All I can say is WTF. Really.. who the hell wants to see human misery... and who wants to see it and then not do anything about it?

All profits made are donated to a specific slum activity.
Like...? Starvation? Suffering? They're happy to pimp the orphans.. but they're a bit light on the details of what they are actually doing.

If this was an elaborate scam to get rich tourists into an area where they could be ambushed, Robin Hood-styles.. I could almost approve of it.. but there just seems to be much better ways to deal with this situation other than turning a slum into a sideshow.

Tipping Sacred Cows

I like to travel.  I've been to a few "3rd world" countries.  I can immediately see some good and bad in this idea.

The good comes in two ways.  First, I think it is important for rich Westerners to see what real poverty is.  I often think that some of our trade policies are based on some idealized view of poor countries -- for example that Kenyans are all traditional hunters (or some silliness like that).  Seeing people struggle in slums might make you think twice about how bad it might be to work 60 hours a week in a textile factory.  I don't know how many times I've had debates with people on [that other site] where they seemed to have absolutely no idea what it is like to live in a poor country -- but would choose to make policy decisions "in their best interests."

Second, money will flow to the local residents.  In less developed countries, everyone is a business owner.  Very few people work for someone else.  They do what they can to make money.  It shouldn't (and won't) take too long for locals to find ways to earn some of those tourist dollars.  Heck, I was just at the Grand Canyon.  Just outside the park American Indians were selling traditional crafts in markets at "viewpoints" along the road.

The downside is the potential for creating dependence on tourists overpaying.  This is a very important point.  In countries like this you always need to negotiate prices.  If you go in as a tourist, you will always be quoted an unreasonably high price in local markets.  For you it may only be a dollar -- not worth arguing about.  The problem is that you create a kind of welfare state.  If people pay for the "value" of the goods or services they produce, the right amount of goods will be produced.  If you overpay, you'll have too many people making trinkets and trying to score a big sale to a tourist.  That will be fine for them, but it will not allow that economy to grow from a cheap tourist destination to one that can compete globally.

I remember specifically being in a resort-ish town in central Vietnam.  There were hotels along the beach and a town two miles away.  You could walk into town or get a ride on the back of a motorbike.  The motorbike "taxi drivers" would always ask for about five or so times what they needed for a ride into town from tourists.  Many tourists would pay that price -- maybe not knowing better, maybe not caring.  The result was that you have a dozen taxi drivers sitting around waiting for that single tourist fare to make up their day (or hour or whatever) worth of work.  If they got paid the right price, there would be far fewer taxi drivers and they'd all be busy (like in New York or Paris or London).

-milo

There's a lot of reasons to bash slum tourism and I'm certainly not going to come out in favor of it. Least of all, I'm sure the residents would appreciate the gawkers staying away and just sending along the cost of the trip.

However, there is something to be said for expanding people's minds and exposing them to the problems that other people face. Unlike most of us (dare I say) not everyone really has a tangible concept of the fact that the rest of the world doesn't live like they do. In Philadelphia in the late 80's there was a kid from the suburbs who (so the story goes) was driving through the city with his mom when he saw a homeless person. Because of the sheltered way his parents raised him, he thought this was the only homeless person in the whole entire world. He made his mom stop the car and give the guy their extra blankets. When told there were more, he started a foundation to give blankets and then other stuff to homeless people. I don't know whatever became of it, but the foundation lasted for at least a good 10 years. It had vans and other infrastructure to aid in getting help to homeless people in the city.

My own exposure to other people's problems in life wasn't entirely different from slum tourism, though at a far more minimal level. When riding through the city as a child in my parents car, my parents took the risk of driving through the less favorable neighborhoods so that I could see the way other people had to live. To profit off it is one thing, but showing people how others live can have a long term impact on helping the people of the world to understand one another better and I don't think that should be lost in the conversation.

escalators never fail; they just become stairs

Check out the assurance at the bottom of the web site linked, "running what they call pro-poor tours."

Victoria Safaris offer customized tours of the Kibera slum and its facilities all year round. All profits made are donated to a specific slum activity.

This cynic sneers at this statement, and ruefully shakes his head at how such a bald-faced lie would quell any guilt associated with having some macabre fascination of touring a slum.  "But look honey, in a way we're helping all those poor, miserable bastards."