As we sit out COVID-19, let’s think about a fair & fail-safe treatment or vaccine for overtourism

Dur­ing this coronavir­us COVID-19 pan­dem­ic we are see­ing some­thing we have wit­nessed many times before — the fickle­ness of travel & tour­ism demand — exacer­bated by enforced travel restrictions.

As gov­ern­ments around the world shut down travel, bor­ders, and gath­er­ings of vari­ous sizes to “flat­ten the curve” of coronavir­us con­ta­gion and buy time to devel­op treat­ments and vac­cines, your cor­res­pond­ent wondered what a fail-safe vac­cine or treat­ment for over­tour­ism might look like.

Overtourism is addiction

When everything is going well, travel & tour­ism does very well. 

The phe­nomen­on of “over­tour­ism”, about which there are always lots of com­plaints, is a symp­tom of an unhealthy depend­ence on tour­ism for jobs and eco­nom­ic activ­ity. We know that, yet this depend­ence is why little gets done to solve the prob­lem. It is polit­ic­ally and eco­nom­ic­ally dif­fi­cult to solve because the with­draw­al symp­toms are rough.

So when some­thing unex­pec­ted hap­pens and vis­it­ors stop arriv­ing, the with­draw­als are even rough­er. Many live­li­hoods suf­fer. And if vis­it­ors stay away for an exten­ded peri­od, which may well be the case with COVID-19, it could be devastating. 

Mean­while, places that don’t depend on tour­ism do so much bet­ter. Few­er res­id­ents rely on vis­it­ors dir­ectly. While there are indir­ect knock-on effects, of course, one could say those places have bet­ter immunity or great­er self-reli­ance. Your cor­res­pond­ent prefers the latter.

Locals understand their priorities better than you do

Fans of “Good news in tour­ism …” will know that “GT” often high­lights travel & tour­ism industry news items that appear in loc­al media out­lets. Your cor­res­pond­ent seeks out stor­ies with pos­it­ive tour­ism industry angles that are not the product of trade media release mills. Nor are they (neces­sar­ily) related to the travel obses­sions of the main­stream media, whose tour­ism-related items are often preachy and, in any case, already shared by many.

In your cor­res­pond­ent’s opin­ion often the most inter­est­ing and inspir­ing stor­ies in “Good news …” are those that are com­munity-driv­en or at least have the host com­munity very much involved along­side gov­ern­ments, NGOs, and/or industry. Here are two examples bor­rowed from this week’s “Good news …” (to be pub­lished tomorrow): 

A sur­vey of res­id­ents in White­fish, Montana, USA showed that tour­ism growth is viewed as neg­at­ive in rela­tion to hous­ing prices, infra­struc­ture, traffic, and “com­munity char­ac­ter”. The good news is that a new draft tour­ism man­age­ment plan by White­fish City Coun­cil “aims to pro­mote sus­tain­able com­munity-based tour­ism devel­op­ment that will be bene­fi­cial to all”. And the pub­lic will have the oppor­tun­ity to comment.

In that story loc­als col­lect­ively pre­dicted a range of poten­tial prob­lems that might arise from tour­ism growth. And guess what? They all hap­pen to be symp­toms of over­tour­ism we have seen else­where. The White­fish City Coun­cil best take heed!

In the USA, legis­la­tion for the Nature Coast Aquat­ic Pre­serve, which encom­passes seagrass beds north of Tampa, Flor­ida awaits the sig­na­ture of state Gov­ernor Ron DeS­antis. A com­munity peti­tion in sup­port of the legis­la­tion stated: “Healthy coastal hab­it­ats foster fish­ing, boat­ing, and tour­ism [and] sup­port valu­able fish­er­ies, sea­food pro­duc­tion, work­ing water­fronts, and eco-tour­ism that gen­er­ate approx­im­ately $600 mil­lion for the region’s eco­nomy annu­ally, provide more than 10,000 jobs, and fuel over 500 businesses”.

In that story, loc­al busi­nesses col­lect­ively iden­ti­fied plenty of reas­ons why con­serving nat­ur­al assets was a good idea. Among their reas­ons was tour­ism, of course, as well as many oth­er eco­nom­ic and life­style ones that are much more power­ful motiv­at­ors to the loc­als who live and work in that area than any amount of envir­on­ment­al mor­al­ising from out­side. Let’s hope the Gov­ernor listens! 

Hav­ing read many of these sorts of stor­ies and taken men­tal note of the issues and trends that emerge from them, your cor­res­pond­ent has become a fan of com­munity-led des­tin­a­tion plan­ning and policy making. 

Where res­id­ents are giv­en the oppor­tun­ity to assert their con­cerns and out­line their vis­ion for how tour­ism fits their place — and politi­cians and des­tin­a­tion man­agers are held to account — such policy-mak­ing will go a long way to solv­ing a host of prob­lems caused (and suffered) by our industry; from avoid­ing (or reliev­ing) loc­al over­tour­ism, to redu­cing tourism’s con­tri­bu­tion to glob­al cli­mate change. 

Your cor­res­pond­ent sus­pects that the more demo­crat­ic a des­tin­a­tion is, and the live­li­er its media envir­on­ment, the more likely it is to yield good social, envir­on­ment­al, and eco­nom­ic out­comes over time. 

That sounds eer­ily like “sus­tain­ab­il­ity”, doesn’t it? 

Ima­gine that!

Tourism must be supply-submissive not demand-driven

To achieve all of this the travel & tour­ism industry must be reima­gined as sup­ply-sub­missive rather than demand-driv­en. Every destination’s societal/cultural tol­er­ances, envir­on­ment­al sens­it­iv­it­ies, and eco­nom­ic ambi­tions are unique. Thus every destination’s host com­munity must be hon­oured and respec­ted; their wishes sub­mit­ted to. 

We must stop think­ing of des­tin­a­tions and their con­stitu­ent parts as undif­fer­en­ti­ated products like … toi­let paper. 

A toi­let paper fact­ory is demand-driv­en. A manager’s primary role is meet­ing demand as fully and effi­ciently as pos­sible; scal­ing up pro­duc­tion dur­ing an unusu­ally crazed con­sumer frenzy and then scal­ing it down again when demand returns to normal. 

Tour­ism des­tin­a­tions are not toi­let paper factor­ies. Nor should a des­tin­a­tion manager’s role be to reflex­ively meet rising tour­ism demand or trendy spikes in demand. Des­tin­a­tion res­id­ents must always be con­sul­ted first. 

Des­tin­a­tions are homes. 

Answer this: Should homeown­ers be forced to open guest bed­rooms? No. Should homeown­ers be forced to accept strangers into their back­yards? Of course not. As a guest in someone’s home, do you not fol­low their rules? Of course you do! It’s their place. It’s their space. If you don’t like it, you leave.

Ignore the woo-woo: Host communities must be consulted

Clearly host com­munit­ies should be giv­en the veto power on any tour­ism policy that will affect the char­ac­ter of their place. And col­lect­ively they might say “no”. Or they might say “yes”. Either way the com­munity will deliv­er an answer that the powers-that-be must accept and respect even if they don’t like it. (Does that sound famil­i­ar, Brit­ish readers?)

This isn’t your cor­res­pond­ent swip­ing at author­it­ari­an gov­ern­ments and greedy glob­al­ist cor­por­a­tions. Not exclus­ively, any­way. This is call­ing out any­one who treats host com­munit­ies with con­tempt, includ­ing the med­dlers and mis­sion­ar­ies, ideo­logues and idio … ideal­ists, who mean well but who can be as much an obstacle to self-determ­in­a­tion as the bur­eau­crats and fat cat cap­it­al­ists they often claim to despise. 

Very few of these indi­vidu­als — con­sult­ants, aca­dem­ics … y’know the type — truly advoc­ate for giv­ing host com­munit­ies the power to design their des­tin­a­tions and veto tour­ism policy. After all, host com­munit­ies aren’t sign­ing their paychecks. If they men­tion host com­munit­ies at all it is in passing and some­times in pat­ron­ising terms rather than with the respect des­tin­a­tion res­id­ents deserve … 

… as found­a­tion stake­hold­ers who MUST BE CONSULTED!

Frankly, many of these tour­ism industry “influ­en­cers” don’t trust nor­mal people to make “cor­rect” decisions. They are sus­pi­cious of normie motiv­a­tions. So they dream up fluffy philo­sophies, woo-woo buzz-phrases, and non­sense paradigms that they can take onto the con­fer­ence cir­cuit and into the offices of des­tin­a­tion man­agers. And they call them­selves  … “thought lead­ers” … or at least their dis­ciples and cham­ber-mates do.

But we digress … 

Local knowledge, local democracy, local policy, local planning

Let’s not rein­vent the wheel here. 

Fre­quent trav­el­lers know that the best know­ledge about a des­tin­a­tion is loc­al know­ledge. So why don’t we apply the same prin­ciple to des­tin­a­tion planning?

A return to loc­al demo­cracy for loc­al tour­ism policy and loc­al des­tin­a­tion plan­ning would be good news on so many dif­fer­ent levels. And it may help avoid, alle­vi­ate, and even cure over­tour­ism and many of our industry’s oth­er ail­ments and impositions. 

UNWTO, listen up: If the “lead­ing inter­na­tion­al organ­iz­a­tion in the field of tour­ism” was to focus on one thing — not 27 things! — advoc­at­ing for the demo­crat­isa­tion of loc­al tour­ism policy should be that thing. And NOW would be the per­fect time to think about it.

But what would your cor­res­pond­ent know? 

Not a lot. Your cor­res­pond­ent doesn’t define him­self as a “thought lead­er”; merely a humble writer avail­able for hire. 

What do you think? Share a short anec­dote or com­ment below. Or write a deep­er “GT” Insight. The “Good Tour­ism” Blog wel­comes diversity of opin­ion and per­spect­ive about travel & tour­ism because travel & tour­ism is everyone’s business.

And if you find “GT” con­tent inspir­ing, inter­est­ing, some­what amus­ing, or at least dif­fer­ent then surely it’s worth a cof­fee or few … 

Fea­tured image (top of post): Top image by Ger­alt (CC0) via Pixabay. Bot­tom image by Duncan Hull (CC BY 2.0) via Flickr, which “GT” cropped among oth­er things.