The Question of Over Reliance on Tourism

There is irony in the ease of which once we circumnavigated the globe, that eventually we took COVID as a passenger back home with us. We lockdowned in our homes, complained to Virgin Media about the 4G and WiFi, some of us were furloughed and people are still loosing their jobs. World over, COVID was reeking havoc and left us all stationary. Unable to travel, skulking over a cancelled ski trip or sweating over an Autumnal long haul adventure, it was all too easy to forget what might be happening in the spaces that were expecting us.

The tourism industry brought in $1.7 trillion in 2019, this year projections forecast an 80% decrease on this figure, the consequence - 120 million jobs. For perspective, that is twice the population of the UK. When you take into account that in Kenya, every salary has ten people dependent on it as an average, laying off one person has an enormous impact. Of course, it varies place to place but who is to say how many mouths one salary can or does feed? The importance of tourism in some rural communities was illustrated in shut down hotels pleading with past guests online to donate money to help maintain communities that rely on them. All of this in the same year as the worst African lotus plague in a generation. Famine was already an inevitability for many. It is not hard to see why the long term consequences of loosing a year of business are going to be devastating. 

It is one thing a family or community relying on a single hotel but another when whole economies are structured on it. The Maldives are the perfect example, where tourism accounts for a third of GDP. In fact, of the 30 destinations in the world that are most reliant on tourism, the top 5 are all small islands. To put that in perspective in Europe tourism accounts for 15% of Spain’s and 13% of Italy’s. In destinations where tourism is the back bone to an economy it is not unusual for water to be syphoned off from the locals for thirsty golf courses, improved roads prioritised from the airport to hotel complexes rather than to hospitals and farmers selling arable land for new builds, dwindling stocks of what destinations can say they produce locally.

There is also the issue of emerging tourist destinations like Georgia where tourism has doubled year on year since investments in the industry were first made. Locals made huge investments with the support of the government to diversify and welcome guests in. Which they did for a couple of years, the industry expanding at a rate of knots, growing visitor numbers a testament to that - one million visitors in 2010 and over five million in 2019.

Then there is the seasonality of destinations, some destinations so popular they are unable to cope with demand in season but then sit barren for much of the year. So you see the growth of destinations promoting low seasons, like summer in Lapland... World famous Ice Hotel in the Swedish Arctic, created a means to have Ice Rooms year round in a solar powered building suitably called Ice Hotel 365. Yes, the prospect of spending a night in an Igloo at -15 degrees in high summer is a strange one, but they have successfully stretched a season that once only spanned late December – end of April. 

Yet, in all cases the subordination of an economy to pave the way for tourism is something to behold. When the going is good, of course, the benefits are bountiful. When the going gets tough… the backup economies are weakened pillars to lean on.

Away from the impact on people and community the sad truth is that in some destinations, the survival of wilderness and wildlife is entirely reliant on tourism. Prior to Covid-19, at any given time 1.4 billion people were travelling. Now of course, there are none. The cash flow to some of the world's poorest places has been completely turned off - this is crucial funding which supports vital work for wildlife protection. Where seahorses raced down the Grand Canal in Venice, wildlife in Africa faced increased levels of poaching at unmanageable rates. Rangers salaries, once funded by lodges disappeared and charity funding, were side lined. When human survival is challenged, animal survival falls to the sidelines. Unsurprisingly, where pictures of sea horses in the Grand Canal made front pages, decapitated giraffes did not.

There is hope that the crisis has reminded some destinations and areas that although there is money to be made from tourism, not to rely on it and not to eradicate the more traditional means of making money that are particular to each part of the world. Sadly, there are other reasons tourism can be hit, just as badly as a pandemic.

There are a host of issues that spring out of promoting tourism as a development strategy. In developing countries, tourism can become a resource curse in its own right. There are strong arguments about the damage of tourism. There are undoubtedly consequences of it, big, small, local and global. Yet, our insatiable appetite to explore and experience is gigantic and the positives personal to guest and host are just as vast. To visit a destination is to understand that the money you have paid is going much further than simply up keep of the lodge itself but more so, the upkeep of the wildlife, communities and the environment around. COVID has highlighted that when so much rests on external tourism, when it stops the consequences are enormous and managing how to cope almost impossible.