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Six reasons why mass tourism is unsustainable

Global tourism is destroying the environment and cultural identities – and doesn’t make good business sense, argues Anna Pollock

Despite the slow but steady increase in the number of enterprises claiming to be responsible or green, the fact remains that the current system of mass international tourism is utterly unsustainable.

I have come up with six key reasons why the current tourism model is way past its prime and why more of us need to focus on creating alternatives:

1. Mass industrial tourism is based on the assembly, distribution and consumption of packaged products and, as a consequence, one product is substitutable for another. The commodification of what should be revered as unique is further aggravated by the application of industrial cost-cutting strategies of homogenization, standardization, and automation that further strip out any remaining vestiges of difference, let alone mystique. Tourists “do” places and rarely get the chance to stand in awe and wonder.

2. In most youthful destinations, low barriers of entry and zero regulation encourage rapid growth and speculation. Both local politicians and often not-so-local developers benefit enormously from this growth, but rarely stay put long enough to have to cope with the crises caused by overcapacity and volatile demand.

3. The product is perishable – it’s a time-based service – and can’t be stocked. So when capacity goes up and demand declines, price discounting is the adaptive tactic of choice.

4. Technological connectivity and price comparison engines have shifted purchasing power to consumers, who have been convinced, by repeated discounting, that cheap travel is now a right – not a privilege. This accelerates the downward pressure on prices and yields.

5. Residents of tourism hotspots, who may have welcomed the first influx of visitors, soon find that cheap travel doesn’t reduce their costs. Visitors cause land, food, water, housing, and infrastructure prices to increase at a rate closely correlated with the decline in tourism operators’ margins. Sadly, more tourism often means less benefit to the host communities.

6. Having fought so hard to be recognized as an industry, the tourism community fragments back into its specific sectors when issues of waste, carbon, water scarcity, and other “externalities” are raised. Airlines don’t pay taxes on aviation fuel and have fought carbon-related charges for decades.

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