“Tourism contributes to sustainable development.” Are you sure?

Tourism as a force for good?

Tour­ism is now one of the most sig­ni­fic­ant eco­nom­ic activ­it­ies and social phe­nom­ena on this plan­et. The United Nations World Tour­ism Organ­isa­tion (UNWTO) reports that in 2016 over 1.3 bil­lion people crossed inter­na­tion­al bor­ders, spend­ing a total of US$ 1,401 bil­lion. This amount of money is con­sid­er­able, and without any doubt it presents an oppor­tun­ity for job cre­ation, improved live­li­hoods and devel­op­ment more broadly. There are plenty of case stud­ies that demon­strate how tour­ism activ­ity in a par­tic­u­lar des­tin­a­tion or com­munity can improve liv­ing stand­ards. But there are also case stud­ies that show the opposite.

So, on a more gen­er­al level (and maybe tak­ing some­thing like a heli­copter view), how do we know if com­mon claims of tour­ism as a tool for poverty alle­vi­ation, a vehicle for peace, a mech­an­ism to save biod­iversity and so forth, are true? Where are the data to show that these bene­fits occur for real?

More data, better data

Clearly, tour­ism is a key driver in achiev­ing pro­gress across the 17 United Nations Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals (SDGs), for bet­ter or worse. To have an informed dis­cus­sion, be able to set pri­or­it­ies, and chan­nel activ­it­ies of well-mean­ing organ­isa­tions and donors, it is import­ant to have access to evid­ence that tracks or assesses tourism’s impacts. The Meas­ure-To-Man­age prin­ciple has nev­er been more per­tin­ent than in today’s world where resources are dwind­ling, pop­u­la­tions are grow­ing, and eco­sys­tem thresholds are being approached.

The Glob­al Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Dash­board is designed to do exactly that: Meas­ure and mon­it­or tourism’s con­tri­bu­tion to sus­tain­able devel­op­ment across a range of key sus­tain­ab­il­ity dimen­sions. Each dimen­sion is under­pinned by a num­ber of indic­at­ors that were developed with stake­hold­er input to give some con­fid­ence in wheth­er tour­ism is ‘track­ing in the right dir­ec­tion’ or wheth­er more con­cer­ted inter­ven­tion is necessary.

The Dash­board presents lon­git­ud­in­al data that are provided by key industry part­ners or are gen­er­ated spe­cific­ally for the Dash­board. One sur­pris­ing insight was to see how little sus­tain­ab­il­ity data there actu­ally is. It is there­fore hoped that, as one of the bene­fits, the Dash­board cata­lyses great­er effort in the area of tour­ism mon­it­or­ing. Effort means: more data, bet­ter data, and con­sist­ent data.

Insights & myths

In addi­tion, the Dash­board has already revealed oth­er major insights, or in some cases bus­ted exist­ing myths. For example, the pro­por­tion of inter­na­tion­al tour­ism that arrives in Least Developed Coun­tries and Small Island Devel­op­ing States is actu­ally very small (under 6%). This sur­prises most people as there is a belief that tour­ism dis­trib­utes wealth from rich to poor coun­tries. This is not true; espe­cially when con­sid­er­ing that about half of the glob­al travel volume occurs between ten coun­tries only. Meas­ur­ing pro­gress over time, how­ever, shows improve­ments. In the case of cash trans­fer into less developed coun­tries there has indeed been a pos­it­ive trend.

That is the good news. The Dash­board reveals oth­er issues that pose a chal­lenge to tour­ism. One Achilles heel to sus­tain­able devel­op­ment is the con­sid­er­able car­bon foot­print of pas­sen­ger avi­ation. Improv­ing air­craft effi­ciency is use­ful but does not out­weigh growth rate, so it is a prob­lem of grow­ing sig­ni­fic­ance. More pos­it­ive pro­gress can be repor­ted on resource effi­ciency in hotels where effi­ciency improve­ments are suf­fi­cient to com­pensate growth or in some cases even lead to real reduc­tions in car­bon emissions.

Reporting for all

The Dash­board holds some inter­est­ing inform­a­tion for decision makers at the glob­al level, but import­antly it should also be of interest to nation­al-level stake­hold­ers or any com­pany inter­ested in sus­tain­ab­il­ity report­ing. It provides a well-researched and sup­por­ted frame­work that can be down-scaled or mod­i­fied for dif­fer­ent pur­poses. Ulti­mately, the vis­ion is to devel­op Nation­al Dash­boards for every coun­try, and these feed back into an increas­ingly robust glob­al data plat­form. This is already imple­men­ted for com­mon tour­ism stat­ist­ics, such as arrivals and expendit­ure, and it is time now to extend such sys­tems to non-eco­nom­ic indic­at­ors that reflect the full suite of sus­tain­ab­il­ity dimensions.

About the author

Dr Susanne Becken

Dr Susanne Beck­en is the Dir­ect­or of the Grif­fith Insti­tute for Tour­ism and a Pro­fess­or of Sus­tain­able Tour­ism at Grif­fith Uni­ver­sity, Aus­tralia. Susanne has led sev­er­al large scale research pro­grams on sus­tain­able tour­ism, includ­ing the Glob­al Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Dash­board, and has under­taken a broad range of con­sultancy work in New Zea­l­and, Aus­tralia, Fiji, Sam­oa, Tunisia and for glob­al organ­isa­tions, such as the UNWTO, UNISDR and UNESCO. Part of Susanne’s work is to provide advice to industry and policy makers. In 2015/16, she was an invited expert on Queensland’s Great Bar­ri­er Reef Water Sci­ence Min­is­teri­al Taskforce. She is now a mem­ber of the Air New Zea­l­and Sus­tain­ab­il­ity Advis­ory Pan­el. Susanne is on the edit­or­i­al boards of five tour­ism journals.