French Polynesia has expressed plans to cap the number of visitors as part of a sustainability plan. The islands have proposed an annual cap of 280,000 tourists, an idea that came about as part of a strategy to market Tahiti, Bora Bora and the other islands as a destination for high value, small scale tourism.
The Tahiti tourism board presented the main lines of the new 2022 – 2027 roadmap called Fāri’ira’a Manihini 2027. The document affirms the desire to position the destination Tahiti and its Islands as a boutique destination, a leader in “slow tourism” where experience and encounters with the population are privileged. This new way of thinking about tourism, which aims to give priority to quality over quantity, is in line with the “inclusive and sustainable tourism” approach that the tourism board has been hammering out for several months. The strategy tackles areas including air travel, cruise and eco tourism.
“The cost of getting to the Islands of Tahiti makes it an ideal slow tourism destination far from the crowds of mass tourists,” said Tahiti Tourism’s CEO Jean-Marc Mocellin. The organization also outlined plans to favor local cruise ships with fewer than 700 passengers. “The Government of French Polynesia has opted to attract cruise ships of small or medium capacity to base themselves throughout the year in French Polynesian waters,” said the tourism body. Although larger ships would be allowed to make technical stops.
In a context of encouraging recovery of the activity, Tahiti Tourism and the numerous actors of the sector consulted have agreed on this strategy completely different from those proposed in the past years. Up until now, there has always been a question of growth objectives in terms of tourism, but this time it is a question of “setting a ceiling of 300,000 visitors per year,” said Mocellin. “We have set an achievable figure, but we don’t necessarily want to exceed it in the immediate future because we want to keep one tourist for one inhabitant.”
The cost of getting to the Islands of Tahiti makes it an ideal slow tourism destination far from the crowds of mass tourists.
Jean-Marc Mocellin, Tahiti Tourism’s CEO
In this same logic, there is also talk of creating a steering committee that would work on the action plan to follow towards this sustainable transition. It also plans to make the 27 tourism committees in Polynesia into relays so that the deployment of this strategy can be done more easily throughout the territory. By implementing this plan, Tahiti Tourism hopes to capitalize on the post-crisis surge that has “changed the travel habits of visitors, but also the expectations of the local population who want a more responsible and virtuous tourism. According to the tourism board, this type of tourism development would meet the “new needs of visitors” but also those of the industry and the environment.
Many destinations have been trying to address over tourism in different ways. Cities like Venice, Amsterdam and Edinburgh having recently joined the ranks of popular destinations imposing a tax. While some tourists may complain about the new tax, others see the point of such initiative which ends up benefiting the local economy and attempts to be a way of tackling over tourism.
Local residents in popular destinations, such as Barcelona and Venice, are prime examples affected by the noise and hassle that result from too many tourists: higher rents and prices in restaurants and shops, and pressure on public services. As a consequence, in recent years there has been a growing backlash against tourism driven by locals tired of their homes being swamped and local prices inflated.
London is the latest city to propose the introduction of a tax. Professor Tony Travers from the London School of Economics told Euronews that it could be worth “hundreds of millions of pounds” a year. The money could be used to finance public transport services struggling from low commuter levels following the pandemic, Travers said.
