A Tale of Two Islands – One of Luxury. The Other of Struggle
Economy & Society
We have built malls, hotels, financial institutions and globally connected companies. But we have also created a society in which the imagery of abundance is constantly placed before people whose disposable incomes may not keep pace with the lifestyles being advertised
By U. Dasin
There are moments when a country’s advertisements tell us more about its political economy than its economic statistics do. Mauritius is experiencing one of those moments. One just has to look around. New shopping malls are appearing, existing ones are expanding, companies are constantly promoting sales and special offers, and consumer credit allows households to acquire increasingly expensive goods while postponing payment for one, two or even three years.
International performers are brought to the island for concerts where tickets can cost Rs 5,000, or more. Hotels, restaurants, property developers and retailers increasingly sell not simply products but experiences, lifestyles and status.
The message is unmistakable: Mauritius is prosperous, sophisticated, cosmopolitan and ready to consume. Yet another reality is increasingly visible in the testimony of ordinary households. People are comparing every price, removing items from supermarket baskets, eating out less often, reducing unnecessary journeys and thinking twice about leisure spending.
Some are using savings to cope with ordinary expenses. The contradiction is not that one of these Mauritius is real and the other imaginary. Both are real. The question is what connects them – and, more importantly, who captures the wealth created between them.
The Mauritius we sell
The international image of Mauritius is increasingly that of a premium destination: luxury hotels, villas, golf, spas, fine dining, yachts and exclusive experiences. The model is economically successful. In the first half of 2026, tourist arrivals increased by only 1.5%, to 668,471, yet tourism earnings rose by almost 18%, to Rs 55.9 billion. In other words, the island is extracting considerably more value from each visitor.
But a luxury destination does not create luxury by itself. Someone cleans the room. Someone prepares breakfast. Someone maintains the gardens and pools. Someone drives the visitor from the airport. Someone washes the dishes, guards the premises and works the late shift. The tourists see paradise. The worker produces it. That distinction should be at the centre of any serious discussion about the distribution of tourism wealth.
International research has long shown that tourism creates substantial numbers of relatively low-skilled and lower-paid jobs. In Mauritius, tourism-related employment represents a significant share of total employment. So, when we celebrate tourism earnings, we should ask not only how much the industry earns, but how much of the value generated by that industry reaches the people whose labour makes the experience possible.
The recent corporate results are extraordinary. Major corporate entities — spanning banking and financial services, retail and logistics, textiles and healthcare, hospitality, and real estate and agriculture — earned profits ranging from Rs 1.5 billion to Rs 20 billion. These figures should not be misrepresented. Some of these groups earn substantial amounts outside Mauritius, and corporate profits also finance investment, taxation, wages and future growth. But they nevertheless tell us something important: Mauritius is generating very substantial private wealth.
At the same time, households are reporting that their purchasing power is under pressure. This is not proof that corporate profits cause household hardship. It is a reason to ask a more fundamental question: When an economy generates billions in profits, where does that money ultimately go? Into wages? Into taxes? Into investment? Into dividends? Into property? Into financial assets? Into wealth accumulated by existing owners? And how much remains circulating in the wider economy in ways that materially improve the security of ordinary households? The GDP figure cannot answer those questions. Ownership and distribution can.
The advertising of abundance
This is where the contemporary advertising landscape becomes revealing. Mauritian consumers are constantly told: Sale. Special Offer. Zero-Percent Finance. Buy Now, Pay Later. The message is not simply that goods are available. It is that the inability to pay for them immediately need not prevent consumption. That is a significant shift. A household that cannot comfortably spend Rs 80,000 today can nevertheless be persuaded to think in terms of a monthly instalment. Consumer-credit providers advertise repayment periods extending to 48 months for ordinary household goods.
The result is that visible consumption can continue even when purchasing power is constrained. A new television, therefore, does not necessarily mean a household has become richer. It may mean that the household has converted today’s desire into tomorrow’s obligation. This helps explain an otherwise puzzling phenomenon: a society can display increasingly sophisticated consumption while many households simultaneously feel financially squeezed.
The society of aspiration
The poorer household is not outside this consumer culture. It is surrounded by it. It sees the same advertisements, the same malls, the same cars, the same restaurants, the same concerts and the same luxury lifestyles displayed on social media. The message is rarely that these things belong exclusively to another class. The message is: You too can have them. If you cannot afford them today, there is a sale. If the sale is still too expensive, there is credit.
This produces a society in which the visibility of prosperity can become much greater than the security of prosperity.
People may participate in the appearance of affluence without possessing the financial foundations of affluence. That distinction matters. A full shopping centre is not necessarily evidence of widespread prosperity. A sold-out concert is not evidence that household purchasing power is healthy. Strong retail sales do not tell us whether purchases were made from income, savings or borrowed money. We need to know what kind of money is financing the consumption.
A country rich in wealth, but unequal in ownership
This brings us to a question that is uncomfortable precisely because Mauritius has been so successful. The country has accumulated considerable private wealth. Historically, economic ownership was highly concentrated, particularly among the Franco-Mauritian economic elite, even as political power shifted after independence. Over subsequent decades, Sino-Mauritian and Indo-Mauritian business groups expanded their economic influence, while foreign capital became increasingly important.
The structure is therefore more diverse today, but the historical concentration of ownership remains part of the story.
The important issue is not the ethnicity of individual entrepreneurs. It is concentration of economic power. Who owns the major companies? Who owns the land? Who owns the hotels? Who owns the shopping centres? Who owns the shares? Who receives the dividends? Who benefits when property values rise? And who supplies the labour that allows these assets to generate their returns? Those questions take us beyond the comfortable language of national prosperity.
The private sector playground
Mauritius can be an extraordinarily attractive environment for people who already possess capital. It is small, connected, politically stable, geographically attractive and increasingly integrated into international flows of capital, tourism and finance. It offers opportunities to develop property, hotels, shopping centres, financial services, entertainment and consumer businesses.
Mauritius can therefore become a kind of playground for capital: a place where new developments, new consumption models and new forms of luxury can be tested and commercialised. There is nothing inherently illegitimate about this. But an economy cannot be judged only by how attractive it is to investors. It must also be judged by what it offers the people who do not own the assets. If a hotel becomes more luxurious, who benefits? If a mall becomes more profitable, who benefits? If land prices rise, who benefits? If a company makes billions, who benefits? If tourism revenue increases, who benefits?
Which Mauritius?
The dominant story tells us that Mauritius is a success. That is true. But it is not the whole story. The more important question is what kind of success we have created. We have built an economy capable of selling luxury to outsiders and increasingly sophisticated consumption to insiders. We have built malls, hotels, financial institutions and globally connected companies. We have created considerable private wealth. But we have also created a society in which the imagery of abundance is constantly placed before people whose disposable incomes may not keep pace with the lifestyles being advertised. The result is a peculiar social arrangement. The tourist buys paradise. The investor owns part of it. The worker maintains it. The consumer aspires to it. And the household at the bottom counts the cost of living in it.
That is not an argument against wealth, business or tourism. It is an argument against equating the accumulation of wealth with the distribution of prosperity. As a country we should therefore ask a question more demanding than whether GDP is growing, whether tourist expenditure is rising or whether its companies are profitable. We should ask: When we say that Mauritius is prosperous, whose prosperity are we talking about? And perhaps an even more uncomfortable question follows: If so much wealth is being created, why does so much of the population still experience prosperity as something they can see, advertise, aspire to, and sometimes borrow for — but cannot securely possess?
Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 2 October 2026
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