Has ‘Future of Tourism’ failed host communities?

The Future of Tour­ism Coali­tion is rather like a pub­lic rela­tions pyr­am­id scheme. The earli­er one signs up to it, the great­er the PR bene­fit. After every­one rushes in it will no longer be news­worthy. So if you’re going to sign up for it, do so after you read this hot take. Or wait until it actu­ally means something.

Leave it to li’l ol’ “GT” to push back a little … 

That’s right. Your cor­res­pond­ent is refer­ring to The Future of Tour­ism Coali­tion, which are six non-gov­ern­ment­al organ­isa­tions, advised by the Glob­al Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Coun­cil, plus sev­er­al found­ing sig­nat­or­ies “with the glob­al mis­sion to place des­tin­a­tions at the cen­ter of recov­ery strategies”. 

Host communities out-voted

Unfor­tu­nately, in the third of 13 “guid­ing prin­ciples”, the Coali­tion pos­i­tions a des­tin­a­tion’s host com­munity as merely an equal part­ner with gov­ern­ment and industry: “… equal par­ti­cip­a­tion by gov­ern­ment, the private sec­tor, and [the community]”. 

This “guid­ing prin­ciple” implies that loc­al people can be over­ruled by a two-thirds major­ity com­prised of industry and gov­ern­ment. Not­with­stand­ing the vague lim­its the oth­er unen­force­able guid­ing prin­ciples place on their beha­viour, this con­dones unholy alli­ances between gov­ern­ment and industry as they con­tin­ue to have their way with land­scapes, cul­tures, and com­munit­ies. To the extent that the tour­ism indus­tri­al com­plex is a real thing, this guid­ing prin­ciple does noth­ing to dis­mantle it.

Unchar­it­able inter­pret­a­tion? Per­haps. The authors have left it open for interpretation.

Tourism management & tourism development are not the same

To be fair, equal par­ti­cip­a­tion in tour­ism des­tin­a­tion man­age­ment is prob­ably a step for­ward for many host com­munit­ies. But your cor­res­pond­ent has argued that loc­al com­munit­ies should have the veto power over tour­ism devel­op­ment.

And on that dis­tinc­tion between devel­op­ment and man­age­ment, the third “guid­ing prin­ciple” is con­fus­ing. Is it about man­age­ment, or devel­op­ment, or both? The head­er says “des­tin­a­tion man­age­ment”. The body says “devel­op all tour­ism”. Which is it? 

If devel­op­ment is included, why isn’t the Coali­tion advoc­at­ing for host com­munity veto? That would do much to put the power back into the hands of des­tin­a­tions, which are meant to be “at the cen­ter” of the Coali­tion’s mission.

So it’s back to the PR pyr­am­id scheme … Your cor­res­pond­ent sus­pects that many (not all) of those who sign up to and announce their asso­ci­ation with this ini­ti­at­ive will be doing so for the sug­ar hit; that feel-good rush refined and bagged by the PR mills that com­prise much of the travel & tour­ism industry media. 

Ulti­mately, where real busi­ness decisions must be made, the vast major­ity of the sig­nat­or­ies will quite rightly pri­or­it­ise the sur­viv­al of their own oper­a­tions over the val­id but vaguely-expressed con­cerns of this latest exer­cise in tour­ism industry vir­tue signalling. 

Fea­tured image (top of screen): Are host com­munit­ies being ground down by the tour­ism indus­tri­al com­plex? Image by Andri­us Petrucen­ia (CC BY-SA 3.0) via Wiki­me­dia. “GT” cropped it and applied a rouge filter.