International tourism is now the predominant industry driving growth in many small island developing states (SIDS). Governments of small islands in the Indian Ocean, Caribbean and Pacific have seemingly put most of their eggs into one development basket – the all-inclusive holiday in a luxury hotel, resort or cruise ship. While this industry generates employment, foreign direct investment, and income for island governments and the private sector, it also brings with it dependencies which are borne from the transnational ownership of these all-inclusive accommodations, the risks from exogenous factors – many of which are tied to the wider security of the global system – as well as the domestic economies in the source markets in Europe and North America. We reflect upon these dependencies and risks through a case study of the Seychelles based on fieldwork research conducted in 2012. Our findings highlight that the international tourism industry in the Seychelles – even in a situation of high or growing demand – creates structurally driven precarity for tourism workers who are predominantly low paid, low-skilled, and increasingly recruited from overseas. These findings provide new evidence that contributes to the growing research into tourism in IPE. Our findings highlight the precarious condition of labour in this fast growing service sector of the world economy and in so doing also adds much needed empirical insights from the South to recent debates about an emerging precariat in contemporary capitalism.

Inclusive growth is contested yet adopted by the World Bank to reduce poverty and inequality through rapid economic growth. Research has tested inclusive growth in sectors including agriculture, but few studies apply it to tourism which is significant for many developing countries. The paper interrogates tourism-led inclusive growth: supply chains, economic linkages/leakage, ownership, employment and expenditure. It draws from fieldwork in Vietnam where tourism has rapidly developed with partial economic benefits for local communities, but does not appear to fall within the inclusive growth paradigm. It is unclear if tourism-led growth will become any more inclusive in the short-to-medium term.

Using a critical political economy approach and the concept of labour precarity, the international dive tourism industry in Sabah, Malaysia and its workers’ vulnerabilities are interrogated. Fieldwork data highlights dive tourism's socio-economic impacts and the precarity of labour within the international tourism sector and also critiques it as a development strategy for a peripheral region. The paper challenges the optimistic views of labour precarity found in the existing political economy literature. Rather than identifying labour empowerment, evidence demonstrates significant worker vulnerability, uncertainty, and contingency – especially among ethnic minorities – resulting from Malaysia's state-led rentier economy.