What is Tourism Truth?

What is really going on in the tourism sector? Its complicated.

The economic value of tourists is quite high and therefore much sought after and fought over by tour companies and destinations.

• Tour companies and resellers —not destinations —have the greater power in the overall market
• Low value, short stay, high impact budget tourism is too costly relative to the benefits that may accrue to the destination
• Resident satisfaction in destinations is not given due consideration and residents are rarely consulted in making major decisions
• Protection of cultural and environmental resources in destinations is less than top of mind importance
• Emissions from air transport and cruise ships are too high
• Airport and cruise port infrastructure costs as well as passenger processing costs are too high. These costs are borne by the destinations and not the tour companies and must be recovered somehow
• Small island nations are destinations at risk and are particularly vulnerable to impacts
• Arrival statistics are misleading
• Greenwashing is an ongoing issue
• Many destinations are burdened with paying for high cost infrastructure that has limited value to local people
• Smaller destinations tend to plan and negotiate independently and lack competitive marketing power. This position of weakness leaves them vulnerable to exploitation
• Promises of mostly low wage/low skill jobs almost never materialize.

It comes down to this: In destinations where environment, infrastructure and social structures are easily overwhelmed or compromised by too many tourists:

More, clearly, is not better. Avoiding overtourism and returning to first principles in an endemic COVID era. 'Careful what you wish for'.

Low value, short stay, high impact budget tourism is not the way forward, especially for destinations at risk. Destinations at risk must find ways to reduce arrival numbers, and associated costs, while increasing visitor spend in-destination (aka revenue or foreign exchange) that is not leaked back to outside entities. For many destinations, this may not be as difficult or disruptive as it sounds.

Also, the way to understand the selling mechanism is this: The entity that owns [ the product ], or the rights to it, should be the one who decides who sells [ the product ] and how [ the product ] is to be sold into the marketplace. The entity that owns [ the product ] should be the one who stands to profit most by selling it.

Thirty ways to explore the future of tourism: (Starting points for further study)

Airlines and Aircraft Issues Arrival Statistics Business Travel Climate Change and Tourism Collaborative Tourism Community Tourism Crime and Tourism Crisis Management / Negative Publicity Cruising vs Sustainable Tourism Destination Life Cycle

Drugs and Tourism Economic Impact of Tourism / Cruise Tourism Engaging High Risk Youth Environmental Impacts of Tourism Greenwashing & Green Certification Medical / Wellness & Marijuana Tourism Resident Attitudes Travel Responsibly Role of Media Selling Tourism

Sex Tourism Social Impact of Tourism Sustainable Tourism Tour Guide Training Tourism Trust Tourist Safety and Security Travel Advisories Travel Reviews and Articles Visitor Attitudes What is Tourism

Overtourism

Overtourism is characteristic of the late 'Consolidation' to early 'Stagnation' phases of The Tourism Area Life Cycle (TALC) Model by Richard Butler. Destinations, and their residents, are being punished for their success.

Many destinations are blind-sided and overwhelmed by the numbers of tourists that arrive. The real power to determine who should visit, and so on, should be held in the destination where the people and resources that make tourism attractive actually reside. Foreign tour companies did not pay for any of this yet they profit handsomely from these resources. Placing the power to decide in the destination as opposed to the tour companies may be unpopular with a small number of CEOs but it will be very popular with a large number of residents (read: potential workers) in the destinations. Ultimately, this becomes a balancing act between selling tours and destinations ability to take them in. The goal is for the betterment of destinations, the protection of resources and for longer term benefits to the local people.

The "Bin dere, Dun dat" syndrome: A typical conversation might go like: "So, last week we went to "San Gimignano. Have you been there?" "Where? Oh, ... Tuscany, its a bit of a blur, we stayed there last year, overnighted in an airbnb and went to eat at really nice little cafe, it was marvellous ... and then I think we went to Barcelona". Then, someone posts a glowing review on a big review site and suddenly a massive herd of visitors descends on the place. The film "If it's Tuesday, this must be Belgium!" revealed this type of tourism over 50 years ago but it still seems to be very popular, if not the least for its apparent brand of "jet-set" glamour. Now people take a bunch of selfies with their "smart phones" and often don't even remember anything about the place. Unlikely that anyone was truly 'moved' by this low-value but high impact exploitative practice?

Is Caribbean tourism in overdrive? Investigating the antecedents and effects of overtourism in sovereign and nonsovereign small island tourism economies (SITEs) Authors: Ryan Peterson, Central Bank of Aruba, Oranjestad, Aruba, and Robin B. DiPietro, School of Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Management, U South Carolina; International Hospitality Review, 2021
Study results confirm the negative impacts of over-tourism in most Caribbean countries. Stagnating economic growth, labour force participation and wage rates, workforce development and specifically perceived unequal wealth distribution all point to an urgent need to modernize economic policies so as to avoid further degradation. Local governments need to act now to end the practice of development agendas and policies being set by external entities. A collaborative mindset between local stakeholders is urgently needed. Tourism planning needs to be based on a longer term view as opposed to the current short term thinking.
See also: Over the Caribbean Top: Community Well-Being and Over-Tourism in Small Island Tourism Economies by Ryan R. Peterson, International Journal of Community Well-Being (05 November 2020)

What to fix? —and who's going to fix it?

Who is advocating for improvements to a commerce system that is off the rails? Who is at the front of the line to fix these problems? And are they having enough positive impact to make a difference? Let's hope so. There is much to be learned from these 'Thought Leaders in Responsible and Sustainable Tourism'.

Negative impacts exist everywhere tourism exists. These impacts become more severe in poorer / smaller nations where the resources are more sensitive to over-use and the ability to adapt / recover is hampered by the lower incomes and smaller tax bases. In effect, it is a vicious cycle and a persistent form of colonial exploitation. The large conglomerates don't want this to end because, then there would be nowhere to exploit. At the same time, residents in destinations know best what they want to protect and need to be left alone to decide exactly how to do that.

Arrival data are nearly useless and should not be used as the only benchmark. There is no breakdown of the type of visitor and little information about their stay. Destinations need to segment between different types of visitors in order to target more valuable visitors. Is the statistical coverage improving?

On the one hand: Big conglomerates sell into poorer / smaller nations such as island destinations but keep the bulk of the profits for themselves:

• The number of employees of some of the largest tourism companies eclipses the populations of some destination countries.
• More importantly, their marketing budgets often exceed theses countries national tourism budgets.
• In some cases, the number of visitors in a place on any given day can easily overwhelm the destination's resources.
• Typically, tourism businesses market to boost numbers, revenues and profits without regard for the detriment to the local people and tourist sites in poorer countries.
• Nearly all of the revenue and profit generated from tourism is captured by the largest and richest companies: airlines, hotel/restaurant chains, tour/cruise companies and car rental firms.
• Most (+/- 80%) of the money short term visitors spend in host places, or destinations, is returned to these wealthy companies within a few seconds after it goes through the payment terminal. By far, the smaller portion stays in the destination. In fairness, it is the advertising budgets of these companies that created the market but to be truly fair, more sharing of the spoils might help to even the playing field.
• Low value or so-called budget tourists are blithely unaware of the cost and impact of their visit and, for the most part, are not terribly motivated to learn about this.
• Many large corporations co-erce destinations into building expensive infrastructure that, except for the presence of the intermittent visits of their customers, make no sense and provide little benefit for local people. An example might be a cruise port with a shopping mall. After the cost of the infrastructure has been accounted for, many small destinations may even be in a loss position.

On the other hand: Destinations must safeguard the very elements that made them attractive in the first place: Inverting the pyramid**.

Frankly, who cares about visitors when the most noticeable result is damage. Damage that is often permanent and beyond the capacity of the destination to recover from. It is almost impossible to recover once a site has lost its appeal.

The visitors come and go but the resident hosts must stay in their 'places' to endure the hangover from the visitors, pay for expensive infrastructure and clean up after the visitors have gone. Even worse, the biosphere and local attributes that attracted visitors in the first place are seriously compromised and may never return to their former splendour. As a result, the big conglomerates sell into to some other exotic location and the pattern repeats. Again, potential visitors are blithely unaware.

Now, smaller destinations are more and more realising: Hosting tourism at scale is becoming very expensive and the visitor tap can be shut off at any time with no warning. As well, newly elected politicians with little training are often pitching against big conglomerates who have teams of people skilled in negotiating, and lots of money. The combination is clearly precarious. Destinations could strengthen their position by negotiating collectively, but will they?

Visitor segmentation: Understanding more about why visitors visit and how to attract higher dollar visitors

• Paths to understanding destination marketing, the tourism value chain and tourism life cycle with the objective to enable destinations to attract stay-over visitors who may have more money and/or have shown a willingness to spend on high quality local experiences, services and products.
• Tourism leaders need to listen to experts and citizen advocates even when the advice they deliver goes against the mainstream development of tourism assets.
• High value visitors for the most part will respond positively when they are encouraged to give something back.
• These same high value visitors are more likely to spend in local food outlets and purchase better quality locally made souvenirs.

Length of stay

• Impacts of air transport, lengthy (costly) passenger processing times, cleaning costs, refurbishment costs and infrastructure costs, &tc for short term stays, many destinations would clearly benefit from longer stay-overs.
• Emphasis on stay-over vacations of at least 8-10 days and less so on single day cruise or tour visits of less than one week.
• Tourism destinations must be encouraged to provide incentives for visitors to stay longer or to give back. It would also be in the interest of these same places to undertake advertising and promotional campaigns that increase awareness of the impacts of short term visits.
• Short term stays are off the table. The cost is just too high and with increasing fuel, passenger processing and in-destination costs these stays are unaffordable. Let's face it, these short term trips don't really benefit the visitor either when, due to the nature of modern travel, they return home equally stressed and fatigued as when they departed.
• For destination that requires a medium haul, or longer flight, the weekend or 3-4 day trip should be no longer be welcomed. Even for business customers. Visitors need to be staying for longer visits and destinations would probably lose very little, and may even gain, in the changeover.
• Destinations could implement a punitive tax to discourage stays shorter than a week.

With 8-10 day stay-overs as a minimum, visitors are encouraged to stay longer and take fewer trips per year. This would save a proportional amount of jet fuel and lower passenger processing costs, &tc. Cost savings from this alone can be quite significant both for visitors as well as for destinations. It would make very little difference to tour operators since air transport revenue would be replaced by hotel/restaurant revenue. At the same time local hotels and restaurants would benefit and be in a improved position to take on new staff. Local entertainers might also benefit. But airline CEOs might not like it so much.

Other considerations

• Resident satisfaction, and not just access to low skilled / low paying jobs in tourism businesses, is key to future of tourism, especially in places that are compromised.
• Consulting local people about new developments: How local people can take steps to protect their resources and benefit from limiting growth and visitor numbers.
• Protecting local heritage, biodiversity and popular attractions.
• Expenditures for local infrastructure must be shared between destinations and tour companies. They must be affordable and equally benefit local people as well as tourists.
• Poor people in these destinations clamour for any amount of spillover from the enormous amounts of money that are spent worldwide. Despite the promises of politicians and business leaders, consistently their only reward seems to be a very limited number of low skilled / low paying jobs.
• It is somewhat disingenuous for countries, where crime rates are equal to destination countries, to publish travel advisories warning travellers about high crime.
• Instead of blanket travel advisories warning about countries being too dangerous, destinations could implement 'geo-fencing' alerts to warn off visitors from straying into known danger spots.
• In destination tourism schools need to include courses on how to negotiate with large tour companies and tourism leaders need to take them.
• Oh, and plant trees both for shade and as carbon sinks —lots of them.

Destinations that accept private jets and megayachts.

The one percenters and so-called celebrities are influencers, not leaders. As revealed in this Oxfam report, ‘Confronting Carbon Inequality’, this wealthy class is clearly showing utter contempt for environmental damage.

This report states: "The richest one percent of the world’s population are responsible for more than twice as much carbon pollution as the 3.1 billion people who made up the poorest half of humanity during a critical 25-year period of unprecedented emissions growth." Numerically, one percent of the World population is about 78 million people.

They visit their mansions and yachts with little to no regard for their carbon footprint. This is not essentially 'tourism' because they are not typical consumers of tourism products or services. Destinations already hard pressed to supply water and generate energy are subsidising this activity with little to no benefit accruing to them.

These people can clearly afford a significant tax on their short term, low value, high impact stay. If they object to being taxed then they should be politely asked to go elsewhere. Furthermore, environmental laws need to be stronger, however these laws are still difficult to enforce. Furthermore, there needs to be substantial vacancy taxes on these mansions and yachts that consume energy and water even when they are not in use. Irresponsible behaviour deserves to be punished.

Stefan Gössling, a world renowned transportation researcher, shows that celebrities live highly carbon-intense aeromobile lifestyles in his study 'Celebrities, air travel, and social norms' from 2019. Clearly, it makes sense that action to bring this level of consumptive practice in line with carbon reduction goals will make a difference.

Tourism promoters and destination managers know how to do all of these things, so why don't they? The answer is they put their bottom line —mostly short term profit first. They do not include any charge for social or environmental costs in their cost of doing business. Clearly it is this practice that needs to be under review. Before it is too late, tourism suppliers and destination managers are duty-bound to make certain that local people and resources are protected in order to provide longer term benefits to residents and attractiveness to potential visitors.

The problem is, that for any of these policies to be effective, they need to be implemented and coordinated by a number of countries collectively. Doubtful that this could happen but, then again, 136 countries agreed on a 15% minimum corporate tax in 2021, so it can happen. A BIG thank you to Janet Yellen, and others.

But, how do you actually do this?

The marketing of longer as opposed to shorter stays would be accomplished by incentivising longer stays and de-incentivising shorter stays. The mechanism could be implemented by DMOs to the tour companies as well as directly to visitors.

Also, if destinations want to increase their marketing power and take it away from the big tour operators, hire their managers and marketing experts.

None of this is new but ultimately, the quest is to get past the hyperbole to understand what actually is 'tourism truth'. And to use this knowledge to move forward in ways that are more beneficial to local people and biodiversity.

A missed opportunity?

After the pandemic first took hold, the tourist destinations especially in the Caribbean, had a chance to stand together to collectively negotiate with the cruise companies for a more equal share of the money cruise passengers generate. But this has yet to happen, why is that?

One explanation may be that independent destinations object because they lose their ability to attract cruise lines by offering tax breaks or port docking incentives, for example. This method only re-inforces the 'race to the bottom' mentality. Advantage: Cruise line; destination, not so much. A similar tactic is used to attract airlines by offering payments to bring their jets in. The international corporate tax, cited above, was instituted to break from this mentality. Destinations need to adopt a similar approach and put the 'race to the bottom' on the shelf. The priority, again, is for the betterment of destinations. Frankly, the tour companies will have a better product in selling quality destinations and this is the path to ensuring that these are available —for now and into the future. Quality destinations — those offering the best bundle of local features— are more likely to attract and also capture higher dollar visitors as well as higher visitor dollars. The competitive advantage becomes 'quality' and not whoever can deliver the lowest bid. Renewal and rejuvenation are essential in destinations so as not to allow attractiveness to lag. As newer, more attractive options become available, less desirable ones become extinct.

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** Inverting the pyramid: In 2002, Chandana Jayawardena spoke about a visitor "pyramid of tourism segmentation" with eco-tourists in the top tier, representing the smallest but most valuable segment:

source: Jayawardena, 2002; Mastering Caribbean Tourism, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 14/2, pp 88-93.

Long and medium-term stay-over visitors and Eco-tourists are seen as the most valuable in terms of economic contribution. So, for example, by inverting this pyramid, these visitors would become the larger groups and therefore have a greater potential to contribute to local economies, both collectively as well as per person. This is where tourism promotion efforts must be directed. Since mass tourism contributes a lower proportion of revenue/person, this type of tourism becomes de-emphasized. For both All-inclusive and Cruise passengers the contribution to local economies is very small/negligible. The middle group, Sun-lust tourists, should be encouraged to stay-over longer by lowering visitor taxes and other incentives on a minimum stay of 8-10 days.

With this in mind, it needs to be destination authorities/managers, and not tour companies, who decide which type of visitor they want to bring in. The resources belong to the residents in the destination. With nice cool, shady places under those trees they planted, they will be better positioned to contemplate how these resources are to be used.

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* The quote from Albert Einstein, "We have to learn to think in a new way", has been co-opted in ways such as, "The problem cannot be solved by using the same thinking that created it in the first place". Any way we see it, the problem is that we must learn from the past in order not to repeat it. It is important that Einstein said "learn to think" and not simply "think", emphasizing there is a way to think that is already outdated and so we must learn again. Einstein also said in 1955, "All, equally, are in peril, and, if the peril is understood, there is hope that they may collectively avert it", with respect to the use of nuclear weapons. Human thinking, therefore, contains both the seeds of our own destruction as well as the way to save ourselves from it. See, for example: Einstein Enigmatic Quote and The Russell-Einstein Manifesto.

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