The cause of overtourism & how tourism can avoid choking on success

World Tour­ism Asso­ci­ation for Cul­ture & Her­it­age (WTACH) Pres­id­ent & CEO Chris Flynn weighs in on the over­tour­ism dis­cus­sion in this “Good Tour­ism” Insight. Mr Flynn iden­ti­fies the cause of over­tour­ism and how the tour­ism industry might avoid more of it.

We are hear­ing more and more about “over­tour­ism” and the neg­at­ive impact it is hav­ing on des­tin­a­tions and, sadly, the social fab­ric of the com­munit­ies that dwell in the towns, cit­ies, and coun­tries affected. But over­tour­ism and its calam­it­ous con­sequences have been unwel­come symp­toms of tour­ism for a very long time.

There are many factors that con­trib­ute to the series of bot­tle­necks we now refer to as over­tour­ism: The cheap­er cost of travel; over-devel­op­ment or under-devel­op­ment and a mis­match with capa­city; mis­guided or, more accur­ately, mis­un­der­stood plan­ning and invest­ment … I can go on. 

Surely there must be a fun­da­ment­al cause of over­tour­ism. And, if so, what is it? 

In my opin­ion the fun­da­ment­al cause of over­tour­ism is the mis­guided view that ‘more’ is always bet­ter. And flawed key per­form­ance indic­at­ors (KPIs) at the pub­lic policy level is evid­ence of that.

Increas­ingly we are see­ing those who have little, if any, exper­i­ence in tour­ism placed in charge of man­aging essen­tial pro­cesses designed to pro­mote des­tin­a­tions and deliv­er vis­it­ors to our shores. These tend to be rel­at­ively high-pro­file polit­ic­al and pub­lic ser­vice pos­i­tions that provide an oppor­tun­ity to ‘make your mark’. I sup­pose there’s noth­ing wrong in that except where res­ults are judged purely by arrival numbers.

KPIs versus carrying capacities

Today we live in a KPI soci­ety; a fic­tion­al mind­set where it’s believed the more we pro­duce the bet­ter we must be. Key per­form­ance indic­at­ors are designed to mon­it­or our work effort, con­tri­bu­tion, and loy­alty to the cause; and of course, our value to the busi­ness. KPIs sit upon our shoulders weigh­ing us down with the ques­tion “Am I good enough?”

KPIs are a form­al­isa­tion of the old “If you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” agree­ment. They make those high­er up the chain, those we report to, look bet­ter in the eyes of those they report to. And there’s always someone out there seek­ing to look bet­ter than they actu­ally are. 

And therein lies the prob­lem: KPIs are short-term tar­gets. There are no long-term vis­ions or thought pro­cesses asso­ci­ated with them. It’s all about NOW! Instant cof­fee, if you will. KPI-driv­en out­comes are left for some oth­er unsus­pect­ing mug to clean up the mess and pick up the pieces.

When you apply KPI think­ing to tour­ism it just doesn’t work. For a start there needs to be a plan and that plan should take into account just how much a town, city, vil­lage, museum, art gal­lery, can take … before it breaks! 

That’s called “car­ry­ing capacity”.

A tour­ism devel­op­ment and man­age­ment plan should, by design, have the abil­ity to meas­ure and mon­it­or the per­form­ance of a place in terms of vis­it­or arrivals with ref­er­ence to car­ry­ing capa­city. Car­ry­ing capa­city helps des­tin­a­tion man­agers under­stand what infra­struc­ture, resources and invest­ment are needed to cope. When it becomes clear that things are going to get tight, decisions can be made one way or the other.

Sounds like a prac­tic­al idea to me! So why are car­ry­ing capa­city stud­ies hardly ever done? It all comes back to KPIs. Neither a tour­ism depart­ment head nor the Min­is­ter they report to will stay in these pos­i­tions long enough to see the poten­tial dam­age their short-sighted decision-mak­ing cre­ates, nor the impact and chal­lenges faced by com­munit­ies that must deal with the con­sequences. Don’t believe me? Click here.

Let’s be clear about this: Growth without a plan is a recipe for dis­aster and one we are see­ing rise to the sur­face at alarm­ing levels. This is tourism’s ‘plastic in the ocean’ prob­lem. It is a crit­ic­al issue that’s been devel­op­ing for years but has been con­veni­ently ignored or brushed under numer­ous car­pets until now … when it’s become too big to hide.

So, what are we going to do about it?

Well that, my friends, is the $1.8 bil­lion ques­tion and the reas­on we estab­lished the World Tour­ism Asso­ci­ation for Cul­ture and Her­it­age (WTACH). Someone had to do some­thing to bring a halt to this mad­ness — the idea that ‘growth at all costs’ is the way to a bet­ter future — and to change the thought pro­cesses driv­ing some of our most pre­cious des­tin­a­tions and cul­tures to extinction. 

So we must change the way we think; the way we do things; the way we meas­ure suc­cess. Because if we don’t, we will inev­it­ably end up chok­ing on our own suc­cess. And the dam­age will be irreversible.

Fea­tured image: Tour­ist-go-home mes­sages are get­ting louder and more fre­quent as over­tour­ism becomes a prob­lem too big to ignore. Image by Duncan Hull (CC BY 2.0) via Flickr.

About the author

Chris Flynn is Pres­id­ent & CEO of the World Tour­ism Asso­ci­ation for Cul­ture & Her­it­age (WTACH). With 34 years’ exper­i­ence across four con­tin­ents, Chris has acquired an intim­ate know­ledge of the glob­al tour­ism industry and is often invited to speak at the biggest industry events and con­trib­ute his insights to lead­ing news media such as BBC World (and The “Good Tour­ism” Blog ;-)). Lead­ing Aus­trali­an and inter­na­tion­al uni­ver­sit­ies have also sought Chris’ advice on course content.