What is so bad about conventional tourism anyway?

After World War II, the improvements in the means of travel, especially the development of jet aircrafts, significantly increased the number of tourist around the world. Alongside this, there was a growing curiosity to experience exotic locations previous inaccessible to the masses. According to the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO), by the late 20th century, “tourism had become a main income source and the top export category for many developing countries”.

Countries that are the hot-spots for tourism reaped substantial economic benefits in the form of development of infrastructure and employment opportunities. However, tourism is a very complex industry with many stakeholders. If managed well, the advantages would outweigh the disadvantages and could even play a positive role in the development of many aspects of the tourist destination. On the flipside, if poorly managed, tourism could be detrimental for the environmental and socio-cultural aspects of the destination.

Impacts of Tourism

Many tourist activities can result in negative impacts for both the environment of the destination and socio-cultural aspect of the local communities if not properly managed. These impacts occur when the level of tourists’ use if greater than the environment is able to cope with i.e. beyond acceptable limits. However, to discuss all the impacts in detail would require a whole separate blog , so for the purposes of illustrating how ecotourism attempts to reduce these impacts, here is a brief summary of just some of the harmful effects tourism has on the tourist destination. Note: There are global impacts of tourism as well but we will not discuss those here.

Environmental impacts

Depletion of natural resources can come in the form of water shortages or degradation of water supplies, pressure on local resources like energy, food and other raw materials and land degradation in the form of deforestation to make way for construction of tourist facilities.

Pollution includes air pollution due to increased presence of various modes of transportation to cater to tourists’ convenience, noise pollution from increase in vehicles on the road and for recreational use e.g. jet skis and land pollution in the form of solid waste and litter generated by tourist.

Socio-cultural impacts

These impacts are those that affect the host communities who have direct and indirect relation with tourist and the tourism industry. They are not as apparent as that of environmental impacts but they can result in an erosion of culture comparable to the physical erosion of the land. These socio-cultural impacts include changes in the values and behaviour of local communities which threaten the indigenous identity and changes in the community structure, family relationships, community lifestyles and possible morality. These and other socio-cultural impacts can have irreparable consequence on the local communities’ culture and may even culminate in the disappearance of it entirely.

In light of the information provided on this blog about the goals of ecotourism, it is clear that ecotourism aims to be a form of alternative tourism where tourist destinations may be able to reap the benefits of tourism while protecting itself against the adverse effects.