Are “all-inclusive” tourism packages to blame for locals missing out?

In many cases these mod­els led to the “all-inclus­ive” phe­nomen­on, which meant loc­al com­munit­ies reaped little or no tour­ism rev­en­ue yet bore the brunt of the neg­at­ive impacts of mass tourism.

Bal­aka­kis said that altern­at­ives to mass tour­ism, such as mod­els emphas­ising cul­tur­al her­it­age pack­ages “with sev­er­al des­tin­a­tions included”, is an altern­at­ive dir­ec­tion tour­ism should be headed.

Tour­ism was the focus of the last day of the inaug­ur­al Balkans & Black Sea Cooper­a­tion For­um (BBSF), which con­cluded in north­east Greeck city of Serres last Friday.

Most speak­ers reportedly “echoed” the UN’s declar­a­tion of 2017 as the Inter­na­tion­al Year of Sus­tain­able Tourism.

Bal­aka­kis’ GRCI organ­ised the BBSF.

GRCI is “a non­profit & non­gov­ern­ment­al cul­tur­al organ­isa­tion” which puts togeth­er “exper­i­en­tial jour­neys and events held under the aus­pices of the Hel­len­ic Nation­al Com­mis­sion for UNESCO” and endeav­ours to high­light cul­tur­al her­it­age and inter­cul­tur­al dia­logue and con­trib­ute to the devel­op­ment of “loc­al soci­et­ies through cor­por­ate social respons­ib­il­ity programs”.

The BBSF seeks to be an annu­al con­fer­ence “high­light­ing cross-border cooper­a­tion, enhan­cing bilat­er­al and mul­ti­lat­er­al rela­tions, strength­en­ing busi­ness oppor­tun­it­ies and pro­mot­ing eco­nom­ic growth and sus­tain­able devel­op­ment among the 17 States of the Balkan and Black Sea Region”.

The 17 states of the region are Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia/Herzegovina, Bul­garia, Croa­tia, FYROM (Mace­do­nia), Geor­gia, Greece, Mol­dova, Montenegro, Romania, Rus­si­an Fed­er­a­tion, Ser­bia, Slov­e­nia, Tur­key, and Ukraine.

Sources: Tornos News & GRCI.