Tourism quandaries

Thanks to Karen, who is writer that I'm working with here, got a free stay in a v swanky hotel at weekend...

Not denying that I enjoyed the experience! it was amazing and a real luxury (we were v pampered as they were trying to impress Karen, who's reviewing the place). But it raised interesting issue in terms of tourism and its role in contributing to development. Creates jobs - a good thing - and brings inward investment into country - presumably also a good thing. Sri Lanka needs tourist dollars/pounds/euros and you can see how it's struggling at the moment because of travel advice warnings against coming here (apart from in UK!). But how fair is it that there are still people here without homes, while huge tracts of lands are given over to beach front hotels with huge amounts of space per guest? And how fair is it that the hotels generate massive profits on the back of an incredibly cheap workforce?

One local hotel owner told us that the Asian hotel business model basically works on the assumption that you can break even by filling just one room per night - the rate charged is so high and the labour costs so low that that's all it takes...