The recent protests in Spain are not the only evidence that combating overtourism is crucial: 61 percent of travellers avoided destinations last year because of this phenomenon. It is therefore also in the interest of destinations and local businesses to use a holistic, data-based approach to strike a balance between local resources, community well-being and tourism growth.
The white paper "A Roadmap to Move Destinations Away from Overtourism", developed by Mabrian, a travel information company, in collaboration with Phocuswright, aims to provide answers to these questions and offer a guide for destinations to help them develop their own sustainability models for tourism.
The indicators presented interact with each other and can be used for different objectives depending on the specific conditions of the respective destination.
- Distribution of tourism expenditure: As well as measuring spend per visitor and area, it is important to understand how this is distributed. In a destination less affected by overtourism, the points where tourists spend money tend to be more evenly distributed. This benefits both the economy and local prosperity.
- CO2 emissions: Reducing emissions is critical to minimizing the environmental impact of travel - especially as air travel accounts for 55 percent of the tourism sector's carbon footprint (according to the Travel Foundation Report). Analysing CO2 emissions by source market and visitor, as well as the relationship between traveller spend and emissions generated, can help destinations become more sustainable.
- Concentration of tourism: density and human pressure are associated with overtourism rather than sustainability? Not necessarily. According to Phocuswright data, 43-61 percent of travelers have avoided destinations in the past year for sustainability reasons, while 13-21 percent find visiting less crowded destinations sustainable.
- Perception of sustainability: An effective approach to combating overtourism is to harmonize policy decisions and their impact on both locals and visitors. This could reduce the gap between the intention to travel sustainably and the actual decisions made by travelers, known as "sustainability dissonance".
The white paper proposes not only means to measure and combat seasonality, but also strategies to increase motivational diversification and reduce dependency by relying on a diverse range of activities, attractions and tourism products. This would contribute to a lower density of areas and lower seasonal demand, as well as the development of alternative events spread more evenly across the area and throughout the year.
The white paper "A Roadmap to Move Destinations Away from Overtourism" can be downloaded here. / red