Overtourism: an issue requiring thought now
YOU WILL not find the word ‘overtourism’ in the Oxford
English Dictionary. Despite this, it is being used increasingly by tourism professionals around the world. It describes the experience of residents in locations where large numbers of visitors are seriously disrupting local lives, causing environmental damage, placing an unacceptable burden on local infrastructure, or making housing unaffordable.
Although scarcely mentioned publicly until recently, the implications of overtourism have begun to be debated in cities from Barcelona to Venice, and Edinburgh, and in relatively remote destinations such as Iceland and the Isle of Skye. In each location increasingly, angry residents have been protesting about the damage being done by tourism to their quality of life and its hollowing out of local communities.
Historically, tourism has been considered a largely benign, peaceful activity that, as the Caribbean knows, can generate significant levels of employment, rapid economic growth, and new sources of taxation. Consequently, the industry and its growing footprint has largely been led by demand, is visitor-centred, and, to a significant degree, has become subject to the requirements of investors, the airlines, cruise companies, and tour operators.
However, this is changing as residents in some of the most affected locations worldwide are encouraging local authorities and governments to engage in a debate about how the negative impact of the industry might be lessened and the numbers of visitors controlled.
The issue so far has not been much discussed in the Caribbean, where the natural environment and promoting to visitors the dream of ‘paradise found’ often hides the gritty reality of everyday life. Despite this, overtourism exists in several forms in the region.
At its most obvious, it is in the shape of multiple cruise ship arrivals disgorging large numbers of visitors for short periods on to designated beaches or into small towns and tourist sites, particularly in some of the smaller islands and capitals of the region. Less obviously, it relates to a trend towards investors trying to restrict public access to beaches, oncelocal cultural events being ‘tourised’ and made inauthentic, and long-term onshore and offshore environmental damage. It can also be seen in some Caribbean coastal and urban locations in increasing property prices as shortterm Internet-led rentals in residential areas surge, creating investor demand for residential accommodation.
For the most part, the situation is presently manageable. Cruise ships apart, arrival numbers tend to be limited by the relatively high-cost nature of a stayover Caribbean vacation, and paradoxically, the desire of the all-inclusives and the newly minted mega resorts to do everything possible to keep their visitors on property.
Despite this, the concept of overtourism in a Caribbean context requires serious thought.
In Jamaica and some other regional destinations, the industry and government have begun to recognise the importance of sustainability, the need to do more to protect the environment, the growing demand among visitors for authenticity, and the need to spread more widely the economic benefit that tourism brings.
What this and the growing debate about overtourism suggests is that the time has come to ask a broader question of Caribbean tourism professionals, tour operators, environmentalists, the cruise lines and others: are there limits to Caribbean tourism-led growth in relation to beaches, popular sites and cities?
Put more practically, this means considering the nature of future constraints on accommodating greater numbers of short-stay or long-stay visitors. These range from achieving a better understanding of the limits to the built environment, the implications, for example, for food supply, environmental and ecological damage, and, most important, whether residents feel that their lives are being dislocated. It means knowing when smallness or social concerns might mean that tourism has become ‘too much’, and how it is best managed to ensure sustainable economic growth.
In some parts of the Caribbean, there is a growing but largely unspoken tension between the local and foreign investors and businesses that profit, governments wanting taxes and employment, and workers and citizens who want to benefit but retain their quality of life.
This suggests that there is a case to be made for an early small industry event that looks over the horizon to identify the implications of overtourism and possible responses.