“The United Nations World Tourism Organization projects that by 2030, global tourism will reach 1.8 billion trips a year. It is now so big that it will inevitably be part of conversations about climate change, pollution and migration. Without serious government attention, many beloved places will be at risk of being trammeled and damaged — what those in the tourism industry call being loved to death.”
Elisabeth Becker, the author of Overbooked, writes an opinion piece for the New York Times on the swelling numbers of people and destinations resisting the growth of tourism in the places they call home.
In Brief
- Travel contributes $7.6 trillion to the global economy, nearly half the entire economic output of the United States.
- Denmark has prohibited foreigners from buying vacation cottages on their seacoasts
- The Chinese government has promised to set up a tourist black list to ban extremely badly behaved chinese tourists from travelling overseas for up to two years
- Bhutan has restricted the number of tourism visas, curbed hotel construction and imposed a high tariff on tourism, all part of a strategy of “low-volume and high-value tourism.”
