In East of India, people say that tourism is like a fire; you can cook your meal on it, or it can burn your house down. This phrasing makes an important point, arguably the most important point from a destination perspective. As Tourism Concern argued, in the UK, for over two decades, “we take our holidays in other people’s homes”. The places marketed as destinations are other people’s homes.
Source market tourism operators, tourist offices, and DMOs often present other people’s homes using words and images designed to attract tourists. However, there is frequently a disconnect, and at times, a significant gap, between the way people see their place and the way it is marketed to attract tourists. Amsterdam is a prime example of this. The city has made a concerted effort to change its image and successfully deterred hen and stag parties. This shift was driven by the desire of Amsterdamers to reclaim their city, a sentiment that the city government has acknowledged and acted upon.
The M in DMO has always been problematic, does it denote Marketing or Management? In the tourism sector, marketing is often reduced to little more than promotion, whereas in other sectors, marketing is a wider, more rounded discipline with a strong emphasis on product and service design. Increasingly, destinations are taking a wider view of marketing, focusing on attracting the kinds of tourists who will fit in, and demarketing some places and discouraging some market segments.
In 2022, the Responsible Tourism Charter updated the 2002 Cape Town Declaration on Responsible Tourism in Destinations, which was passed at an official side event to the World Summit on Sustainable Development. The Charter drew on two decades of experience with governments, businesses and communities. To make tourism sustainable people in government and businesses have to take responsibility; merely mouthing sustainability as an incantation cannot make tourism, or any other economic activity, sustainable. Responsibility drives sustainability. The future will be what we make it in the context of a warming world.
Use tourism for the sustainable development of communities or be used by it?
Responsible Tourism is about “making better places for people to live in and better places for people to visit.” In that order, because great places to live in are great places to visit. Ministers of Tourism, working with ministers in other government departments, need to focus on the core question: Will their country, city, national park, or community use tourism for sustainable development, or will they permit the tourism industry and tourists to use their place to extract value from communities and their environment?
Harvard economist Michael Porter is famous for his work on cluster theory. He defines “clusters: [as] critical masses—in one place—of unusual competitive success in particular fields.” Tourism requires clusters of accommodation, food and beverage, attractions, cultural and natural heritage, and, of course, transport to reach the destination and to travel around it. Tourism destinations are clusters.
Porter has also argued that businesses need to create shared value “which involves creating economic value in a way that also creates value for society.” Shared value is not about philanthropy, it is about doing business, and making profits, in ways that grow the cluster and engage sole traders and SMMEs in tourism. This enriches the tourist experience, extends length of stay, and enriches the local community through their earnings from tourism through employment and supply goods and services to tourism business and to tourists.
Undertourism is a problem, as is overtourism – tourism has to be managed to benefit communities and bring sustainable development. Destinations need to use tourism rather than be used by it. The responsibility is government’s.
