CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
Tourism is a short term movement of people to destination outside their residential areas primarily for leisure recreation, sport and business transactions. There is domestic and international tourism. Domestic is the movement within one’s state or country while international involved movement from one’s country to another. Modern tourist industry in the western world started in the 19th century with the wake of industrial revolution that increased the ranks of middle classes in Europe and United States and this led to the increase in number of people found themselves with both the money and the time to travel.
       Tourism world wide reputedly generates an estimate of 4 trillion dollars annually. Today tourism has become an all year business. In Nigeria, Owerri Imo State to be precise the impact of tourism have created job opportunities, and the increase in poverty alleviation has risen beyond expectation. It is a welcome development and will increase its impact if more attention is given to it, from all stakeholders, government etc.  
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
       Traditionally the impact of tourism has been measured in terms of its contribution to gross national product and employment created. Often tourism overall impact on the economy is estimated by looking at the effect  of tourism expenditure through direct, indirect and induced spending using a multipher effect approach. Tourism growth is most often measured through increase in international arrivals, length of stay, bed occupancy, tourism expenditure and the value of tourism spending. However, none of these provide any means of determining the scale of the impact on the poor or even to trends which result from overall growth or decline on the poor. While in the literature there are references to the importance of tourism in the least developed countries (LDCs) developing countries, rural and marginalized areas there is very little consideration of the impact of tourism on the poor. The assumption has been that any tourism development will eventually benefit the poor through the “tickle down” effect. There can be no doubt that tourism development does employ those in the lower social and economic classes but then is growing body of evidence that generate low paying and low status employment. In addition, poorly planned and managed tourism can destroy ecological system raise the cost of living for local people and damage social and cultural traditions and life styles.
       Until recently those engaged in tourism development have not sought to demonstrate the impact of tourism on poverty alleviation the focus has been on major economic impact and its potential to bring economic growth to poor and marginalized individuals and communities rather than on measuring and demonstrating specific impact on poverty.
       In the development community the focus of most interventions has shifted from identifying ways in which economic growth in developing countries can contribute to overall development to a much more specific focus on the alleviation of poverty.
       There has been growing realization that economic growth may not necessarily alleviate poverty and that policy commitment to alleviate poverty can only be achieved if there is a specific and concerted effort to raise the well – being of the poor in developing countries. Within tourism planning and development there was also been a growing realization that tourism development may not be alleviating poverty and that proper tourism policies and practice must be developed. It clear manifestation of this new policy focus at the international and regional level can be seen in the policies and programme of various international organization such as the WTO, ESCAP and ADB.
       The millennium development goals are the most recent and explicit statement of this commitment with an explicit focus on alleviating and reducing the numbers of people living the extreme poverty. It is widely recognized in the literature that poverty is multi- faceted. The poor have low incomes and lower levels of consumption than those who are not living in poverty. The poor are characterized by lack of purchasing power in the market and buy human underdevelopment, they are generally socially excluded and have minimal access to education, health and other forms of social welfare enjoyed by others in the society who are not poor, they suffer relative depravation and are generally marginalized in the decision making process. They generally lack marketable skills and have few employment opportunities. The poor lack access to saving and capital and generally experience high levels of vulnerability to changes in market conditions. The result is that their basic needs are met and do not have a state of well being their condition is sometimes referred to as “ill being”
       The interest of this research work is aimed at a broader focus to tourism related poverty alleviation is important because it emphasizes the multi- faceted nature of poverty and the relevance of looking at the broad range of impact which tourism may have on livelihoods directing it focus on tourism Nigeria with more emphasize one Nekede zoo Owerri Imo state and beyond.