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I<\/span>n response to the spectre of overtourism, it was encouraging to see Megan Epler Wood begin her essay on\u00a0Saving the Heart and Soul of Tourism Destinations<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0with the most important question of all \u2013 WHY? She asks \u201cwhy are tourism destinations becoming so crowded and what is being done about it<\/em>?\u201d\u00a0Apparently, the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) has outsourced this crucial query to McKinsey & Co and their findings will be released shortly. In the meantime here are my thoughts.<\/p>\n If you ask the question WHY enough times, you get to root cause of an issue and can determine whether the solution will simply ameliorate a problem, supress the painful symptoms or has the potential to affect a lasting cure. This journey of discovery will take you down through an analysis of symptoms, to the identification of contributing factors and the \u201croot cause\u201d from which they arise.<\/p>\n As the travel and mainstream press has literally swamped the digital airwaves describing outbreaks of overtourism symptoms, we\u2019ll press on and identify 10 utterly interwoven contributing factors which are worthy of serious investigation:<\/p>\n 1.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Growing populations and rising consumption – international tourism has barely scratched the surface of potential demand;<\/p>\n 2.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Globalisation that has created unprecedented connectivity and accessibility (routes & affordability);<\/p>\n 3.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Market fragmentation and diversification \u2013 the proliferation in reasons to travel;<\/p>\n 4.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Minimal barriers to entry and very limited controls \u2013 tourism is a vast network of self organizing, highly competitive, self-interested providers with limited allegiance to the destination;<\/p>\n 5.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Industry & governments have spent fifty years promoting the benefits of travel while not insisting all external costs be covered \u2013 the rights of travellers to travel have been over emphasized and the rights of residents to determine who to welcome and how have been virtually ignored;<\/p>\n 6.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The perishability of the product (a time specific experience) that encourages price competition, discounting and the prevailing myth of cheap travel;<\/p>\n 7.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Digital search engines and algorithms have both concentrated demand for popular destinations and placed further downward pressure on prices.<\/p>\n 8.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The system comprises numerous \u201cbuilt in\u201d positive feedback loops affecting different parts of the supply chain which reduce margins and necessitate dependence on volume growth;<\/p>\n 9.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Artificial bottlenecks periodically concentrate demand (school holidays, seasonal weather patterns; cultural events, festivals; work week; natural disasters, political instability)<\/p>\n 10.\u00a0Governments (and politicians) are attracted to growth figures that associate them with success; enjoyed the tax revenues but have under-estimated the collective costs associated with infrastructure and \u201cexternalities.\u201d<\/p>\n These factors are woven into a veritable tapestry of threads – tug on one and others will shift. Tug too hard on several at once and the whole cloth can unravel.<\/p>\n If you ask WHY often enough, you come to an understanding that the system of values, beliefs and assumptions on which tourism is based are fundamentally flawed and no amount of tinkering will solve the problems that are only now becoming so apparent.<\/p>\n Tourism has adopted an extractive production and consumption model developed by a manufacturing sector in an Industrial Age when the planet was still, for all intents and purposes, \u201cempty.\u201d The core flaws of that model include a dependency on growth, the primacy of capital and property, the creation of artificial scarcity, and the necessity for debt and competition all based on a worldview that assumes humans are separate from each other and their biospheric support system, and are always rational, inherently selfish, utility\/profit-maximizing beings.\u00a0The fundamental game of survival is one of competition for scarce resources that, once acquired, can be accumulated and traded as proxies for power and influence thus creating a positive feedback loop that ensures wealth will be concentrated in fewer hands over time.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the rub – the industrial model, shaped and informed by a scientific tradition based on linear thinking \u2013 chains of cause and effect \u2013 simply doesn\u2019t apply to a living system and tourism is, most definitely,\u00a0a living, human system. It\u2019s not a machine or an assembly line either where the focus is on the efficiency of parts.<\/p>\n In linear thinking, when something works, more of the same will always be better. That\u2019s why an economy that shows perpetual economic growth could become a definition of health and success. BUT:<\/p>\n Successful living systems are highly non-linear. They don\u2019t maximize their variables; they optimize them. When something is good, more of the same will not necessarily be better, because things go in cycles, not along straight lines.<\/em>Fritjof Capra<\/p>\n For several years I have been trying to explain why tourism in general will follow the same path as tourism to a specific destination.\u00a0In other words, the\u00a0Tourism Area Life Cycle Model<\/em>\u00a0so successfully expounded by Dr. Butler also applies to the global growth of international tourism as a whole. The hockey stick growth curve favoured and promoted by our global tourism institutions illustrates only part of our journey. It applies to an adolescent stage in a system\u2019s development. If we had not lost touch with Nature and learned what evolution had perfected over 4 billion years, we would be aware of the\u00a0Panarchy Principle<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n When a system is managed to optimize a single variable (versus several ) it may produce the desired result for a time. But that result will be compromised over the longer term as the greater complexity of the system is revealed. Single-variable optimisation eventually destabilises the whole system, introducing entropy (disorder, chaos). The system, no longer resilient, degrades (often with shocking speed) into a radically new state. From such disorder, new forms arise.<\/em>\u00a0See\u00a0For Goodness Sake<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0<\/a>by Chris Houston, former senior executive with Ogilvy.<\/p>\n Panarchy is baked into the way our world works. Until very recently, the primary aim of most companies has been to maximise profits and shareholder returns and the dominant objective of our economy is to grow GDP. Tourism has adhered to those maxims slavishly with virtually every destination on the planet committed to expansion in visitor numbers, spending, jobs and contribution to GDP. How long will it take McKinsey to figure that as an answer to Megan Epler Wood\u2019s question?<\/p>\n The source of our problem is not lack of management \u2013 especially as I haven\u2019t found any comprehensive set of management practices and processes that would come close to managing tourism without potential negative consequences for some of its stakeholders.\u00a0The source is an inaccurate, obsolete perception of how the world actually works that is impeding our ability to imagine and create a better form of tourism that works for the many not the few.<\/p>\n Once you see our world as a living, organic system in which all the seemingly separate parts are actually inter-connected and interdependent, it\u2019s inevitable that the inadequacy \u2013 nay, the folly –\u00a0of simply doing less harm (reducing consumption of resources and production of waste\u00a0per unit<\/em>) while continuing to expand the number of units becomes obvious.<\/strong>\u00a0Even if every airline flew on a new fuel that didn\u2019t produce carbon emissions, and every hotel or ground transportation company had reduced its footprint to zero, the problems of congestion and residents\u2019 sense of being overwhelmed, displaced or disenfranchised would still be threatening our licence to operate if we tried to expand forever. Tourism is an extractive system that consumes physical space and human patience. Both are finite \u2013 albeit subjectively so.\u00a0Easy to sense if you use your heart and soul; fiendishly difficult to quantify!<\/p>\nTen Factors Contributing to Overtourism<\/strong><\/h3>\n
The Root Cause of Overtourism<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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