It’s all about money – and why not?

International tourism is up to nearly a billion in 6 months, combined with domestic tourism maybe 5billion in a year. Where are community benefits?

It’s great that tourism is up – it could provide benefits for everybody in the tourism partnership. Communities, destinations, travelers, intermediaries – they could all get massive financial rewards – and more. If the cake was shared fairly it could be made bigger without any pain or inconvenience.

In particular destinations could get direct funding to finance local social needs, get good strong training and quality tourism jobs for their communities. They could finance their environmental planning and improve their tourism product. They could invest in their cultural offer to give visitors and their own communities opportunities to enjoy and learn and experience. But it’s not happening.

Somebody is making a load of money out of tourism’s estimated $10-$15 trillion a year – but it is certainly not the destination communities who have to bear the pain of tourism overcrowding and its pressure on infrastructure – without the gain.

Taleb Rifai was absolutely right when he said that "Growth is not the enemy". It is in fact an opportunity for everybody. But stupid growth directed only at providing billions for tourism marketers certainly IS the enemy.

And he was also right when he said that there is a fourfold solution to the problem to prosper sustainably we need to:

• Diversify visitor activities; both in type and location.
• Effective and integrated mechanisms and policies to manage visitors at sites;
• Introduce policies to reduce seasonality;
• Provide incentives for the private sector to invest in new areas and new products,
• Deliver incentives and policies to reduce energy and water consumption and address other community needs, shortcomings and deficits

But who is going to do it and what will they use for money?

At the moment 99% of tourists go to 1% of destinations. How stupid is that?

If tourism marketers such as Tripadvisor, Booking.com, AirBNB who have seen their own value soar from nothing to around $250billion in just a few years playing the jaded old game of selling easy to market places and boring simple tourism stereotypes why should they bother to change?

Smart destination politicians are already seeing the opportunities of leveling the playing field and enforcing policies that make tourism marketers pay for their product.

But ultimately it is tourists that will make the choice, as they have done again and again since mass tourism started just 50 years ago. Any travel professional can name you 20 top mass destinations that are no longer fashionable and devoid of tourists. Be warned!

Maybe the biggest elephant in the room is the 80% of tourism emissions that are caused by the biggest polluters – Airlines and cruise companies. Forecasts from Stefan Gossling  and now Paul Peeters  put a big cloud over the tourism future. Isn’t it time for ICAO to stop defending an outdated position, just for airline’s short term gains before we blow the Paris Accord targets up in a burst of kerosene?

Now isn’t it time for WTTC and UNWTO to stop their PR-speak and take real action about the massive existential problems facing the industry and make a real positive change happen? After all the WTTC was the organization of the top100 chief executives of the world’s biggest travel organizations.

Valere Tjolle

@ValereTjolle

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