Sustainable Tourism Today

Positive effects of the pandemic on sustainable tourism

At a first glance, it seems that the pandemic is very effective in the fight against mass tourism, since it reduced mass gatherings. The good thing is that the prices of some services have gone down, which made more accessible to the local community. This happened in Dubrovnik where the accommodation prices plummeted for as much as 30 percent. The pandemic has also had a positive effect on the environment because it has helped reduce pollution and natural resource consumption. Stories have popped up from cities of animals returning to the streets. Fish and ducks have settled in the empty streets in Venice and cougars appeared in Santiago de Chile. Thailand’s beaches have seen sea turtles coming back to lay eggs. The Thai city of Lopburi, however, experienced a somewhat less positive effect of the pandemic when monkeys started fighting with each other over food in rubbish dumps, since they had previously been used to receive food from people. The absence of airplanes and tourist ships brings peace and quiet, something which researchers in Alaska have taken advantage of, since they have finally been able to listen to the whale songs without noise interferences after decades. But this is where we need to think of the importance tourism has when it comes to the preservation of numerous natural habitats around the world because it helps finance animal programmes and sanctuaries. The loss of jobs for millions of people in tourism industry means a lack of financial support for sustainable tourism. The number of wild poachers has increased in nature reserves, since there’s no one to keep watch. Tourist beaches are still full of waste because there is no one who would pick it up. We need to realise that we can’t pass the protection of biodiversity, which is important for all of us, solely on to countries with low GDP.

How has tourism around the world adjusted?

The way we view many things has changed in the last few months. Travellers have been most affected by the fact that travelling is impossible, but owners of tourist accommodations and tour operators have been hit even harder. Without an influx of tourists, travel organisations have taken advantage of the situation for reorganisation and new strategies. Tourism Board of Colombia sees sustainable tourism as the smartest way to tackle the crisis, so they’ve decided to promote this type of tourism along with safe travel. They’ve created the “biosafety seal” which is given to those sustainable accommodations whose priority is the safety of its travellers. In Australia, Ecotourism Australia and WWF Australia joined forces in hopes of saving the environment and the local community in the area of the last year’s fires. By creating new eco destinations they want to increase the resilience of the local communities to social changes and natural disasters. Others, such as sustainable tourism service providers, have taken an interesting approach by spending time without tourist influx for local food production, subsequently enrichening their offer and becoming more attractive for tourists. In Alaska, they have decided to make homemade kombucha, while workers in the Virgin Islands have laid the foundations for an organic farm. An opportunity arose during the pandemic in the shape of virtual trips that leave tourists wanting to visit the real-world equivalents of the virtual places. You can travel virtually to Yosemite National Park or the Great Wall of China. Or you can visit galleries, such as the Louvre in Paris.

The future of sustainable tourism

The World Tourism Organization published a new initiative on tourism recovery which states that sustainable tourism should cease to be a niche for extra income and should instead become the norm for everyone. In its guidelines for responsible recovery of the tourism sector it recommends actions that can be taken to facilitate responsible recovery and better future. These guidelines contain six areas of activity. Due to all the negative impacts of mass tourism on the environment and the local community, it is of vital importance that scenes of crowded beaches and historical landmarks around the world don’t happen again in the new future. This is a problem especially in countries of South East Asia where short-term profit is put above sustainable development. Even some areas, such as Boracay Island, had to be closed down because of too many tourists. People want tourists to return, but they’re not aware of the consequences, which is why tourist workers in Thailand propose the registration of tourists upon check-in, so they could maintain a steady number of travellers.

And travellers want travelling to return to normal. But let’s take a moment to think about our travel style and how we can make it more sustainable. It’s important to decide whether we want to be tourists who arrive at a destination for a couple of days and stay in an international hotel, not spending any money, or whether we want to be travellers who could help the local community and the environment during out visit. There’s plenty of literature on the matter, but articles in Globetrotter can be a great start. Even small changes, such as opting for more sustainable transport, is a great start of a journey towards the solution.