Does Sharm prove tourism is overheating?

Destinations created solely for economic development look very unsustainable now

The responsible tourism mantra is "Good places to live in – good places to visit" could be no more appropriate than at this very moment.

Many countries with challenged human rights records were helped to develop mass tourism by lenders such as the World Bank – and it appears that the chickens are now coming back to roost.

After the success of Spain’s mass tourism development in the 1960’s the formula was taken up and replicated all over the world as a mechanism for economic development.

The World Bank, among other funders saw mass tourism as a cure-all for the economic woes of sunny countries with cheap beaches and possibly not so clean political records and in the 1970’s massive tourism developments took place. Then, of course ‘sustainability’ was not such a potent word, before the Earth Summit looked at the situation in 1992.

So Tunisia, Kenya, Sri Lanka, the Dominican Republic, Morocco and Turkey, amongst others, all ‘benefitted’ from mass tourism developments financed by international lenders.

And now, of course, the situation is rather different. Not only is climate change going to put a damper on these resorts energy-efficiencies, but also the difficulties of getting masses tourists on cheap long haul flights are going to come to the fore.

Plus some of these destinations are ripe for terrorist attacks – the logic fuelled by brutal local regimes, employment conditions of workers and their treatment by the global tourism industry – even, often, tourists themselves.

One wonders just how many of the extra billion international tourists forecast for the next 30 years or so would have been accommodated in such destinations?

And just how sustainable that massive further development would be. Economically sustainable, perhaps – if big walls are built around destinations and they were operated like prisons. But culturally sustainable? Socially sustainable? Environmentally sustainable? Probably not a hope.

So maybe travel agents and tour operators will consider the political records of countries- rather than ‘Bang for Buck’ and if a destination is a good place to live – it may well be a good (and safe) place for their clients to visit too.

Valere Tjolle

@ValereTjolle

[email protected]

Antidote to mass tourism         Special sustainable tourism offer

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