How can we change sustainable tourism destination management for good?

To cre­ate a more sus­tain­able tour­ism industry, des­tin­a­tion man­agers need to tackle ‘the invis­ible bur­den’ that trav­el­lers and their facil­it­at­ors and ser­vice pro­viders impose on people and places. 

Megan Epler Wood dis­cusses the energy, intel­li­gence, resources, hope, and edu­ca­tion required to trans­form des­tin­a­tion man­age­ment for the 21st cen­tury and beyond. 

Plan­et Hap­pi­ness invited Ms Epler Wood to share this “Good Tour­ism” Insight. Plan­et Hap­pi­ness is a “GT” Insight Part­ner. [You too can write a “GT” Insight.]

One of the most dis­tinct­ive changes in our indus­tri­al age has been the trans­form­a­tion of travel & tour­ism into a glob­al, tril­lion-dol­lar industry which trans­ports, accom­mod­ates, and organ­ises mil­lions of vis­it­ors across hun­dreds of nation­al bound­ar­ies to enjoy the planet’s invalu­able cul­tur­al and nat­ur­al attractions. 

While once an elite pleas­ure, travel has become a uni­ver­sal right which brings eco­nom­ic bene­fits across the world. 

How­ever, the tour­ism industry is hampered by inad­equate invest­ment in the com­pet­ent man­age­ment of its sig­ni­fic­ant social and envir­on­ment­al impacts. 

Don’t miss oth­er “GT” con­tent tagged with
“Travel & tour­ism des­tin­a­tion management”

While trav­el­lers are without ques­tion of great bene­fit to the des­tin­a­tions they vis­it, their unac­coun­ted-for impacts, known as ‘the invis­ible bur­den’, are a grow­ing threat to des­tin­a­tions that are without the resources or skills to man­age their most pre­cious assets. 

What my own exper­i­ence has shown is that, des­pite tour­ism gen­er­at­ing excel­lent for­eign exchange and tax rev­en­ues, more and more tra­di­tion­al des­tin­a­tions are facing oper­a­tion­al defi­cits that restrict loc­al author­it­ies’ abil­ity to man­age the costs. 

This prob­lem becomes increas­ingly grave as tour­ism des­tin­a­tions expand, fre­quently with an emphas­is on growth and little reg­u­la­tion to con­strain it. 

Rem­ed­ies have rarely been imple­men­ted, des­pite this hav­ing been explored in our [Travel Found­a­tion, Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity Centre for Sus­tain­able Glob­al Enter­prise, and Epler­Wood Inter­na­tion­al] report, Des­tin­a­tions at Risk: The Invis­ible Bur­den of Tour­ism. 

Also see Noel Josephides’ 2019 “GT” Insight
“It’s time to address tourism’s invis­ible burden”

Tackling the invisible burden of tourism

My team at Cor­nell STAMP (Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Asset Man­age­ment Pro­gram), part of the Cen­ter for Sus­tain­able Glob­al Enter­prise at Cor­nell University’s SC John­son Col­lege of Busi­ness, is not only study­ing how to rem­edy this prob­lem, we have cre­ated a new eight-mod­ule course for pro­fes­sion­als: Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Des­tin­a­tion Man­age­ment. 

There are many sources of inspir­a­tion for this work. Among them is my per­son­al back­ground in eco­tour­ism, which I dis­cuss in my eCo­r­nell Key­note present­a­tion “Sus­tain­able Tour­ism on a Chan­ging Plan­et: The Chal­lenges of Trans­form­a­tion in a Glob­al Industry”. 

I spent a great many days work­ing dir­ectly with indi­gen­ous and loc­al people on the pro­tec­tion of their her­it­age, tra­di­tions, and biod­i­verse lands in Ecuador, Peru, Colom­bia, Panama, India, Kenya, Sierra Leone, and Sri Lanka. 

What has always remained clear to me is that small-scale enter­prises must con­nect to lar­ger sup­ply chains to trans­form regions and bene­fit the widest num­ber of residents. 

If appro­pri­ate rev­en­ue shar­ing tran­spires and is prop­erly accoun­ted for in a trans­par­ent way, inclus­ive eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment can be fostered, and biod­iversity and world her­it­age des­tin­a­tion treas­ures are likely to be pre­served for both the bene­fit of loc­al people and human­ity at large.

There are many threats and oppor­tun­it­ies here, includ­ing our col­lect­ive thirst for energy, our intel­li­gence and innov­at­ive spir­it, our need to redir­ect resources to appro­pri­ate object­ives, and the imper­at­ive to remain hopeful.

Energy

First and fore­most, the trans­port­a­tion eco­nomy, includ­ing avi­ation, cruises, and cars, account for 25% of total energy con­sump­tion; some 90% driv­en by oil resources. 

This illus­tra­tion gives a remark­able view of how much glob­al avi­ation is driv­ing excess green­house gas (GHG) emis­sions, which is grow­ing largely without restraint at present:

Very few regions are seek­ing to lower their incom­ing flight capa­city. This fact needs to be con­sidered and dis­cussed among all those seek­ing to lower their per­son­al travel impacts. (One way to respond is by check­ing the GHG emis­sions of your flight options on Google and oth­er sources and act­ing upon it.)

Intelligence

As I think about the future, I am an optim­ist. I believe that we are equipped to deliv­er change as a spe­cies, and that we can achieve this by think­ing prac­tic­ally and inform­ing ourselves with object­ive data and trans­par­ent sys­tems for gath­er­ing and bench­mark­ing loc­al perspectives. 

How­ever, this grand chal­lenge can no longer be over­come incre­ment­ally. We need to power for­ward by using innov­at­ive meth­ods to gath­er inform­a­tion on where the trouble spots lie. 

We can­not act togeth­er effect­ively without more digit­al intel­li­gence that can be shared with­in regions. This will require increased usage of satel­lite tech­no­logy and Geo­graph­ic Inform­a­tion Sys­tem (GIS) map­ping sys­tems, which have infin­ite capa­city to align data on maps regard­ing urgent ques­tions of resi­li­ence to cli­mate change and land-use that pro­tects biodiversity.

Resources

Some of the fin­an­cing mech­an­isms for sus­tain­able des­tin­a­tion man­age­ment are still in for­mu­la­tion, but good solu­tions for pre­serving nat­ur­al cap­it­al are under­way, such as debt for nature swaps.

The Nature Con­servancy has helped to fin­ance the pro­tec­tion of vital cor­al reefs in the Carib­bean and Indi­an Ocean by refin­an­cing sov­er­eign debt for the pur­poses of long-last­ing invest­ments in nat­ur­al capital. 

Jen­nifer Mor­ris, who leads the US-based non­profit, sees a US$10 bil­lion oppor­tun­ity “right now”. This will bring many dividends for nations seek­ing to pre­serve their eco­nom­ies and well-being. 

Hope

It is our hope at Cor­nell STAMP that we can help orches­trate a new kind of des­tin­a­tion man­age­ment archi­tec­ture with the fol­low­ing features:

• Fin­ance to deliv­er on the pre­ser­va­tion of nat­ur­al and social capital;
• Loc­al resi­li­ence and engage­ment; and 
• Fun­da­ment­al trans­form­a­tion in loc­al water, waste, and energy infrastructure.

As I write this blog, I am hear­ing from motiv­ated pro­spect­ive stu­dents of our new Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Des­tin­a­tion Man­age­ment online course; people from around the world who want to do more for their coun­tries. This is inspiring. 

If gov­ern­ments were to devote a per­cent­age of tour­ism taxes to new, well-trained des­tin­a­tion man­age­ment units, the trans­ition could begin. 

Des­tin­a­tion man­age­ment units would not only help pre­serve vital resources, they would also trans­form how travel & tour­ism is man­aged and begin to elim­in­ate the invis­ible bur­den imposed by our industry.

What do you think? Share a short anec­dote, com­ment, or ques­tion below. Or write a “GT” Insight of your own. The “Good Tour­ism” Blog wel­comes diversity of opin­ion and per­spect­ive on travel & tour­ism because travel & tour­ism is everyone’s business.

“GT” Insight Part­ner Plan­et Hap­pi­ness invited Ms Epler Wood to write this “GT” Insight.

Fea­tured image (top of post): The world is chan­ging. Is travel & tour­ism? Indi­vidu­al hold­ing news­pa­per by Gerd Alt­mann (CC0) via Pixabay. Super­im­posed as a news­pa­per image is the avi­ation emis­sions image by @PythonMaps which is used in the body of this post. “GT” added the words “Is travel & tourism?”

About the author

Megan Epler Wood is the Man­aging Dir­ect­or of the Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Asset Man­age­ment Pro­gram (STAMP) at Cor­nell University’s Cen­ter for Sus­tain­able Glob­al Enter­prise at the SC John­son Col­lege of Busi­ness. She pre­vi­ously led courses and research at Har­vard Uni­ver­sity from 2010 – 2021.

Ms Epler Wood is the lead lec­turer for a com­pre­hens­ive 40-hour, self-paced Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Des­tin­a­tion Man­age­ment eCo­r­nell course for busi­ness lead­ers, urb­an plan­ners, sus­tain­able devel­op­ment pro­fes­sion­als, des­tin­a­tion man­age­ment organ­isa­tions, and muni­cip­al gov­ern­ment employees. 

Megan led the research and writ­ing for the ground-break­ing 2019 report, Des­tin­a­tions at Risk: The Invis­ible Bur­den of Tour­ism, which “helped redefine how the tour­ism eco­nomy can bet­ter meet sus­tain­ab­il­ity require­ments on a region­al level while cov­er­ing loc­al costs”.  Her 2017 book, Sus­tain­able Tour­ism on a Finite Plan­et, reviews the sus­tain­ab­il­ity strategies for each sec­tor of the tour­ism industry. 

As pro­pri­et­or of the inter­na­tion­al con­sult­ing firm Epler­Wood Inter­na­tion­al (EWI), Megan “designs value-added sus­tain­able tour­ism eco­nom­ies”; work­ing with inter­na­tion­al and region­al devel­op­ment agen­cies, des­tin­a­tion man­age­ment organ­isa­tions, and devel­op­ment banks since 2003.