Visitors come and go. Residents are always present. Visitors can turn away from issues. Residents must face tourism impact on an ongoing basis. How do residents cope and how are they dealing with impacts? More and more, in fact, residents are reacting to tourism impacts. They see the costs as often greater than the benefits.
At the same time, it is also important for visitors to show some concern for local impacts. Visitors who choose to disregard local practices risk increasing the backlash.
Often, tour operators, particularly those with low awareness of local issues, will not imbue their customers with the importance of respecting local needs. How local authorities respond to their citizens attitudes is also important.
Nurturing relationships between sectors and competitors along the lines of that operated by the Travel Foundation, a UK charity, in Tobago.
"It is local communities that, directly and indirectly, give accommodation providers the "licence to operate". Without their support there is no real chance of long-term sustainability. Many hotels have active philanthropic community programmes that could be more extensive and engage a broader range of stakeholders. The Travel Foundation has adopted an approach in Tobago and some other non-Caribbean destinations of supporting a coordinator to bring all the interested parties together to resolve common issues. This seems to work well in improving mutual understanding and stakeholder co-operation in identifying appropriate initiatives. We believe that this approach is best suited to a smaller island or possibly to an area within a larger island". (Travelwatch - Caribbean Article)
What is essential is clear messaging: to visitors, residents and tour companies to act responsibly. What is considered irresponsible at home is also irresponsible away. Visitors showing empathy and respect for hosts and their homes, engenders fairness and respect from these same people.
At the same time it is beholden on tour providers to promote responsible tourism because having the hosts in your most favoured destination on your side only contributes to better experiences for all concerned.
This becomes more urgent in destinations with cruise ships visiting. The daily influx of visitors will often overwhelm the destination, leaving something akin to stress disorder in its wake. In these places, it is even more critical to properly manage the clutch of visitors.
Yes - Resident attitudes matter - A great deal!
Largely, tourism development has excluded local communities, with highly detrimental effects and potentially lasting impacts. The more intense the exclusion of locals, the higher the negativity. This has implications for longer term viability of many places. In almost every study, there is some level of resident resentment toward tourism development and sometimes the tourists themselves. What is mentioned very often is the need to engage local communities in planning and implementation whereas, this has mostly been missing in the past.
Providing suitable employment opportunities also receives much attention as many local people feel they are not being given a real chance to enter the job market beyond the service related jobs. These reasons may be what is forcing the job market out of local communities and the influx of hiring foreign workers not only because the locals don't want the jobs but also because they don't see a real chance to move up the corporate ladder. The local people see that they don't have a chance at meaningful employment in this industry in the place where they live.
Many authors also report that tourism developments, for the most part, do not do anything to limit use of local natural resources or help, in any way, to protect them.
Local people often feel that tourism development leads to an increase in crime but the developers leave the matter to be dealt with by local authorities, who are often severely taxed to deal with this problem. Developers do not provide any manpower or logistical support to assist local authorities in dealing with criminals.
Benefits either have not happened or are very slow to infiltrate local communities, too slow for local people who are losing patience with tourism and its promises which many locals only see as empty promises. This clearly also impacts local sentiments towards tourists and feelings of hostility towards them. This, in turn, leaves visitors feeling not welcome and the cycle continues when visitors return home, where many will not re-visit the destination or recommend it to their friends. As a consequence, many communities may be in a sort of self-destruct mode.
It would also appear that resident resentment is starting to happen earlier in the product life-cycle. This may be a result of more experience on the part of local people, or the availability of travel reviews, or media attention, and so on. The connected world works to connect all stakeholders.
Whatever the cause, local peoples are becoming more wary of tourism developers. In turn, this clearly imposes limits on how and where tourism development is welcome. If tourism authorities and developers choose to ignore this preponderance of information, the blame does not rest with the local people - they want to participate, only in a more equitable way.
Tourism developers can't say they didn't know about this because the've heard it over and over. So, if multi-million dollar tourism developments don't deliver, the blame rests with the developers who did not do their homework. The industry may even try to refute it or invalidate it but this doesn't work either.
The question might be where do we go from here? As mentioned above, communities give the "license to operate". Local people, who are the communities, need to be engaged and involved and share in the returns before this license will be renewed. The answer is to deliver to the license holders what is rightfully theirs.
In certain cases, where residents are being forced to pay admissions to use facilities, the same as tourists, this can also be a source of friction and can cause some resentment to build up. At the same time, where facilities are free to use, residents should not feel that they are being excluded from using them just because tourists are present there. Some residents may refuse, simply because they don't want to interact with tourists. Those who do, however, may find the interaction to be beneficial.
I recollect my host in Tobago telling me that he went to swim very early in the morning because that was when the beach was quiet and there were no tourists there. He expressed that he did not like the beach as much when it was full with tourists and he preferred his quiet enjoyment. (This is a classic coping mechanism, see Abdool, 2002, pg 51-52.)
Even if it was built for tourists, it would certainly be beneficial to local people to have improved tourism developments, like sports or entertainment facilities, in their area. But, any shift in attitude might also be contingent on whether the cost to use the facility hasn't increased. So, tourism may be helpful in this way as long as locals feel they are being handled fairly.
The predominant theoretical framework for analysing resident perceptions and attitudes has been "Social Exchange Theory", proposed by Ap in 1992. Overwhelmingly, resident perceptions of a positive benefit arising from a tourism development is directly proportional to positive support for the project. This is usually related to jobs being generated but may include social and environmental factors.
Equally importantly, positive support is clearly linked to government and developer engagement and involvement of local people. Both of these observations apply almost universally and the location of the tourism development is not important in establishing this relationship. As well, tourism authorities along with the developers are creating a relationship with the community which will be the supplier of many of the workers who they will rely on. A negative attitude, from the get-go, is only going to undermine this relationship and actually make it more difficult for them to find and keep good people. Furthermore, staff to client contact may also carry a negative connotation which will be remembered by visitors.
People don't like change in their environment, living place or work place but its not apparent whether any studies have looked at resident attitudes from the viewpoint of resistance to change in any of these.
Interpretation of the meaning of the words: "attitudes" and "perceptions" have been taken to mean the same thing for some authors while having different meanings for others. I do think there is a difference, in that a "perception" is just that, a thing having been seen or realized whereas an "attitude" demonstrates some way of thinking towards something.
Both, however, will have a bearing in determining what action an individual might take as a result. In any case, throughout these studies, there appears to be relatively very little difference between study areas, based on country, culture or age* of the respondents. On the other hand, there are fairly consistent differences, however, between the responses of men and women. (*The age of the respondent "within" a study area, in some cases, was important.)
It is particularly shocking to read the account of the study on St. Kitts with respect to turtle conservation. Its almost mind-numbing to think that people who live in such a beautiful place can be so despondent. The apathy, disenchantment and lack of knowledge along with the prevailing attitude that ecotourism does not benefit them. I wonder if this is the impression that the author, Amber Greening, intended or if there is a different way to look at this. What I wonder if this attitude is caused by the development of tourism in St. Kitts alone, or possibly if this attitude is prevalent in other islands. Whether this frame of mind is the result of general neglect by developers and the government. What can be done to rebuild these people's trust in themselves and to educate them about the future and/or the potential of tourism? Also, what can be done to demonstrate that there are success stories which need to be explored and replicated? Although there is disenchantment in other islands, this seems to be a particularly dramatic case. (Understanding Local Perceptions and the Role of Historical Context in Ecotourism Development: A Case Study of St. Kitts by Amber Greening, Masters Thesis, 2014)
From the views expressed by residents in most of these studies, governments and tourism authorities have much work to do to bring residents, and by inference, communities onside with future tourism developments.