Strategies to reduce the negative impacts of mass tourism

Overview

Visitor management and repositioning a destination towards quality rather than quantity.

What you need to know

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Questions from this subtopic

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1. 1

   What is visitor management, and what techniques does it use?

   Model answer

   Visitor management means controlling where, when and how tourists move within a destination so as to limit damage and crowding. Techniques include zoning, which designates areas for intensive use, for limited use and for no access; hardening honeypot sites with surfaced paths, boardwalks, steps and fencing that keep feet off fragile ground; timed entry tickets and advance booking to spread arrivals through the day; daily visitor quotas and permit systems; one-way routes to reduce congestion in narrow streets; and temporary closure of sites, beaches or paths to allow vegetation and wildlife to recover.

2. 2

   Evaluate the use of quotas and caps on visitor numbers.

   Model answer

   They are the most direct way of keeping use within carrying capacity, and they work well at discrete sites with controllable entry, such as a cave, an island or a walled monument. The drawbacks are that they reduce revenue and are resisted by businesses; they are hard to enforce where a site has many access points or is a whole city; they can simply displace pressure onto neighbouring unregulated sites; and rationing by permit or price raises questions of fairness, since a cap that is allocated by price excludes poorer visitors and one allocated by booking excludes those who cannot plan ahead.

3. 3

   How are tourist taxes and entry charges used, and how would you judge their success?

   Model answer

   Overnight bed taxes, departure taxes, park entry fees, cruise-passenger levies and congestion charges raise revenue from visitors that can be spent on the costs they impose, such as waste collection, water treatment, path repair, ranger services and conservation. They can also modestly suppress demand. Judging them requires asking three questions: whether the revenue is actually hypothecated to environmental and community spending rather than absorbed into general budgets; whether the charge is large enough to change behaviour or merely raise money; and whether it diverts visitors to competing destinations without the tax, which shifts the problem rather than solving it.

4. 4

   What transport measures are used to reduce the impacts of mass tourism, and how well do they work?

   Model answer

   Park-and-ride schemes with peripheral car parks and shuttle buses; pedestrianisation and car-free historic centres; restricting coach access and providing coach parks away from the core; improved public transport, cycle hire and walking routes; road pricing or seasonal road closures in national parks; and limits on cruise-ship berths or on the number of ships per day. They are effective at removing congestion and local air pollution from the core and are generally popular with residents, but they need frequent, cheap and reliable alternatives to be accepted, they can shift traffic and parking onto surrounding areas, and they do not reduce the total number of visitors unless combined with capacity limits.

5. 5

   How can planning controls limit the damage caused by tourist development?

   Model answer

   By setting the rules before building takes place: height and density limits, restrictions on building within a set distance of the shoreline, protection of dunes, wetlands and skylines, requirements that new hotels connect to adequate sewage treatment and demonstrate a water supply, design codes requiring local materials and styles, moratoria on new bed spaces once a limit is reached, and requirements to demolish or refurbish obsolete accommodation before new capacity is approved. Their weakness is that they arrive too late in destinations already built out, and they depend on enforcement that is often weak where the industry is politically powerful.

6. 6

   What does a regional or national tourism management policy typically try to achieve, and what measures does it contain?

   Model answer

   Such policies generally aim to move a mature destination away from high-volume, low-spending tourism towards fewer, higher-spending and less seasonal visitors, while protecting the resources the industry depends on. Typical measures are a levy on overnight stays funding environmental restoration; caps on total bed numbers and on cruise or short-let capacity; regulation and licensing of holiday lets to protect housing supply; demolition or upgrading of obsolete hotels; investment in beaches, promenades, water treatment and public transport; protection of remaining undeveloped coast; support for inland, cultural and rural attractions to spread visitors away from the coast; and marketing aimed at the shoulder season and at new market segments.

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