Carrying capacity, mass tourism, and overtourism

Scroll down for posts that have been tagged with “Car­ry­ing capa­city & mass tour­ism & overtourism”.

Accord­ing to the Bio­logy Dic­tion­ary: “In bio­logy, the concept of car­ry­ing capa­city relates the num­ber of organ­isms which can sur­vive to the resources with­in an eco­sys­tem. Eco­sys­tems can­not exceed their car­ry­ing capa­city [for long].” Some travel & tour­ism stake­hold­ers refer to a des­tin­a­tion’s sus­tain­able capa­city to receive vis­it­ors as its ‘car­ry­ing capacity’.

Mass tour­ism is char­ac­ter­ised by large con­cen­tra­tions of tour­ists at the same place at the same time. The travel & tour­ism industry facil­it­ates mass tour­ism through organ­ised group tours, pack­age deals, shore vis­its by cruise ship pas­sen­gers, and sim­il­ar practices.

Over­tour­ism is the per­cep­tion, espe­cially among res­id­ents, of too much tour­ism at a des­tin­a­tion or simply too many vis­it­ors to a place. Envir­on­ment­al car­ry­ing capa­cit­ies not­with­stand­ing, over­tour­ism is sub­ject­ive. There need not be indus­tri­al-scale mass tour­ism for a host com­munity to feel the effects of over­tour­ism. Mass tour­ism, for example, is often the cause of over­tour­ism in ‘nor­mal’ neigh­bour­hoods, but not in des­tin­a­tions or attrac­tions that have been planned and pur­pose-built to receive large num­bers of tour­ists, whose res­id­ent pop­u­la­tions wel­come the eco­nom­ic oppor­tun­it­ies mass tour­ism brings.

Over­tour­ism can be ter­rible for res­id­ents who per­ceive it. Yet open-hearted, wel­com­ing, hos­pit­able people find it dif­fi­cult to turn people away. And, sim­il­ar to immig­ra­tion debates in some parts of the world, when some do find voice to call for restric­tions, it’s easy for oth­ers to label them as some kind of an ‘anti-’ or an ‘-ist’ or a ‘-phobe’.

“The phe­nomen­on of ‘over­tour­ism’, about which there are always lots of com­plaints, is a symp­tom of an unhealthy depend­ence on tour­ism for jobs and eco­nom­ic activ­ity. We know that, yet this depend­ence is why little gets done to solve the prob­lem. It is polit­ic­ally and eco­nom­ic­ally dif­fi­cult to solve because the with­draw­al symp­toms are rough.” _ Dav­id Gill­banks in “As we sit out COVID-19, let’s think about a fair & fail-safe treat­ment or vac­cine for over­tour­ism”.

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