The growth in tourism for its own sake must be ended if destinations are to tackle ‘overtourism’ and promote sustainability, the Global Resilience Summit was told.
Oliver Martin, partner and Twenty 31 Consulting, told the annual event in London that “absolute growth” can no longer be the main aim for the sector.
“Tourism is really about transformational change from an economic perspective,” he said.
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“It’s about the economic generation that happens within small and medium sized businesses and local communities.
“We have been stuck for a long period of time in the concept of absolute growth – tourism for the sake of tourism. We all know that the number one metric we are measured on is absolute growth.
“This is a huge problem for the industry because we are now starting to see issues around overtourism and sustainable travel problems.”
Martin said a number of consumer trends are driving change. Firstly, babyboomers are being overtaken by millennials as the largest market.
This technologically savvy generation are making different demands on companies and want to see “local and effective” tourism.
The second is a move towards higher value, lower volume tourism linked directly to environmental conservation efforts.
Martin said there is a balance to be struck between exploiting the tourism asset – the destination – and the gains of tourism to fund conservation.
“Sustainable tourism is starting to shift beyond eco-tourism into the mainstream and protected areas can drive real sustainable growth for a whole series of tourism destinations around the world,” he said.
Charlie Ballard, global director, strategic insights, at TripAdvisor, said its data can be used by destinations to disperse tourism away from hotspots.
He cited Indonesia as an example which used the site to grow interest in visiting the country and then to promote regions outside popular spots like Bali.
Ballard said having the data so you know where the crisis points will be and how to invest to mitigate those is vital with global tourism is set to double in size in the next 10 years and.
“That’s a lot of money to be spent but it’s also a lot of people. How are we going to prepare for that? I see this as the biggest thing we all need to be talking about,” he said.
“We have to learn to travel well, and respect the world. Destinations’ first step is to recognise what assets they have that are making people travel and find a way to protect those. Once that have protected those they can make all the other decisions.
“I don’t want to come across as overly negative. We have to do logical analysis of how much demand is going to grow and prepare those destinations to meet those needs. We just need to be smart about it.”
Martin said overtourism is a problem on the demand side not the supply side. He added: “No industry is growing faster than travel, it’s outpacing everything else. It’s potentially the biggest opportunity in the world right now.
“There are definitely crisis hotspots but there is an opportunity of tourism dispersal and finding great destinations within markets and regions that we can encourage people to visit instead.
“But even that is not sustainable in the long-term. We are going to have to turn to regulations, like visa limits, in order to cope with the demand.”
He added: “Tourism is not a right. Every single marketing organisation is chasing numbers. Dispersal and all the other solutions we are applying to climate change and risk issues are very much shifting the problem around.
“We are eventually having to get into that stage of regulation. We have to, by default, start limiting the number of tourists within destinations. We have not grown up with that fact, but we will have to start to do that for the long-term.
“Regulation is a scary word, no one wants it, but it’s a reality. Tourism drives real economic growth but the problem is we have got such unchecked growth.
“We have to start doing more product management and experience management. It’s about educating our industry and the traveller to think more responsibly. Travellers has to start realising that we only have one planet and we need to act more responsibly.”
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