It is important not to confine the discussions of the relationship between budget tourism and local development to
economic criteria. A discussion of some significant social and environmental benefits to communities catering to
backpackers is also in order. Encouraging local people to cater to the needs of backpackers poses a challenge to
foreign domination of tourism enterprises within developing countries. “There is a global economic concentration of
wealth in tourism, witnessed by domination of the package tourism market by a small number of key players...
controlling aspects of the industry” (Scheyvens, 2002). This is very clearly seen in the case of the tourism industry
of Maldives, where less than ten key players and their clients operate monopolistic control of the tourism-related
businesses. Major resort owners also have their own tourist shops or cafes and restaurants in the capital city or
nearby islands that excursions are made to, and these excursions will include arranged routine stops to those outlets,
thereby maintaining extra inflow of revenue within the parent business. The financial benefits from tourism actually
are not redistributed to the people and preventing encounters between local entrepreneurs and budget tourists allow
such monopoly to remain in place. The development of Community-based Tourism could change the supply and
initiate backpacker and budget tourism. At the time being no official policy is implemented to assist such move and
vested interests might invoke cultural sensitivities to deter such evolution. Even though the government’s view does
not seem to hold much for the local tourism, there is a phenomena taking place and it seems that with more locals