment. While it offers tourists a unique and eye-opening experience, it also raises significant ethical questions and potential negative impacts on local communities. By approaching slum tourism with sensitivity, respect, and a commitment to social justice, it is possible to navigate these challenges and ensure that the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

Ultimately, slum tourism serves as a powerful reminder of the resilience and resourcefulness of human communities in the face of adversity. It highlights the importance of empathy, understanding, and solidarity in addressing the global challenges of poverty and inequality. As we continue to explore the world around us, let us do so with a spirit of respect and responsibility, ensuring that our travels contribute to a more just and equitable world.

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Slumming It At Dharavi: What Are Our Intentions With Slum Tourism?

With cities like Mumbai, Johannesburg, and Rio de Janeiro now becoming bonafide tourist attractions, bringing in hundreds and thousands of curious visitors each year, Slum Tourism has also seen a rise in popularity. It takes outsiders through the most impoverished, marginalised districts of the city to get a glimpse of the city’s inequality. 

Filled with hundreds of shanty towns lined by the riverbanks, train tracks, and garbage dumps, “Slumming” has become the key to capturing the attention of the wanderlust, experiential, thrill-seeking traveller. Spending time at a slum through one’s own curiosity or for the charitable purpose of pro-poor tourism, there are benefits and detriments. 

Slum tourism does spark a considerable debate around an uncomfortable moral dilemma. Is the practice in line with privileged people gawking at those less fortunate or do they raise awareness and provide numerous examples of giving back to the local communities? Yet to further look into this travel practice, we need to set out the basics of the same.

Slum Tourism, Poverty Tourism, Ghetto Tourism or Reality Tours Defined:

Slum Tourism also known as Poverty tourism or ghetto tourism is a type of city tourism that involves visiting impoverished areas. Originally focused on the slums and ghettos of London and Manhattan in the 19th Century, Slum tourism is now prominent in South Africa, India, Brazil, Poland, Kenya, Philippines and the United States. Whether called a township, favela, a barrio, a slum, a shantytown, or a ghetto, outsiders recreationally visiting these typically impoverished places is nothing new.  

What began in the mid-80s, ‘Slumming’ was first used in the Oxford English Dictionary, as people in London visited slum neighbourhoods such as Whitechapel or Shoreditch in order to observe life in this situation. In the 1980s, South African communities organised township tours to educate the whites in local governments on how the black population lived. Similarly, in the mid-1990s, international tours were organised with destinations in the most disadvantaged areas of developing nations, thus starting the trend of slum tourism, attracting thousands across the globe.  

Motivated by the ‘out of the ordinary’ experience , tourism is in itself the exploration and experience of the reality of a particular place. Therefore slum tourism actually returns to this practice, it allows the tourists to get a sense of real-life for the poorest communities, creating a path to development and poverty alleviation- funnelling tourists dollars into slums, or installing exploitative practices that enhance the western travellers need to ‘feel good’. 

Reality Check with Slum Tour and Travel.

A study in 2012 by the University of Pennsylvania showed that tourists in Mumbai’s Dharavi slum were motivated primarily by curiosity, as opposed to several competing push factors such as social comparison, entertainment, education, or self-actualization. The study also found that most slum residents were ambivalent about the tour, with interest and intrigue as the most commonly cited feelings. Take Reality Tour and Travel of Mumbai, India. Often ushered by this slum tour operator, tourists get to see a thriving recycling industry which employs around ten thousand people, to melt, reshape, and mould discarded plastic.

Also, followed by dhobi wallahs, or washermen in open-air laundry areas, tourists get to connect with locals for memorable cooking experiences, presenting the residents as productive and hardworking yet content and happy with their lifestyle and socio-economic status. However, Dr, Melissa Nisbett in her study of Slum Tourism found that the concept of poverty to these Dharavi visitors was practically invisible. She added:

“As the reviews show, poverty was ignored, denied, overlooked and romanticized, but moreover, it is depoliticized. The tours decontextualized the plight of the poor and seem only to empower the wrong people- the privileged, western, middle-class visitors”. 

The primary accusation here is that slum tourism takes away the poverty from poverty tours, often turning hardship into entertainment- something that can be momentarily experienced and then escaped from. Yet the tours do provide employment and income for guides from the slum and an opportunity for craft-workers to sell souvenirs, allowing them to re-invest in the community and motivating tourists to help such economies. 

View this post on Instagram Join us in Kumbharwada and get hands-on with pottery making! Last week we had our inaugural Pottery Tour. Here's a sneak peek. #mumbai #bombay #kumbharwada #dharavi #slum #pottery #workshop #travel #travellove #travelworld #traveller #travelling #explore #wanderlust #neverstopexploring #incredibleindia #adventure #adventuretravel #indiatravel #passionpassport #exploreindia #travelbug #neverstoptravelling #india Picture @bunny_mayur A post shared by Reality Tours (@realityindia) on Jan 8, 2018 at 1:35am PST

Now Let Us Talk Numbers:

Considered to be one of the world’s largest slum, Dharavi in Mumbai, India is spread over 2.1 square kilometres (520 acres) with a population of somewhere between 700,000 to a million. With an active informal economy in which numerous household enterprises employ many of the slum residents- leather, textiles and pottery products are among the goods made inside Dharavi. The estimated total annual turnover for this informal economy is over USD 1 billion . 

An estimated 5000 businesses and 15,000 single-room factories operate in the area. The per capita income of the residents, depending on estimated population range of 300,000 to about 1 million , ranges somewhere between USD 500 to USD 2000 per year. The slums were also named by travel website TripAdvisor.com as the 2019 top visited experiences in India and also one of the 10 most favourite tourist sites in Asia. 

After being featured in award-winning films like Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire and much-appreciated Gully Boy, Dharavi has gained a lot of popularity, growing footfall in the area. Due to lack of data, one cannot determine the actual tread of visitors to the area. However, Reality has reportedly had about 15,000 visitors annually for the year 2016, with an expectation of the same growing further in the next 5 years. 

View this post on Instagram From #oxford to the slums of #slumdogmillionaire #dharavi #mumbai #india … only 9 of us were brave enough to try it ?? @oxfordsbs @oxford_uni A post shared by R U D I N A ? (@rudisuti) on Dec 4, 2019 at 10:30am PST

What About Your Intention? 

However, with tour operators trying to mitigate offence and give back to locals, the impact of slum tourism stays rather isolated. Fabian Frenzel, Author of the definitive book, Slumming It: The Tourist Valorization of Urban Poverty. , writes “ In slum tourism, what I find is that people are interested in this fact of inequality”.  Images of these areas create a sense of sentiment that amplifies over time as more and more visuals of the human condition around the world, especially within these slums surface. 

So, instead of consuming these images at home, people are increasingly trying to follow those images back to its origin, in order to “see it themselves” and then try and do something about it. According to the tour operator, the effect of such desire is massive. Take movies based around the areas. Slumdog Millionaire- an oscar winning movie that portrays the journey of two brothers in the slums of Mumbai to riches. Might it be a mere representation of the slums in its entirety, the actual essence of the “slum life” is something that creates this need to rate the place, see the place, feel the desperation of poverty?

View this post on Instagram #streetphotography #dharavi #oldhomes A post shared by bunny (@dharavi__17) on Dec 11, 2019 at 8:15am PST

“What you see is life, urban life”, as Frenzel puts it. Even though limited in many ways, might it be the lack of basic sanitation or all basic services of a city, there is a sense of vibrancy that has fantasised poverty. This is where the issue starts. Yes, the intention behind slum tourism itself is diverse in nature, but they all are pushed from a place of empathy, that adds personal value to the visitor rather than the actual settlement. It does help educate us about inequality in the world, but it takes away the poor in poverty by depoliticizing and romanticising life in slums. 

Is there something good that comes from ‘Slumming’. 

Regardless of your intention, slum tourism does open our eyes to inequality. It takes poverty and inequality and commodifies it in the sense of tours educating (might it even be a small group of people) about a global issue. While it might illuminate the issue on a small scale, slum tourism is not a sufficient answer to a growing global problem. 

But as Frenzel puts it “if you want to tell a story, you need an audience, and slum tourism provides that audience”.  

Yes, slum tourism can provide a way to challenge the stigma that represents slum life something dangerous. Take Reality Tours and Travels , for a mere INR 900 per person (USD 12.72), you can get a 2-hour eye-opening tour of ‘one of the largest slums in Asia’ and learn about the very vibrant life of Dharavi and its people. The best part, 80 per cent of the profit goes back into the slum to organise programs and run a community centre that houses many NGOs – including what Reality Tours gives to help better the conditions of the area.

Thus to conclude, what I would like to say is, yes slum tourism has many implications, but what matters is what your intentions are. Are you indulging in pro-poor tours to make yourself feel better? Or is it because you want to be educated about inequality and poverty?

Ask yourself this the next time you or someone you know goes on a slum tour.  

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Slum tourism: helping to fight poverty ...or voyeuristic exploitation?

Slum tourism – which involves touring marginalised and impoverished areas that tourists would normally never visit – is becoming increasingly popular in many locations around the world. Proponents argue that it can enable economic and social mobility for residents, and that it can also change the perspectives of those visiting. However, many critics see it as little more than voyeuristic classism with potentially damaging consequences, and few benefits for those who live in the slums. This report presents findings from desk-based research which sought to answer the following questions: What is slum tourism and why do people choose to visit slums? How can slum tourism benefit people in deprived areas? When is slum tourism voyeuristic and exploitative? Is it possible to define best practice principles in slum tourism?

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The good, bad and ugly of slum tourism

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When Marie Antoinette wanted to escape the confines and pressures of courtly life, she retreated to her quaint Petit Hameau, a rustic retreat at Versailles, where she and her companions donned their finest peasant frocks and pretended to be poor.

A century later, fashionable Londoners took that pauper fantasy to a new extreme — nocturnally touring East London’s slums, where they gawked at ladies of the night and coined the phrase “slumming it.” The idiosyncratic pastime eventually made its way across the pond and, before long, New York City socialites were hitting the Bowery in search of opium dens and lowbrow adventure. Back then, slum tourism was sort of a DIY diversion.

Today, it’s an all-inclusive destination vacation. Twenty-first century slum tourism is a far cry from the back -alley excursions of yesteryear. For the right price, discerning travelers can experience firsthand how the poorest of the poor live — some times without ever having to sacrifice first-world conveniences like Wi-Fi, heated floors, and Jacuzzi tubs.

Here are details of some of our (least) favorite poverty-chic getaways, including what a vacation or tour will set you back, where to book — and just how tasteless these options are.

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1.A 5-star South African shantytown

Bloemfontein, South Africa

Lodging from $82 per night

Tastelessness: Very High

Have you ever wanted to steal away to a cozy tin shack in one of South Africa’s sprawling shantytowns — only to change your mind over concerns about crime, noise and generally poor infrastructure? Emoya, a luxury hotel in Bloemfontein, may be just what you’re looking for: A quaint little shantytown tucked safely away on a game preserve. A mere $82 per night will get you a private shack, made of corrugated tin sheets, so you can experience the charm of living in a post-apartheid shantytown, without ever having to set foot in one. The shantys are child-friendly, and come equipped with heated floors, free Wi-Fi, and spa services.

2.Vacation like a border crosser, in Mexico

Parque EcoAlberto

Hidalgo, Mexico

Lodging from $105 per night;

“Night Walk” tour $19 per person.

Tastelessness: Moderate

In Southern Mexico, an eco-park owned by Hñahñu Indians offers tourists a chance to live out the drama and tension of an illegal border crossing. Called “Night Walk,” the strange excursion lasts about four hours and takes groups on an imaginary journey through the desert and across the Rio Grande. A dozen or so Hñahñus act out different roles: fellow migrants in search of work, as well as police on the lookout for border crossers. The park has many other attractions, too — including hot springs, kayaking and campgrounds — but the Night Walk seems to be the biggest draw.

In Indonesia, an authentic, bare-bones (and sometimes flooded) getaway

Banana Republic Village

Jakarta, Indonesia

Lodging $10 per night

Tastelessness: High

Travelers looking for a more realistic third-world experience may find it at “Banana Republic,” a plantation village just minutes outside of Jakarta. Ten dollars per night will get you a room, a mattress, and a fan within this interconnected complex of shanty homes. Bring your own flashlight if you expect to use the outdoor toilet at night, as well as your own toiletries for the communal shower.

If that’s not authentic enough for you, the Airbnb posting notes that “In December, the floods arrive. Heavy rain causes the river surrounding the village to overflow … The rusty roofs leak and leave the homes damp.” According to the ad, your $10 will go toward unclogging the river and repairing damaged roofs — but not before you get the chance to enjoy both.

4. Tour Rio’s largest favela with some of its very own residents

Favela Tourism Workshop

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

From $30 per person

Tastelessness: Moderate to Mild

A Brazilian company called Exotic Tours was the first to offer sightseeing tours of Rio de Janeiro’s biggest slum, Rocinha. In recent years, it began hiring local favela residents to work as guides, an effort that created a more authentic experience for travelers, and provided some income for members of the community. The company claims that some of the proceeds benefit a local school, so tourists can rest assured that they’re doing their part to help Rio’s urban poor. Be warned, though: Increasing tourism has helped to transform Rocinha from a sprawling shantytown into a semi-developed urban slum, so it’s perhaps less gritty than the average poverty tourist might prefer.

5.Enjoy San Francisco’s grittiest neighborhood alongside its homeless

San Francisco, Calif.

Tour is $20 per person.

Tastelessness: Relatively mild

Most visitors to San Francisco try to avoid the Tenderloin, a downtown neighborhood once notorious for its high crime rate but now better known for its population of vagrants. One man, Milton Aparicio, is trying to change that, by offering tours that highlight the Tenderloin’s unique culture of homeless. “We’ll go to a couple of shelters, day centers for children, soup kitchens, “ he advertises, offering “a guided experience of what it’s like to be homeless from a friendly homeless person.” Like most other examples of slum tourism, it promises an eye-opening experience that will certainly lead to personal growth and enlightenment.

In that respect, contemporary poverty tourism still resembles its 19th century predecessors. While the original London slumming parties were unabashedly voyeuristic and exploitative, they nevertheless revealed an upside: The parting of the veil between rich and poor moved some members of the upper classes to charitable action. “London slumming brought to the notice of the rich much suffering,” The New York Times reported in 1884, “and led to sanitary reforms.”

Modern day slumming, by contrast, is often characterized at the outset as a socially responsible endeavor — often purporting to benefit impoverished communities. That said, it’s still a little creepy to pay for the experience of watching poor people like animals in a zoo.

Catherine Traywick is a fellow at Foreign Policy magazine.

Slum Tourism

Slum tourism or ghetto tourism is a special interest tourism that involves visiting impecunious areas. This is also described as niche tourism fulfilling the need of some special segment of tourists. Earlier this concept was focused on the slums of London and Manhattan till 19th century, but the concept slum tourism is now increasingly prominent in many places, including South

Africa, India, Brazil, Kenya, Indonesia, Detroit, and others. The nomenclature of slum tourism is very vast. It has been denoted as a township, ghetto, a slum, a shantytown, a barrio, a favela and typical improvised place for visitors.

The concept of establishing slums records back to 19 th century when the middle and upper class of people heading to the East End of London which was infested with poor class of people and latter they were introduced as slums. This particular term called “slumming” was edited in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1884.

In London people used to visit slum areas such as Whitechapel or Shoreditch to observe the quality of life which the inhabitants were enjoying. By the era of 1880, it became a fashion among wealthier people in New York City to visit the areas of Bowery and the five points which were the prominent places for poor immigrants just to see how they live.

In South Africa in the year 1980, organized tours were conducted by the black residents to the township of white people to educate them in terms of local government. Such tours got popularized and attracted international tourists who wanted to learn more about apartheid. By the end of the decade 1990, the organized tours were started for the most disadvantaged area of the developing and developed countries and later they were called as slums.

Renowned travel companies came forward to promote slum tourism and as an estimate in Cape Town an approx of more than 3 lacs tourist visit every year to view the slums. In India added advantage of slum tourism came in the year 2008 when movie called Slum Dog Millionaire released and Mumbai (Dharavi) became the hub of slum tourism. Mean while some more adventurous travelers attracted towards new destinations like lower east of Manhattan and place of anti-apartheid movement of South Africa.

Now these places have been developed into formalized commercial offering as “Slum Tourism”. In modern times the concept of slum tourism has been turned into a legitimate part of travel industry attracting millions of tourist per year. Tour operators are attracted towards its huge potentiality which it encompasses and as a result special destinations have been identified and marketed by the tour operators.

The major attractions included into the category of slum tourism is the township of Cape Town and Johannesburg, the favela of Rio, the slums of Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Delhi, skid rows of Los Angeles, Detroit, Copenhagen and Berlin. 

Nomenclature of Slum Tourism prevailing in the world:

• The distinguished feature of slum tourism is that it is mainly performed in the urban areas of developing and developed countries which different names. Some of the common names similar to slum tourism prevailing in the world is discussed below:
• Township Tourism: This type of tourism was prevailed in South Africa and Namibia. As we know township tourism came into existence because of apartheid and racial segregation. South African settlements are divided into many forms like wealthy, white suburbs and poor, historically black townships and are centre of attractions for many tourists.
• Favela Tourism: Meaning of favela is a shanty town in or near a city. The concept Favela Tourism is available in Brazil. This is also a motive for travellers.
• Slum Tourism: This concept is attached with India and the famous place is Dharavi in Mumbai. The concept get popularized in the year 2008, when a movie called “Slumdog Millionaire” was released.
• Hidden Tours: This type of tourism is availed in Jakarta, Indonesia by the name Batavia Jakarta Tour. This tourism is volunteer in nature because the travel companies involved in promoting hidden tours in Jakarta claim that 50% share goes to the locals in making them educated, empowering and bringing out them from emergency situations. They also urge that those who want to donate generously they can bring pencil boxes, books, soaps, second hand clothes, toys etc. for the kids of the village.
• Social and religious divisions: A combination of political, religious and social differences plus the threat of inter communal tensions and violence has led to widespread self-segregation of the two communities. Catholics and Protestants lead largely separate lives in a situation that some have dubbed self-imposed apartheid. Examples are New York City and Belfast, Northern Ireland in which travellers are visiting the area because of remembering the incidents of the past happenings. 
• Ghetto Tourism: The concept of Ghetto as a tourism product was conceived in the year 2005 by Michael Stephens. The Oxford dictionary defines ghettos as a section of a city, especially a thickly populated slum area, inhabited predominantly by members of an ethnic or other minority group, often as a result of social or economic restrictions, pressures, or hardships. Ghetto is also represented with urban tourism and stresses movement to certain destinations made famous by popular artists. Ghetto tourism inculcates all forms of entertainment like music, rap, video games, movies, television and other gadgets that allow travellers to be there in the inner city without leaving home. It gives opportunity to travellers to cross the boundaries based on caste, creed, race and colour and enjoys the life style of others.   

Impact of Slum Tourism

When we go through the impact of tourism on slum, we get that in real terms it has much more to offer to the residents. The prime impacts which have been realized by many anthropologists are connectivity. The slums are supposed to be the least developed area of any country and are less focused by the government in terms of amenities. Connectivity is the core area which can be emphasized by the tourism.

Tourist visiting urban areas are considered as a no go zone because such places are suffering from deficiencies in comparison to the rest of the cities and the significance of such places lies in terms of its value, ethos and existence. The connectivity of two different cultures in terms of economic growth and opportunity for setting up of new venture can be analyzed as a positive impact. The case comes from Rio where tourist inflow was welcommed for the betterment of the locals, facilitating cross class encounters to a new extent.

In first instance such areas need to be ignored because very often it is informed to the visitors that there does not exist any such place, it is not a part of the city, do not go there as place is not safe and rumors goes like this. It is the tourism who can come forward to help in making connections.

The brighter aspect of promoting slum tourism is that these tours provide employment opportunities and source of income for travel companies and tour guides, an opportunity for craft makers to sell their artifacts, and thus retaining the profit and reinvesting the money to be circulated in their own community and in the last well to do tourist may motivate to donate generously for the upliftment of the residents of slums.

Also read Challenges and Strategies of Dark Tourism

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Slum visits: Tourism or voyeurism?

By Eric Weiner

• March 12, 2008

Michael Cronin's job as a college admissions officer took him to India two or three times a year, so he had already seen the usual sites — temples, monuments, markets — when one day he happened across a flier advertising "slum tours."

"It just resonated with me immediately," said Cronin, who was staying at a posh Taj Hotel in Mumbai where, he noted, a bottle of Champagne cost the equivalent of two years' salary for many Indians. "But I didn't know what to expect."

Soon, Cronin, 41, found himself skirting open sewers and ducking to avoid exposed electrical wires as he toured the sprawling Dharavi slum, home to more than a million. He joined a cricket game and saw the small-scale industry, from embroidery to tannery, that quietly thrives in the slum. "Nothing is considered garbage there," he said. "Everything is used again."

Cronin was briefly shaken when a man, "obviously drunk," rifled through his pockets, but the two-and-a-half-hour tour changed his image of India. "Everybody in the slum wants to work, and everybody wants to make themselves better," he said.

Slum tourism, or "poorism," as some call it, is catching on. From the favelas of Rio de Janeiro to the townships of Johannesburg to the garbage dumps of Mexico, tourists are forsaking, at least for a while, beaches and museums for crowded, dirty — and in many ways surprising — slums. When a British man named Chris Way founded Reality Tours and Travel in Mumbai two years ago, he could barely muster enough customers for one tour a day. Now, he's running two or three a day and recently expanded to rural areas.

Slum tourism isn't for everyone. Critics charge that ogling the poorest of the poor isn't tourism at all. It's voyeurism. The tours are exploitative, these critics say, and have no place on an ethical traveler's itinerary.

"Would you want people stopping outside of your front door every day, or maybe twice a day, snapping a few pictures of you and making some observations about your lifestyle?" asked David Fennell, a professor of tourism and environment at Brock University in Ontario, Canada. Slum tourism, he says, is just another example of tourism's finding a new niche to exploit. The real purpose, he believes, is to make Westerners feel better about their station in life. "It affirms in my mind how lucky I am — or how unlucky they are," he said.

Not so fast, proponents of slum tourism say. Ignoring poverty won't make it go away. "Tourism is one of the few ways that you or I are ever going to understand what poverty means," said Harold Goodwin, director of the International Center for Responsible Tourism in Leeds, England. "To just kind of turn a blind eye and pretend the poverty doesn't exist seems to me a very denial of our humanity."

The crucial question, Goodwin and other experts say, is not whether slum tours should exist but how they are conducted. Do they limit the excursions to small groups, interacting respectfully with residents? Or do they travel in buses, snapping photos from the windows as if on safari?

Many tour organizers are sensitive to charges of exploitation. Some encourage — and in at least one case require — participants to play an active role in helping residents. A church group in Mazatlán, Mexico, runs tours of the local garbage dump, where scavengers earn a living picking through trash, some of it from nearby luxury resorts. The group doesn't charge anything but asks participants to help make sandwiches and fill bottles with filtered water. The tours have proven so popular that during high season the church group has to turn people away. "We see ourselves as a bridge to connect the tourists to the real world," said Fred Collom, the minister who runs the tours.

By most accounts, slum tourism began in Brazil 16 years ago, when a young man named Marcelo Armstrong took a few tourists into Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro's largest favela, or shantytown. His company, Favela Tour, grew and spawned half a dozen imitators. Today, on any given day in Rio, dozens of tourists hop in minivans, then motorcycles and venture into places even Brazil's police dare not tread. Organizers insist the tours are safe, though they routinely check security conditions. Luiz Fantozzi, founder of the Rio-based Be a Local Tours, says that about once a year he cancels a tour for security reasons.

The tours may be safe, but they can be tense. Rajika Bhasin, a lawyer from New York, recalls how, at one point during a favela tour, the guide told everyone to stop taking pictures. A young man approached the group, smiling and holding a cocked gun. Bhasin said she didn't exactly feel threatened, "just very aware of my surroundings, and aware of the fact that I was on this guy's turf."

Still, she said, the experience, which included visiting galleries featuring the work of local artists, was positive. "Honestly, I would say it was a life-changing experience," Bhasin said. Saying she understood the objections, she parried, "It has everything to do with who you are and why you're going."

Chuck Geyer, of Reston, Virginia, arrived for a tour in Mumbai armed with hand sanitizer and the expectation of human misery incarnate. He left with a changed mind. Instead of being solicited by beggars, Geyer found himself the recipient of gifts: fruit, and dye to smear on his hands and face, as people celebrated the Hindu festival of Holi. "I was shocked at how friendly and gracious these people were," Geyer said.

Proponents of slum tourism say that's the point: to change the reputation of the slums one tourist at a time. Tour organizers say they provide employment for local guides and a chance to sell souvenirs. Chris Way has vowed to put 80 percent of his profits back into the Dharavi slum.

The catch, though, is that Way's company has yet to earn a profit on the tours, for which he charges 300 rupees (around $7.50). After receiving flak from the Indian press ("a fair criticism," Way concedes), he used his own money to open a community center in the slum. It offers English classes, and Way himself mentors a chess club. Many of those running favela tours in Brazil also channel a portion of their profits into the slums. Luiz Fantozzi contributes to a school and day-care center.

But slum tourism isn't just about charity, its proponents say; it also fosters an entrepreneurial spirit. "At first, the tourists were besieged by beggars, but not anymore," said Kevin Outterson, a law professor from Boston who has taken several favela tours. Fantozzi has taught people, Outterson said, "that you're not going to get anything from my people by begging, but if you make something, people are going to buy it."

Even critics of slum tourism concede it allows a few dollars to trickle into the shantytowns, but say that's no substitute for development programs.

Fennell, the professor of tourism in Ontario, wonders whether the relatively minuscule tourist revenue can make a difference. "If you're so concerned about helping these people, then write a check," he said.

The Pros And Cons Of Slum Tourism: Crass Voyeurism Or Enlightened Travel?

Let me begin by saying I  have  engaged in slum tourism (a basic definition of slum tourism would be the kind of tourism that takes you to see impoverished communities).

I took  an African slum Soweto tour  during a long-ago visit to South Africa, to see a place that overflowed with meaning. In 1976, during the Soweto Uprising in which unarmed students were stormed and killed by police for refusing to study in Afrikaans, I was a university student in Political Science, engulfed (at a distance) in liberation movements and revolutions. Soweto was part of that, as well as a major chapter in the bigger  South African story of apartheid  and discrimination.

It was a place I wanted to see, but the then  boycott  of South Africa was in full swing and I would have to wait nearly two decades.

Years later as a journalist, I was escorted through some of the most  crowded favelas  in Rio by a young community nurse who worked with drug addicts and knew everyone. He was respected and we were stopped on every corner for a bit of a chat.

The afternoon I spent in Rocinha gave me  a slightly better understanding of the poverty  that fuels much of the addiction and crime, something I certainly would not have learned from the back of a bus.

It also showed me a side that surprised me – the  regular everyday life  of people less fortunate than myself. The streets were dirty and the housing rickety but people came and went, shopped, talked, laughed – and went to work, determined to make things better.

Oddly enough, at least to me,  not everyone was poor . Walking around highlighted differing characteristics of slums. Some dwellings were decidedly middle-class, because here as everywhere else, when people succeed they don’t necessarily want to leave their friends and family. 

Over the years, visits to  poorer urban and slum areas  have left me unsettled. Children sniffing glue under a bridge in Brasilia. Mothers scavenging on the world’s biggest scrap heap in Manila. Begging for food near a Nairobi slum. Homeless children in Malawi.

These are scenes that drive home the accident of humanity, of where I happened to be born, of my race and privilege, and how easily it might have been otherwise.

On the one hand, it showed me what is life like in a slum, but on the other, it left me unsure of whether I was engaging in ethical tourism.

So was slum tourism positive or detrimental, and does it hurt or help a slum economy?  it still begs to question; “Is slum tourism good or bad?” 

WHAT IS A SLUM? AND WHAT IS SLUM TOURISM?

SLUM DEFINITION

•  noun: 1 –  a squalid and overcrowded urban area inhabited by very poor people.  2 –  a house or building unfit for human habitation.

•  verb:  ( slummed ,  slumming ) (often  slum it)  informal voluntarily spend time in uncomfortable conditions or at a lower social level than one’s own.

Source: Compact Oxford English dictionary

Slum tourism has been around  since Victorian times , when wealthy Londoners trudged down to the East End for a view. The end of apartheid in South Africa fueled a more politically-oriented type of ‘township tour’ while Rocinha has been receiving tourists for years – some 50,000 a year now.

In India, the release of the movie  Slumdog Millionnaire  created space for even more slums of India tours. In Nairobi, enterprising Kenyans are guiding tourists on Kibera slum tours, one of the better-known urban slums (and one of the world’s bigger slum areas) with a population of one million inhabitants.

The  voyeur aspect  of slum tourism makes me intensely uneasy.

Imagine a busload of foreign visitors traipsing down your street, peering into your house, taking a selfie in front of your door… Yet that’s exactly what happens on some township tourism slum tours, often labeled poverty tourism, pity tours, ghetto tourism, reality tours or even poorism – there is no dearth of labels.

So is  slum tourism  ethically acceptable or is it exploitative? What are the advantages and disadvantages of slum tourism? Do our tourist dollars actually help these communities or are we simply paying for a peek into lives we have no intention of ever experiencing for more than a few minutes? What are the impacts of slum development?

SLUM TOURISM PROS AND CONS

Negatives of slum tourism: exploitation and voyeurism.

Why slum tourism is bad (or can be):organized slum visits have come under  harsh criticism , particularly as they become more popular.

Much of the criticism revolves around these slum tourism cons:

• Slum tours treat people like  animals in a zoo  – you stare from the outside but don’t dare get too close.
• Visitors aren’t interested in meaningful interaction; they just want their  photo op . Contact with locals is minimal.
• Money rarely trickles down. Instead,  operators fill their pockets  but the vaunted ‘benefits to the community’ don’t materialize. Slum tourism profits from poverty, which is why it is often called “poverty tourism”.
• People feel degraded  by being stared at doing mundane things – washing, cleaning up, preparing food, things that are private. Their rights to privacy may be violated. Imagine yourself at the receiving end: how would you feel?
• Even when they participate as hosts, local people are often  underpaid and exploited .
• The  image of a country  may be tarnished by publicizing slums (this is an actual concern among certain segments of certain populations – usually the more wealthy).
• The  tours make poverty exotic , otherworldly, almost glamorizing what to inhabitants is a harsh reality which will remain once the tourists are long gone, which is one of the main slum tourism disadvantages.

How true is this picture?

UN-HABITAT  defines a slum household as a group of individuals living under the same roof in an urban area who lack one or more of the following: 1. Durable housing of a permanent nature that protects against extreme climate conditions. 2. Sufficient living space which means not more than three people sharing the same room. 3. Easy access to safe water in sufficient amounts at an affordable price. 4. Access to adequate sanitation in the form of a private or public toilet shared by a reasonable number of people. 5. Security of tenure that prevents forced evictions.

Slum tourism benefits: improving local lives

So are there slum tourism advantages? There may be a flip side. Slum tourism has supporters, many of whom believe  tourism will ultimately benefit  the favela or the township and help improve the lives of people who live there.

Visitors who take these tours may  genuinely care  and are interested in knowing more about the people they meet and the places they see.

Here are some of the potential benefits of slum tourism:

• Even if it’s only a little,  some money does enter the community , whether through meals at home or the purchase of art or souvenirs. Many say this tourism boosts the local economy. This trickle-down economy is bound to be better for local residents than picking trash off a stinking garbage heap.
• The tours  change our perceptions of poverty  by putting a face to it and showing visitors that however poor, people are the same everywhere and share similar thoughts and emotions.
• Tourists will visit areas they would never go to otherwise.
• Some operators have made sure part of their profits are recycled into local hands, for example by  starting local charities .
• A spotlight on poor areas by foreigners may help governments move more quickly to  improve conditions by using tourism as an economic developement tool.
• Even in the poorest areas  development and innovation  can take place: slum tours can showcase the economic and cultural energies of a neighborhood.
• They can  improve our understanding  of poverty and of one another – and of the world at large.
• Local people may support them. Locally-run  slum tourism examples  include Zezinho da Rocinha’s own favela tour (a slum-dweller himself, see below what he has to say on the effects of tourism in his community).
• They can  bring us closer  and demystify and  debunk some of our stereotypes . This excellent video (below) by one of my favorite authors, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, highlights the dangers of what she calls a ‘single story’, or what happens when a single point of view is hammered home, in this case, the ‘single story’ of poverty and pity.

THE SLUM TOURISM DEBATE: SO, IS IT A GOOD THING OR A BAD THING?

There is no such thing as a star system for slum tours, an ethical rating that will tell you how well an operator is performing or what the real economic benefits of tourism in the community really are. So, it’s up to us to find out before booking.

Here are some of the things we should look for:

• Size matters . A huge tour rumbling through a neighborhood in an air-conditioned bus is probably not going to promote much interchange with local residents.  Ask how many people will be on your tour.
• Look at the highlights and figure  how long you’ll be  in each place. If you’re expected to eat in a home, visit a local shebeen and walk through several streets in the space of an hour, chances are you won’t be getting to know your hosts in any significant way. Visitors need and have asked for more time for real exchanges with local people, as real as such unequal exchanges can be.  Make sure you have enough time to interact.
• Explore how the tour was  designed . Who put it together? Who came up with the itinerary? Why are you visiting one place and not another?  Ask the organizers if local people were involved, and double-check once you’re in the community.
• Follow the money.  Find out where the profits go and if the tourism economics are more beneficial than harmful. Are some profits returned to the community? What has been achieved – are there more schools, projects, education or jobs as a result?  Ask the operators, and double check their answers.

Granted, much of this information will not be easy to find, especially before you book.

But you have the ethical obligation to find out: what are the disadvantages of slum tourism in the area you are visiting? But by asking the right questions, you are showing you care, and are forcing tour operators to  tackle these issues .

Once you’re on the tour, you’ll have a better sense of its ethics and if you don’t like what you see, there’s always social media. If a tour is exploitative – well, word gets around fast.

There are many signs  slum tourism is changing the future of tourism.

More charities are being set up to spread profits around, local people are becoming increasingly involved, negative stereotypes are being challenged, local artisans are being encouraged to sell their work to tourists at fair prices, and tour operators themselves are beginning to understand that slum tourism is not like mass tourism: they don’t have to cram every possible attraction into the shortest possible time.

While some feel much good can come from  properly thought-out slum tours , others believe slum tourism has done more harm than good, with insensitive itineraries pulled together purely for gain.

So which is it: Would visitors be better off staying in a  luxury downtown hotel  while pretending not to see the slum next door? Or is knowledge and awareness the first step towards understanding?

For more information on slum tourism, these resources may help:

• Slum Dwellers International  is a is a network of community-based organizations of the urban poor in 33 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
• Slumtourism.net  brings together academics and practitioners working on tourism in slums and poor rural areas. 
• The  world’s five largest slums .

Both For And Against Slum Tourism

By Zezinho Da Rocinha, Proud Favela Resident In Rio De Janeiro

I certainly understand the  controversy about slum tours . I am both FOR and AGAINST them. Let me explain this.

I was born, grew up and still live in Brazil’s largest slum, or  favela . Life is dificult yes, but not impossible. I am proud to live here in Rocinha. I will never leave here, I do not want to leave here. This is my home. This is my feeling about this issue of  slum/favela tourism .

What I like about the tours is the contact I get from foreigns who come here. This interaction helps me to educate people about my life here in the favela. When foreigners come here I feel like my home or favela has value and is worth to be seen. The Brazilian government mostly ignores us and helps us very little.  We want our voice to be heard . I want to feel that somebody on the outside cares about us and recognizes that we exist. Up until about a few years ago favelas did not exist on maps. Why was this?

Many foreigners come to learn how we create and live in our comunity with little or no goverment involvement. Others come because of the art and culture that exist here.

I do not judge why people come, they confirm that we exist. 

I started in tourism because I saw the opportunity to show my favela and help create jobs for others here.

We live here, and should be making the tours here. I have heard outsider tour companies exaggerate things or  tell outright lies  about my favela. They do this because they do not know and do not live here. I am here to share a social experience, not provide some adrenalin tour.

With my work, many visitors return to volunteer with social projects or to start their own programs in the favela. Recently people have contacted me wanting to make projects like a rooftop garden class. Another person wants to help bring solar energy here. These are people who came on visits here in the favela. Is this bad? What I do NOT like about the tours …tours that use jeeps or trucks are the worst because they present us like a zoo. The tourists have no contact with the locals and this reinforces a sense of possible danger. Tours or visits where the guests walk in the favela are more welcome. There is one company that tells their guests not to interact with the locals if they are approached. This is wrong.

The glamorization of violence is another thing that we do not like here. It is as if these companies are trying to capitalize on some kind of excitement. Favelas are not war zones, and people need understand that real, honest hardworking people live there, we just make less money. There are tour companies here who use the community to make money but they give very little or nothing back to the community. This is not right. They should contribute something for the betterment of the favela. There are plenty of social projects here that could use help.  I am not ashamed to live in the favela and people should not feel shame to come and visit. All we ask is please do not take photos of us like we are animals, and do not have fear if we say hello to you on the street.  If we want to stop or reduce poverty, we need to stop pretending it does not exist. I call it socially responsible tourism. If you chose to tour this type of community, try to give something back, however big or small. I work with an art school and encourage people to bring art supplies, not money. Slums, favelas and shanties are where 1/3 of the population live in all major cities, serving the needs of mostly the rich. Visiting these places may increase your knowledge and awareness at a much deeper level than visiting a museum or art exhibition.  Ignoring poverty is not going to make it go away  and those who have more, should not feel guilt. Unfortunately, this world will always have this unbalance of wealth. Sad but true. Read more about Zezinho on his blog,  Life in Rocinha  or  book a favela walking tour .

— Originally published on 06 February 2011

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Slumtourism.net

Home of the slum tourism research network, what is slum tourism.

• noun 1 a squalid and overcrowded urban area inhabited by very poor people. 2 a house or building unfit for human habitation.

• verb ( slummed , slumming ) (often slum it) informal voluntarily spend time in uncomfortable conditions or at a lower social level than one’s own.

Source: Compact Oxford English dictionary

Slums (e.g. favelas, townships and other notations) have long tempted popular imagination. They have been and are scandalise, fought, bulldozed down and walled in. At the same time however, they are idealised and sought out as places displaying a more authentic humanity, flourishing culture and deviant, but inventive entrepreneurship. The concept of slum tourism remains popular today and is being addressed in a growing body of academic and practitioner’s research.

Dominant in reflections on slum tourism have long been ethical concerns and reasons for its existence: What is slum tourism and why is it shown? Is slum tourism voyeuristic and immoral? What motivations and expectations did and do people have to visit slums?  To what extend are slum tours considered to be ‘authentic’ forms of holidays? How does today’s slum-tourism relate to its historic predecessors and to the legacy of colonialism? What is the relationship between slum tourism and issues of migration, democracy and (in)equality?

Similarly, questions regarding potential benefits and harmful aspects and the organisation of tourism to deprived urban areas is investigated: To what extent does slum tourism provide an income and positive visibility for people in deprived areas? Which stakeholders are involved in slum tourism and who profits most? How are guided tours organised or composed?  What are the geographical scopes of slum-tourism and which place does it occupy in the new mobility system? Where does slum tourism fit in a globalised world of tourist consumption?

An increasing number of scholars are working on these issues on different continents. Slumtourism.net aims to bring together researchers of slum and poverty tourism in urban areas, in order to stimulate an exchange of experiences and contacts. The website is aimed to help create an international network of researchers and provide a stepping stone for further co-operations and projects on the subject.

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Travel Research: Slum Tourism in South Africa

Last updated: July 13, 2022 - Written by Jessica Norah 10 Comments

Today I would like to focus on the topic of slum tourism in South Africa, also known as township tourism. Slum tourism is defined as the practice of travelers visiting poor urban areas of the Global South to view its impoverished conditions and understand more of the lifestyles of local inhabitants.

Organized slum tourism tours exist around the world in cities such as Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Cairo, and Mumbai. Slum tourism is a controversial issue and I have written about the different viewpoints and potential pros and cons of this practice in a previous article that focused on research about slum tourism in Cairo, Egypt .

This post will specifically focus on the research of a fellow researcher and blogger, Jeanett Andrea Søderstrøm who runs a blog called The Gipsy Giraffe , writing about her travels, passions, life, and research.

Although born in Norway, her holiday travels to South Africa and a township tour in Cape Town made her wonder about the impact of slum tourism and led her to later study this issue from an academic point of view.

Since that time, Ms. Søderstrøm has received a Master’s degree in Responsible Tourism Management in which she completed her final research on township tourism in Cape Town. If you want to learn more about slum tourism in South Africa, read on!

Table of Contents:

A Brief Overview of Slum Tourism in South Africa

While slum tourism is not a completely new phenomenon, organized slum tours have become steadily more common and popular since the 1990’s. Currently, there are an estimated 40 to 50 township tour operators in Cape Town alone and it is estimated that at least 25% of international overseas tourists to South Africa take a township tour.

Slum tours in South Africa are typically called “township tours” because in South Africa the term “township” generally refers to impoverished and underdeveloped urban areas. The division and segregation of people according to race during apartheid —the political system that ruled in South Africa from 1948 to 1994—led to very segregated townships with most colored people being forced to live together in impoverished conditions.

Ms. Søderstrøm’s research focuses on Langa in Cape Town since it is currently one of the most commonly visited townships during the commercial tours. Small and located near the center of Cape Town, Langa is the oldest township in South Africa, created in 1927 as an area for non-Whites to live (often forcibly) in racially-segregated South Africa—a forerunner to apartheid.

The majority of residents in Langa are Xhosa people (former President of South Africa Nelson Mandela was a Xhosa-speaking Thembu person) and the level of unemployment and poverty is extremely high.

The Research Study: Responsible Township Tourism in Cape Town

Research study : Søderstrøm, J. A. (2013)  Responsible practice for township tourism: An exploration of Stakeholders’ opinions, commitments, actions and expectations in the township of Langa, Cape Town . Master’s thesis.

The current research takes a three-prong approach in gathering qualitative data from tour operators, Langa residents, and government officials. The researcher interviews four tour operators of township tours in Langa and then takes three township tours by these same operators. She also interviews 39 Langa residents, including 17 residents of homes where household visits occur during tours. Lastly, the researcher also interviewed four people involved in responsible tourism planning within the local government in Cape Town.

Research Findings: Township Tourism in Cape Town

In the course of her research on township tourism in Cape Town, Ms. Søderstrøm developed a list of 14 guidelines for tour operators she wanted to explore further with her research. These guidelines were based on what has been suggested by past research and stakeholders as ways to ensure that tours are operating as responsibly as possible, particularly emphasizing social and economic benefits for the local communities.

Below are each of these guidelines and the findings related to the research on each one about whether it is being adhered to by the tour operators participating in the research project.

1. Walking tours over driving tours

Why? : Walking tours can allow for more meaningful connections between tourists and residents, allow tourists to purchase products/make donations, and help avoid the more voyeuristic nature of looking at people from a car or bus.

Findings? : Overall, most companies offer walking tours, although some companies do offer tours that are partially or primarily driving tours. Locals reported that they would like it if tour operators facilitated more conversation and meaningful interactions with tourists such as more time for conversation, more visits to local businesses, and more time to stay in homes such as stopping to have a chat over tea.

2. Small rather than large tour groups

Why? : Smaller groups can more easily visit homes and businesses and feel less intrusive to residents. It also can help facilitate more interaction between tourists and the locals and between the tour operators and the tourists.

Findings? : Most responsible companies in Cape Town do appear to be adhering to the responsible practice of providing small group tours rather than large group tours.

3. Provide behavior guidance to tourists

Why? : For most travelers, they have never been on a slum or township tour before and do not know what to expect. For many, this may be their first time encountering such poverty and living conditions and they may not know how to behave, especially when entering people’s homes.

It is the responsibility of the tour operators and guides to ensure that tourists do not make a negative impact on the local community by communicating proper dress codes and behavior, as well as encouraging curiosity about residents’ customs through general respectful interaction. Many tourists also have ethical concerns about whether or not to book such a tour.

Findings? : Some companies provide general guidelines concerning behavior on their websites and some also talk about ethical concerns tourists may have. Most tour operators give some guidance as well about “good behavior” during the tour. But more could be done on some tours.

4. Photography policies

Why? : Obviously, most visitors want to take photographs or videos to remember their tours. However, being constantly photographed can be very annoying and feel quite intrusive by local residents. Many residents do not mind being photographed and visitors should ask residents before taking photographs of actual people.

Findings? : Companies appear to be providing photography guidelines at the beginning of tours to tourists about asking residents before taking pictures of them. Some also advise tourists not to photograph children.

While all tour leaders appear to be providing guidance, some tourists may be disregarding this advice and still taking photographs anyway without asking. Among the interviewed residents many claim it can be annoying in certain situations, hence is it crucial that guides always repeat what is expected from the visitors in this regard and discourage this behavior.

5. Provide fair salaries to guides

Why? : Providing a fair salary to tour guides and other staff avoids exploitation of cheap labor in impoverished communities, gives back to the community, and generates staff goodwill that hopefully also leads to more satisfied clients.

Findings? : Unfortunately, there are no good guidelines of what constitutes a “fair salary” and many guides are not well paid. Most of the guides depend on tips and were even observed discouraging donations to local residents on the tour in order to attempt to receive a larger tip themselves from tourists at the end of the tour.

6. Tipping policies

Why? : To encourage professional behavior by guides, tour companies should communicate that tipping the guides for good services is welcome. This should help supplement their typically small salaries and result in further professionalism among guides. Most importantly this could also lead to guides allowing more of the tourist donations to end up in the hands of the communities visited.

Findings? :  It was found that most companies do not communicate a tipping policy to tourists, as tour operators reported that most tourists decide to give tips anyway. However, tour operators saw the information about unfair redistribution of tourist donations as interesting and may not have previously considered that this issue was related to having an established tipping policy.

7. Provide compensation to visited households

Why? : Most tour companies visit at least one local household during their tour and this is generally one of the promoted highlights of the tour. These households should therefore be compensated for their time and value as a tourist attraction. Such compensation not only makes sense from an ethical business perspective but also avoids exploitation of the local residents.

Findings? : Very few tour companies have formal agreements concerning compensation with the local households they visit. Most receive nothing (or very little) directly from the tour operators. For most they only receive donations or tips left by tourists; however, most guides do not appear to talk about or encourage donations so tourists are often unsure whether it is appropriate to leave donations or not.

Sadly, some local households reported that they used to receive regular visits from tours, which provided tourist tips and/or food, but for unknown reasons, the tour operators have stopped visiting them which has made their economic situation even worse. Even if tour operators do not directly provide money to households, regular committed donations of food, clothing, school supplies, etc. would significantly help these households.

8. Promoting local purchases

Why? : One of the ways that tourists can help the local communities they visit is by spending money within that community. These may include buying local handicrafts, purchasing local services, staying at local homestays, or eating in local eateries.

Findings? : While it seems that almost all tour companies provide an initial opportunity to purchase crafts at the beginning of the tour, most tour companies do not promote local purchase throughout the tour.

Many tour guides seemed to avoid lingering around local businesses, making it more difficult for tourists to stop and buy something. Tour operators said they did not want the tours to feel too commercial, had to adhere to their schedule, or said that tourists were not very interested in purchasing goods.

Locals want tourists to visit their businesses, but felt that getting tourists to their stands daily is difficult since they have very little power over the tourist groups which are directed by the tour guides.

9. Provide ways tourists can donate to the local community

Why? : Many people take township tours in order to learn more about the culture of the people, and after taking these tours many have a desire to give back to the community. While purchasing items or services may be one way tourists can give back, some may instead want to donate money to local community projects (e.g., schools, construction projects, churches). This is another way that tour operators can provide to those tourists who want to give back.

Findings? : Some tour operators discuss this as an option during tours, but often only when tourists verbally express interest. Some tour operators reported that they did not want people to see the township as a charity and do not mention this; however, tourists themselves often expressed gratitude for being given information about how to donate if they would like to do so.

It should be noted that some residents whose homes are visited during tours stated that they felt that encouragement of donations to local schools or other projects has hurt them by leading to decreased tips and donations to their household.

10. Involvement/donations by tour operators

Why? : An ethical and responsible tour operator should give back to the local communities through community involvement or donations, and many tourists may in fact expect this of slum tourism companies.

Findings? : Whereas some tour operators do become directly involved and donate to local projects, others reported that they are a business and give back indirectly by bringing tourists into the township. Among those who did report giving back, it was not always clearly stated or communicated for tourists to find this information, nor was it proven to the researcher.

11. Provide evidence of responsible claims

Why?: Given that many tourists have ethical concerns about these tours, companies should clearly state and detail what specifically they do to give back to local communities and how the community benefits. Such practices provide transparency and help better inform potential clients.

Findings? : While many companies do responsibly give back to the local communities, whether indirectly or directly, these claims are often vague and not well communicated.

12. Create linkages with local enterprises

Why? : The more connections that slum tourism operators create with local companies, the more widely they can benefit the community.

Findings? : Most tour companies do try to include at least one local business in each tour, whether it be a local dining establishment, craft store, or homestay. However, more of such local businesses could be utilized to not only help benefit the community but also enhance the tourist experience of the local culture.

13. Seek residents’ feedback

Why? : It is vitally important that to maintain responsible tourism practices, tour operators seek feedback from residents and that they continue to seek feedback over time. This not only helps avoid exploitation of the local population, but enhances good will, cooperation, and local participation.

Findings? : Tour operators all claim to seek resident feedback; however, it is clear from interviews with locals involved in the visited homes that tour operators and guides often have poor communication or unclear agreements with the local residents.

Some residents reported that they had questions, requests, or suggestions for tour operators, while others seemed apathetic about actually communicating their opinions and wishes to the tour operator or guides. This suggests that residents may not feel empowered to voice their opinions and it is the responsibility of the tour operators to ensure that residents, especially those involved in the tours, are given a voice.

14. Assure that all tour staff have the same responsible aims

Why? : The majority of township tour operators in Cape Town report that they follow responsible tourism criteria; however, while having such criteria set in principle is great, these also need to be clearly communicated and followed by all staff members, particularly the guides.

Findings? : While most interviewed companies claim to be responsible, the actual practice depends largely on who is guiding the tour and the company’s emphasis on staff cooperation, transparency, and reporting.

Conclusions of the Research on Slum Tourism in South Africa

So what do these research findings mean? What are the conclusions drawn by the researcher?

This research supports the complex nature of slum tourism in Cape Town, South Africa. While there are certainly benefits for the local people and most locals feel that things are better with tourism than without it, tourism companies do not appear to be doing as much as they could to make an impact on local communities.

While most tour operators, in general, appear to be friendly, professional, and adhere to general ethical policies, they seem more apathetic regarding issues such as encouraging donations to local hosts, providing fair pay to guides, and promoting tourist purchases and donations.

The issue of not compensating local households visited during tours was highlighted as a particular problem as some of these households get up to ten visits on average per day—often with no compensation!

There appear to be a number of ways that tour operators in Langa, Cape Town can better improve their responsible tourism practices and the first step would be to facilitate better communication with local residents. Further, more support and oversight is needed by the local government. Although the local government encourages township tours and have created policies on responsible tourism, they do not seem very involved in enforcing such policies.

How Can I Find Out More about Slum Tourism?

If you have specific questions about this research project, you can connect with the researcher, Jeanett Andrea Søderstrøm, by visiting her personal blog The Gipsy Giraffe . Here you can find ways to contact her as well as more articles on slum tourism.

Want to know more about slum tourism? I wrote a prior post on research on slum tourism in Cairo, Egypt , which looks at the thoughts and feelings of slum residents, tour operators, and local stakeholders.

We also wrote a follow-up post to this one that comes up with a set of 17 proposed slum tourism guidelines for travelers . The article helps travelers decide if they should take a slum tour, how to choose the most responsible tours, and how to behave on a tour. It provides a lot of tips for travelers who want to take a slum tour. That post also includes an overview of the history of slum tourism , slum tourism research, and how to find more information and resources on the topic.

What do you think about slum tourism in South Africa or slum tourism globally? Have you taken a township tour in South Africa or taken a slum tour in another country?

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There are 10 comments on this post.

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Indiphile Post author

February 9, 2020 at 4:31 am

Are slum tourism a legitimate form of tourism or another neoliberal exploitative endeavor?

Jessica & Laurence Norah Post author

February 10, 2020 at 3:18 am

Hi there Indiphile,

Slum tourism has been around for a fairly long time (originating in Victorian London), so it is nothing new. Most of the original slum tours in the Global South have political or social justice roots. However, many tours now are designed and run by for-profit companies and little of this money may go back to the community. As noted it can certainly be an exploitative form of tourism. But some are led by non-profits with the money going to try to help the community. And some tours are going to be more responsible than others.

I definitely encourage you to read some of the research and policy papers on the subject so you learn more about the practice and come up with your own opinion in terms if it is a legitimate form of tourism or not.

Best, Jessica

Mark Post author

February 9, 2014 at 6:21 pm

Interesting Piece.. Whatever the rights or wrongs, slum tourism is definitely growing very quickly in many places

travelcats Post author

February 9, 2014 at 7:59 pm

Yes, it sure had been growing in popularity. My hope is that if people are going to do it, they do it as responsibly as possible.

Emilie Hagedoorn Post author

December 28, 2013 at 12:59 am

With regards to your future post regarding how to choose a responsible tour may I recommend checking Fair Trade Tourism (FTT)? FTT has certified several tourism businesses offering tours into townships in SA. Great examples are AWOL Tours, Uthando (both in Cape Town), Calabash Tours (in PE) and Lebos, Fundani and Moratiwa (all in Joburg/Soweto).

Any other questions please get in touch with FTT.

Thanks, Emilie

December 28, 2013 at 10:52 am

Thanks Emilie, this information is very helpful! In regards to my future post, it will focus more generally on slum tourism worldwide, but checking out responsible tourism trade organizations is a good idea. Thanks for stopping by.

Val Post author

December 26, 2013 at 11:20 am

Hi, I would like to mention, not to take anything from the author or yourself, it is a very complex situation and can have catastrophic consequences for its residents. As mentioned this is only one township this study was done on. Each area and tribal group have differing dynamics. This article therefor in my opinion is a relatively small indication of township or squatter camps as they are in fact called in South Africa. One cannot generalize this in all the countries as mentioned. I kindly refer you to the research paper authenticated by University Of Pretoria, by OG Mengich on Slum Tourism in particular to page 65 of this citation. Also would like to draw your attention to the article by Ross McGuiness A cynical cash cow or a helping hand on the website of metro.co.uk/slum_tourism Thanks and Regards Val

December 27, 2013 at 8:14 am

Hi Val, thank you very much for your comment. As noted this research was specifically done on township tourism in Langa, Cape Town and may not generalize to other areas of South Africa or other countries. However, it should be noted that empirical research in this area often demonstrate similar complex findings suggesting that there may be both potential great harm as well as potential benefits from slum tourism. Almost all advocate for responsible tourism practices similar to those suggested by the author. Thank you for the additional info on slum tourism, we will take a look. I suggest that you visit the featured researcher’s website as well for more information on her research.

Mary Belle Post author

December 23, 2013 at 10:16 pm

Hi Jessica! For a Tourism student, I haven’t heard of Slum Tourism. Shame. But thank you so much for sharing! Now I’ve got something to share to my friends back in school too! 🙂 And expect me to be a frequent visitor! <3

December 23, 2013 at 11:01 pm

Welcome Mary, thanks for taking the time to comment. Glad that you learned about slum tourism and hope that you will inform others. You should check out my other post on slum tourism and the Gipsy Giraffe blog. Look forward to having you as a follower!

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