Pay attention: Massive opportunities in culture & heritage tourism

Chris Flynn, Pres­id­ent & CEO of “GT” Insight Part­ner the World Tour­ism Asso­ci­ation for Cul­ture & Her­it­age (WTACH), reflects on the reas­ons why he formed the organ­isa­tion and why it behoves travel & tour­ism industry stake­hold­ers at the des­tin­a­tion level to pay atten­tion and get involved.

The estab­lish­ment of the World Tour­ism Asso­ci­ation for Cul­ture and Her­it­age (WTACH) was motiv­ated by the crit­ic­al need to take action against the increas­ing erosion of cul­tur­al her­it­age assets due to over­tour­ism, mis­man­age­ment, and/or a pure lack of appre­ci­ation of the poten­tial con­sequences of inaction.

As former Dir­ect­or for the Pacific region at the Pacific Asia Travel Asso­ci­ation, a role I held for 15 years, it became appar­ent that less-developed eco­nom­ies need more assist­ance to ensure they pro­gress and prosper in ways that ensure the pro­tec­tion of their unique cul­tur­al ances­try; espe­cially in an age of increas­ingly afford­able access to des­tin­a­tions coupled with a grow­ing middle class, par­tic­u­larly in Asia.

With these thoughts in mind I began to research and found there was an import­ant cor­rel­a­tion between vis­it­or aspir­a­tions and sup­ply on a glob­al scale. In par­tic­u­lar mil­len­ni­al trav­el­lers. My research con­sist­ently showed that their No 1 aspir­a­tion was to have a true authen­t­ic cul­tur­al exper­i­ence. That’s a word being used a bit too often these days but you can­’t ignore the evid­ence and the desire of these trav­el­lers. The prob­lem with this is that as inter­na­tion­al travel con­tin­ues to surge, authen­ti­city con­tin­ues to erode. Demand is effect­ively des­troy­ing supply!

We saw 1.4 bil­lion inter­na­tion­al trav­el­lers in 2018; two years ahead of UNWTO pre­dic­tions. And we are expect­ing around 100 mil­lion mil­len­ni­al trav­el­lers to take trips around the globe with­in the next five years. And that’s just from Asia!

Nat­ur­ally I was con­cerned about these num­bers and the poten­tial issues and/or dam­age that the sheer volume of vis­it­ors could reap on some of the world’s most vul­ner­able sites. What con­cerned and sur­prised me more was that there was no recog­nised glob­al author­ity on cul­tur­al her­it­age and tour­ism. Con­sid­er­ing that most trav­el­lers have some form of cul­tur­al and/or his­tor­ic­al com­pon­ent to their itin­er­ar­ies I found this fact stag­ger­ing and disturbing. 

What this meant was that tour­ism oper­at­ors, des­tin­a­tions, and vis­it­ors alike had no effect­ive guidelines designed to pro­tect these unique envir­on­ments. It also lay bare oppor­tun­it­ies to exploit com­munit­ies that have no exper­i­ence or capa­city to man­age a tour­ism ven­ture. As you can ima­gine, the alarm bells were ringing loudly yet I couldn’t find a solu­tion to the prob­lem because there wasn’t one!

It was at this point that I sus­pec­ted that if some­thing was to be done to try and solve this prob­lem, I was going to have to ini­ti­ate it. After numer­ous meet­ings, phone calls, VOIP calls, and emails with inter­na­tion­al experts and pro­fes­sion­als I determ­ined that if any­thing pos­it­ive was going to be done I would have to do it myself. It was at this point I estab­lished WTACH and have been fight­ing this battle ever since.

It might sound melo­dra­mat­ic to use the term ‘Battle’ but that’s exactly what it is. The erosion of cul­tur­al her­it­age assets usu­ally comes down to a lack of plan­ning, unres­tric­ted vis­it­or growth, and profit for its own sake. When you com­bine these ele­ments, it can be a recipe for dis­aster. If we’ve seen this hap­pen in some of the world’s more fam­ous his­tor­ic­al sites and des­tin­a­tions, then ima­gine what could hap­pen to places and people who are effect­ively invis­ible on the glob­al tour­ism radar. 

A good example is Rapa Nui, bet­ter known as East­er Island and known world­wide for the amaz­ing Moai statues. Rapa Nui has a pop­u­la­tion of less than 6,000 yet they wel­comed approx­im­ately 100,000 vis­it­ors in 2018. It’s import­ant to appre­ci­ate that tour­ism is not a product, it is a com­plex eco­sys­tem of products and ser­vices. As well as access to the exper­i­ences they crave, tour­ists con­sume pre­cious and often fra­gile resources. They also gen­er­ate costs e.g. waste and long-term dam­age such as major social and cul­tur­al disruption.

These factors have put a massive amounts of stress on infra­struc­ture and the com­munit­ies that call Rapa Nui home, as amongst oth­er things they now have to man­age around 20 tons of garbage every day. That was nev­er fore­cast. So you begin to see the problem. 

This is not and nev­er will be a blame game. More often than not prob­lems arise due to a col­li­sion of issues that were pre­vi­ously nev­er con­sidered because they were a com­plete unknown. Unfor­tu­nately, this leads to a scramble to try and fix things on the run. That rarely if ever works. Plan­ning for the future and/or fix­ing prob­lems caused by over­tour­ism requires spe­cial­ist skills and meth­od­o­lo­gies unique to that des­tin­a­tions. It’s nev­er one size fits all.

At WTACH we’ve estab­lished what I con­sider to be the best team of glob­al experts and their asso­ci­ated net­works ever put togeth­er to help fix these prob­lems. We don’t diver­si­fy. This is all we do. And we do it to ensure that the world’s cul­tur­al her­it­age and ances­try is pro­tec­ted for gen­er­a­tions to come. Why? Because once it’s gone it’s gone for good. We can’t grow it. It can’t be replanted. It simply becomes extinct. 

The erosion of cul­tur­al her­it­age assets due to over­tour­ism is our ‘plastic in the ocean’. It’s invis­ible because we choose to ignore it or pre­tend it is not hap­pen­ing. Deal­ing with it could be bad for profit or make us miss our KPIs. But it is hap­pen­ing. And at an alarm­ing rate. 

We don’t have 50 years to pre­tend it’s someone else’s prob­lem. It’s our prob­lem and we need to find ways to fix it. 

For des­tin­a­tions that get it right, there is a massive oppor­tun­ity for both com­mer­cial profit and cul­tur­al pride. Emer­ging gen­er­a­tions of trav­el­lers want to exper­i­ence you at your best and will be will­ing to pay a premium.

If your vil­lage, city, region­al or nation­al des­tin­a­tion is inter­ested, con­tact WTACH. We are here to help. Indeed we are des­per­ate to help! This is pre­cisely why WTACH was established.

Fea­tured image: Rapa Nui (East­er Island) Moai stand proud amid a stun­ning windswept landscape.

About the author

Chris Flynn is Pres­id­ent & CEO of the World Tour­ism Asso­ci­ation for Cul­ture and Her­it­age (WTACH), a “GT” Insight Part­ner. 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.