Butler asks: How do we solve one of the great conundrums of ‘sustainable’ tourism?
“Interesting range of views”, Richard Butler (of Tourism Area Life Cycle model fame) writes in the comments section of the “GT” Insight Bites on opportunities and threats to tourism in 2025.
“How do we square the first response re air travel and the second and fourth positive responses about tourism in [Southeast] Asia where many of the visitors rely on air transport to get there from their origins?
“If anyone can resolve the contradictions, they will solve one of the great conundrums of supposed ‘sustainable’ tourism; travel to most self-styled sustainable destinations is almost always mostly by air.”
Thanks also to K Michael Haywood who was the only respondent to a question about meritocracy in tourism media; a topic close to your correspondent’s heart given this platform and its mission to advance viewpoint diversity. Prof Haywood’s thoughtful response is honoured here as a “GT” Insight BiteX.
Bites menu
Less long-haul, more ‘polluter pays’
C Michael Hall, Professor, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
Ostensibly Richard is absolutely right. It is not just a paradox because in many ways it reflects two alternative realities for tourism. Arguably, it also reflects different ways of understanding what sustainable tourism is:
- Those who believe in green growth, i.e. that we can still have our increase in visitor numbers and, if we are a bit more efficient, we can be greener too. They focus on sustainability metrics more at the level of the individual.
- Those who look at growth versus sustainability in absolute numbers, i.e. it is not just per visitor sustainability that matters but the travel & tourism industry’s total effects; important because we only have the one planet!
So how could we reconcile growth versus sustainability?
Well, at least in the short-term, we can encourage more domestic and intra-regional tourism and less long-haul tourism. In doing so we can increase tourist numbers and trips but reduce emissions from flying.
In tandem, I would also advocate implementing the long-standing ‘polluter pays’ principle, i.e. the further you travel the greater should be your sustainability tax. Proceeds should then be reinvested in conservation and sustainability projects that both tourists and locals see as providing value.
More often than not, places are too frightened to have visitors pay the real costs of travel & tourism. Yet, if we are going to extract maximum value, it is what we need to do.
Will such measures be implemented? No, not in the foreseeable future, except perhaps at a very local scale in some places. But ultimately, tourism needs to get off of the growth bandwagon and focus on value and yield at the destination.
‘Guaranteed routes’ to needy places
Geoffrey Lipman, President & co-founder, SUNx Malta
To reconcile the carbon impact of air travel with the benefits of tourism to least developed countries (LDCs), landlocked developing countries (LLDCs), and small island developing states (SIDS), we just need to take a leaf out of our American friends’ playbook.
When the United States deregulated air services back in the 1970s, they identified vulnerable destinations and called them ‘guaranteed routes’ that would never lose air services. The UK did the same for the Scottish islands.
So all LDCs and LLDCs and SIDS — none of whom created or contributed to the global pollution problem — would have their air services ‘guaranteed’.
The rest would have to rely on the “Net Zero” get-out-of-jail-free card.
[SUNx Malta is a valued “Good Tourism” Partner]
Externalities: ‘… so the entire global aviation fleet must be replaced’
Jonathon Day, Associate Professor at Purdue University, Indiana, USA
How do we create a more sustainable tourism system in the face of rising demand?
Like most wicked problems, there is no single solution. Nevertheless, promising solutions are emerging.
One of the key issues is accounting for what economists call ‘externalities’. This is not unique to tourism. It is embedded in the way we produce and consume most things. When we pay for a good or service, we rarely consider its true costs. These can be significant.
A simple example is that when we throw away a plastic bottle we aren’t paying for its disposal or its carbon footprint. When I travel to Nepal or Peru I note that the cost of removing plastic bottles from trails falls to local communities.
So, the answer at the heart of Richard’s question is that travel & tourism must start to account for all of its externalities if it is to be sustainable.
I love to travel, and I am usually frugal, but I recognise that travel is too cheap because we ignore externalities.
The issue with air travel is its carbon footprint. To be more sustainable, we should ensure that we include that externality in costs associated with air travel. One example: American Express Global Business Travel (Amex GBT) has introduced a carbon pricing tool to help companies understand the full cost of their travel.
I am not saying that this is the only solution. We need to change the types of energy we use to travel and so the entire global aviation fleet must be replaced.
Offsets aren’t a solution. Behaviours must change. But getting costing and pricing right, and using the power of markets to influence change in the tourism system, is one possible tool in the toolbox.
“GT” Insight BiteX (‘X’ is up to you)
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BiteX: ‘Mediacracy’ in tourism
K Michael Haywood, publisher, ‘Destinations-in-Action’, Canada
The leading tourism media platforms are commercially-oriented and are in the business of promoting individual enterprises and/or destinations.
Evocative content is persuasive and is designed to entice target audiences to make decisions regarding trips, holidays, and destinations that suit preferences and passions. It’s about the money, honey.
Content offered by social media platforms may be personalised based on the peculiarities of influencers who provide keener insight into the nuances of destinations, but sparingly about the viewpoints of destination stakeholder groups.
With fact checking on the wane, false narratives on the rise, and algorithms serving to maximise gains by pushing content of influencers with celebrity status (their media power as a guarantor of success), content becomes entertainment, not analysis. .
Obviously, the media offerings serving commercial sector stakeholders may provide consumer analysis and keep track of happenings in destinations. Most else is advertising.
The media of academics — refereed journals — may reveal interest in, and concern for, varied local stakeholders, but to what avail? No attempt is made to write for, reach or convince decision-making, consumer, corporate, or community audiences.
Publish or perish is a performative and competitive game that eschews collaboration with the world beyond the ivory tower. Meritocracy may be in evidence, but moral intuition has been abandoned.
As a sign of the times, the satirical The Rise of Meritocracy and the “tyranny of merit“ provide lucid explanations as to how those who control the media can ignore the notion of equality and the promise that “all men are created equal”.
Given the lack of opportunity for community groups to have their opinions heard, meritocracy in the media really represents a mediocre “mediacracy”.
Meritocracy can happen when tourism is in pursuit of progress and everyone has an equal and meritorious chance to “move on up” and have their voices heard.
What do you think?
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Featured image (top of post)
Richard Butler asks: How do we solve one of the great conundrums of ‘sustainable’ tourism? Pic by Michael Schwarzenberger (CC0) via Pixabay.
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