Sustainability in tourism trends

 UNIVERSITY COLLEGE NORDJYLLAND SUSTAINABILITY IN TOURISM TRENDS TOURISM MANAGEMENT PROJECT Theme: Tourism trends Prepared by 2nd semester students: Xxxxxx xxxxxxxx Xxx xxxxxxxx Xxxxxx xxxxxxxx 2011, Aalborg Contents No table of contents entries found. INTRODUCTION In this project we are going to do the research related to tourism trends, which we want to associate with very important issue, called sustainability. Firstly, it is important to understand what is the trend tourism. And what actually are the trends now? Trends… Naturally, we would first think about the clothes trends, the looks trends. However, trends are all around us. It‟s car, interior, exterior, architecture, music, art and many more! Therefore we can see that first we think about the material/tangible objects trends. Certainly, the trends are everywhere, even in our behaviour and our choices! Tourism as an industry also have various trends. Of course, they depend on the location of the tourist‟s home country. It can be a trend to mostly choosing leisure tourism, or active vacations like backpacking, hiking, skiing, biking… Tourism industry trends can be assessed with the following parameters: Market analysts who are researching in tourism industry trends provide a general scheme of the trends in respect of outcomes of inbound tourism, e-business in the tourism industry, development and promoting tourism in tribal areas, tourism requirements, development of strategies in the industry, tourism markets world-wide, and selling/promoting tourist destination.1 In addition, we are going to find what factors are influencing the tourists to fallow the trend of ecotourism; how does it work; and what are the advantages or even disadvantages of fallowing the trends and more. 1 http://www.economywatch.com/world-industries/tourism/trends.html PROBLEM FORMULATION These days we as students and just ordinary people hear more and more about sustainability, environmental problems and more. We read it in newspapers, on internet articles, news, radio… And of course, it is clear why it is so important and so popular to talk about. As technologies improve, as we find new machines to make human‟s life easier in every day and in work environment; people‟s needs are growing rapidly. Therefore, we use more water, more electric power etc. It becomes harder and harder to save the “mother Earth” and more important us and our future generations; for them to have clean water, safe environment and fresh air. Sadly, every minute and every second we all are polluting our surroundings. Right as we take a car, as we throw a single trash (which we think will not hurt anybody, because it‟s just a small little thing)… The air pollution, for example, is a real pain for the world. There are about eight thousand people dying because of air pollution (in other words, because of the diseases it causes).2 Nowadays all world is trying to take as strong actions as possible, in order to make the word sustainability come a real thing! The progress in this area must start. As we are tourism management students, it is natural that we are interested in whether tourism can be sustainable. Whether, more importantly, trend tourism is the kind of one that is taking actions in order to help the world fight with environmental issues. Is ecotourism as sustainable as it sounds? METHODOLOGY While writing this project, the researchers were conducted an analysis of secondary source of data, taken from tourism and sustainability related books, articles and websites. The analysis was done by using a qualitative research method. Collecting and analysing different tourism articles, books and websites, gave us introduction in ecotourism, a better understanding of what it is and let us realise, that everything has not only the “bright” but also the “dark” side. It also let us think of solutions that might help prevent the disadvantages of ecotourism. In this project we also used and analysed statistics from a relevant article of ecotourism importance to the consumers, which gave us a bright picture of what this topic means to the majority of travellers. Therefore, it helped to do the following decisions and offer solutions. As we were writing the project, we realised that ecotourism is one of the fastest growing industries, which is, however, very new. The articles were mostly about a few of countries that are already following this trend for some time. The other ones are very “fresh” in this area, therefore, there was not so much information of more regions, because they were just started practising. However, the articles we did use were very useful both for the project and for our own understanding of the topic. 2 http://www.csiro.au/files/mediarelease/mr1999/AirPollution.htm 3http://www.ecotourism.org/site/c.orLQKXPCLmF/b.4835303/k.BEB9/What_is_Ecotourism__The_International_Ecotourism_Society.htm DESCRIPTION OF A NEW TREND IN MODERN TOURISM Contrary to some beliefs, most tourists do not simply want to live in a „sanitized bubble‟ while on holiday… Tearfund (2000) It is not that easy to describe a new trend in modern tourism, as the difference between cultures vary. There are countries, that used to fallow one trend, now it may be different, and other countries may be a little late. (Meaning, that the trend comes to the location much later than in other regions or countries.) These days environmental issues have become a very important and popular topic in most of regions. Therefore, we would like to give you an introduction to as a part of tourism trends. What is ecotourism? The definitions we found on a website that is specially dedicated to ecotourism says: "Responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well-being of local people."3 What are the principles of this brand of tourism? “Ecotourism is about uniting conservation, communities, and sustainable travel. This means that those who implement and participate in ecotourism activities should follow the following ecotourism principles:  Minimize impact  Build environmental and cultural awareness and respect  Provide positive experiences for both visitors and hosts  Provide direct financial benefits for conservation  Provide financial benefits and empowerment for local people  Raise sensitivity to host countries' political, environmental, and social climate.“4 4http://www.ecotourism.org/site/c.orLQKXPCLmF/b.4835303/k.BEB9/What_is_Ecotourism__The_International_Ecotourism_Society.htm An article written by The International EcoTourism Society (TIES) called “Consumer Demand and Operator Support for Socially and Environmentally Responsible Tourism” gave us an idea on how much some of countries (like the U.S., the U.K. and Australia) are into carrying about environment while travelling, so these are some statistics and information from a few of researches and surveys made in order to find these issues out: Environmental Impact  More than two-thirds of U.S. and Australian travelers, and 90% of British tourists, consider active protection of the environment, including support of local communities, to be part of a hotel‟s responsibility. According to a 2002 survey, these travelers are more likely to patronize hotels with a “responsible environmental attitude.” However, only 14% of U.S. travelers, and 26% of Australians, actually ask hotels if they have an environmental policy. Not a single British traveler surveyed spoke to the hotel about their policies.  In the U.S., more than three-quarters of travelers “feel it is important their visits not damage the environment,” according to a 2003 study. This study estimates that 17 million U.S. travelers consider environmental factors when deciding which travel companies to patronize.  In Britain, 87% of tourists interviewed in 2002 stated that it was either “very” or “fairly important” that their vacation not damage the environment; this was up from 85% in 2000.17 Additionally, 66% of British travelers said that they had placed importance on the fact that their last trip “had been specifically designed to cause as little damage as possible to the environment.”18 In a 1997 survey, 18% of British tourists said that a hotel‟s lack of concern for the environment would prevent them from returning to the same place again.  A 2002 survey found German tourists expect environmental quality: 65% (39 million) want clean beaches and water, and 42% (25 million) “think that it is particularly important to find environmentally-friendly accommodation.”5 5 “Consumer Demand and Operator Support for Socially and Environmentally Responsible Tourism“, TIES/CESD working paper No. 104, revised April 2005 6 Stefan Grössling, C. Michael Hall, David B. Weaver “Sustainable tourism futures. Perspective on systems, restricting and innovations”, 2009 7 http:// www.ecotourism.org/ After looking into this information, we can clearly state that it is very important to travellers that the surroundings they are planning to visit and stay in should be clean. It is obvious that people do not want to stay in a “trashy” environment, swim in a dirty water or breath heavy and polluted air. At least we must think about our future generations, and about our future also. Who would want to have their children live unhealthy and die in an early age? Hopefully, nobody wants that, and these projects and lectures, at last the trend of being sustainable, will help us and everybody else come up with good solutions and actions against environmental disasters. COULD ECOTOURISM BECOME NEW MASS TOURISM? Tourism has a long history with through the years changing trends. First there was just a basic search for food, then medieval pilgrimages and the Grand Tours of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, also there was mass tourism and now most popular ecotourism or in other words eco-friendly tourism - sustainability in general.6 As a new trend comes all people want to be fashionable and not to fall behind compared to the others. That goes for tourism also. As the time passes more and more organizations and various web-sites such as:  The international ecotourism society7;  International ecotourism club8; 8 http://www.ecoclub.com/ 9 http://www.Planeta.com 10 http://www. ecotourdirectory.com 11 http://travel.nytimes.com/travel/guides/eco-tourism/overview.html 12 http://www.i-to-i.com/eco-tourism/what-is-eco-tourism.html  Planeta.com (created in 1994 by Ron Mader) is a hand-crafted website maintained in glorious old school Web 1.0.9;  ecotourdirectory.com10 and etc.; try to give information about newest fashion scream - ecotourism for people who are interested in it. So what about the books and brochures? There are so many of them telling and teaching future managers and tourism specialist about sustainable tourism, event planning and ecotourism. Looking through those web-pages, books and organizations main ideas – everything looks so perfect and ideal, but then one thought comes unexpected. If this trend becomes more and more popular among people, maybe ecotourism becomes new mass tourism and the main idea becomes worthless? And truly how come ecotourism can be called ecological if people are encouraged to visit and impact protected areas11? Ecotourism‟s main goal is to minimize the impact that tourism has on an area through cooperation and management and in some case it even encourages travellers to have a positive impact on their new surroundings.12 However reality is different. Ecotourism is growing rapidly as mass tourism and in the end trend called ecotourism is just a new form of mass tourism for people who want to spend their time in nature by thinking that they are not doing anything harmless for the nature. ECOTOURISM IS NOT AUTOMATICALLY SUSTAINABLE - THE NATURE SHOWS THAT ITSELF As people coming to visit protected areas something unusual is happening in the nature. The animals are becoming restless and stressed. They are losing weight, with some dying as a result. The cause of this effect is ecotourism. The massive growth of the ecotourism industry has biologists worried. Evidence is showing that many animals do not react well to tourists in their backyard. The immediate effects can be - changes to an animal's heart rate, physiology, stress hormone levels and social behaviour, but in the long term the impact tourists are having could endanger the survival of the very wildlife they want to see. For instance, Rochelle Constantine of the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and her colleagues have been monitoring schools of bottlenose dolphins along the country's north-eastern coast since 1996. In an upcoming paper in Biological Conservation, they report that the dolphins become increasingly frenetic when tourist boats are present. Land animals are affected too. Since the early 1980s, specialized vehicles have been taking people to watch polar bears during October and November in Manitoba, Canada, at a time when the animals should be resting and waiting for Hudson Bay to freeze over so they can start hunting seals. But often the bears are not resting as they should. Also in Australia, nearly 350,000 tourists a year visit Fraser Island off the Queensland coast, many hoping to see the island's dingoes. But in April 2001, after two dingoes attacked and killed a 9-year-old boy, the authorities culled 31 of the dogs in an effort to prevent further attacks (Tourism Management, vol 24, p 699). Ecotourism can have an even more detrimental effect in the wilderness regions of Africa and South America. "In more remote places such as the Amazon, there's not much control," says ecologist Martin Wikelski of Princeton University in New Jersey. Ecotourism is growing at a stunning from 10 to 30 per cent13 a year so it truly can be called new mass tourism just with a different name and imaginary sustainable thought. 13 http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4733-massive-growth-of-ecotourism-worries-biologists.html?full=true SUGGESTIONS FOR ECOTOURISM TO BE MORE SUSTAINABLE With Mass tourism everything was easier, because mass tourism„s problems had many solutions. One of them was ecotourism. But does ecotourism has any more solutions to be more sustainable or all we can do is travel by foot, sleep under the tree and eat only that food like berries and grass leafs? Not necessarily. There is much more that can be done by tourism, accommodation, carrier agencies, governmental stakeholders and even average tourist. Tourism agencies:  Buy, rent or build office buildings which would have more windows, that natural day light could be used more than light bulbs;  Reduced paper waste14 – motivate people to use more web-pages instead of paper brochures for gathering information about trip;  Part of the money from earnings donated to charity, which is related with ecology;  Motivate employees to turn off or hibernate computers when they are not needed, also turn off lights in the building when it is not necessary for them to be turned on. 14 http://www.ecotourismize.com/ecotourism.aspx 15 http://gosw.about.com/od/resortsandtours/a/greentravel.htm Accommodation agencies:  Buy, rent or build office buildings which has more windows, that natural day light could be used more than light bulbs;  Gray water recycling (gray water is waste water from the kitchen, bathroom showers and tubs etc.);  Use organic and Eco friendly food;  Show your guests your environmental awareness. For example tell your guests its “Good to be Green” introduce them to ecotourism;  Motivate your staff to be more sustainable, teach your staff about ecotourism. Tourist:  First of all and most importantly do not through trash everywhere except trashcan;  Let management of your hotel know that it is not necessary to change your towels and sheets every day;  When you leave the room, turn off the AC/heat, lights and TV;  Book flights with airlines that recycle the waste created when serving food and beverages to passengers;  Use public transportation in your destination city15. Carrier agencies:  Try to fill up all seats, that train, plain, bus or other vehicle would be empty seated;  Try encourage people to use electronic tickets than the paper ones;  Use biofuels. ASSESSMENT OF ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF ECOTOURISM FROM A PERSPECTIVE OF RELEVANT STAKEHOLDERS Talking about the advantages and disadvantages of ecotourism, we normally would think that there are no (or shouldn‟t be any) disadvantages of it. Certainly, if everything would work as it is supposed to, probably, there would be no disadvantages in world at all. However, knowing that there is a huge amount of money circulating in such areas as tourism industry, as ecology (sustainability is now a very important topic worldwide, therefore, huge investments are being done in order to implement various projects), it is very common, that money somehow “disappear”. There are many organisations, companies etc. that would use a possibility to grow sustainable. In this case they would get huge investments in their businesses, they would probably get State funding, and of course gain more popularity. Ecotourism is a new field of study and a new type of tourism. Moreover, there are different viewpoints of what actually ecotourism is about. Therefore, as with most of innovations, many organisations, companies and countries are taking advantage of it. For example, while using it as a cover for financial machinations.16 As mentioned before, the idea of ecotourism might sound good, though instead of saving nature, it is ruining it. As ecotourism becomes more popular, the number of tourists grows. Consequently, there comes dilemma if there should more space for tourists be made (which would bring more money to the local economy); therefore the local nature and communities would sacrifice. 16 http://www.benefitsofecotourism.com/benefits-of-ecotourism/advantages-and-disadvantages-for-ecotourism/ 17 http://www.benefitsofecotourism.com/benefits-of-ecotourism/disadvantages-ecotourism/ These are some examples of potential minuses of ecotourism17:  Agreeing on the definition of ecotourism  Focusing on tourism to generate income or focusing on improving the environment  Commercialization of tourism schemes disguised as sustainable, nature based, and environmentally friendly ecotourism  Negative impacts on local communities  Physical displacement of persons, gross violation of fundamental rights, and environmental hazards  Illegally keeping endangered species in captivity to attract visitors  Money spent on public relation campaigns, rather than actual ecotourism  Less money spent on other projects that help the environment more  Damage to the environment  Industrialization, urbanization, and unsustainable agriculture practices leaving negative impacts on the environment deforestation,  Disruption of ecological life systems  Various forms of pollution such as from more tour vehicles  Less rare species as they are widely hunted down and kept for show  Wildlife and rare species are turned into souvenirs and commodities  Foreign investors and corporations benefit from ecotourism, not local communities  Locals are moved to make room for tourist parks, resorts, etc.  Exploitation of local communities and tribes Let us not forget about the benefits of ecotourism. As we mentioned before, the idea of ecotourism looks almost ideal. So, if the actions would be done equally with the ideas, ecotourism would look like a heaven to both the visitors and locals. Here you can see some of the pluses that ecotourism creates18: 18 http://www.ecoindia.com/sustainable-tourism/risks-and-benefits-of-eco-tourism.html  Eco Tourism minimizes the negative impacts on the local people and the natural environment.  Eco Tourism minimizes the negative impacts on the local people and the natural environment.  Eco tourism directs economic and other benefits to the local people by providing them employment.  It promotes conservation of natural assets and enhances the cultural integrity of the local people.  Eco tourism has become the major source of income and is attracting lot of travel agencies than ever before.  It promotes the preservation of wildlife and the natural habitats.  Providing positive attitude and experience among the travellers.  Eco tourism supports the international labour agreements.  Ensures that the natural resources are conserved and managed properly so that they could be saved for the future generations. All in all, there will always be both “bright” and “dark” sides, though we as future managers/investors etc. should not take down our noses. This is just the thing that should motivate us and others to do whatever it takes to improve the advantages, and get rid of or at least lower the amount of the disadvantages! CONCLUSION The goals of our project were to find out of how sustainable is ecotourism, why is it a trend, why do people choose it and analyse the pros and cons of it. Firstly, we have found out that ecotourism is a quite new industry, that it‟s idea is uniting conservation, communities, and sustainable travel; that the principles of ecotourism are to minimize impact; build environmental and cultural awareness and respect; provide positive experiences for both visitors and hosts; provide direct financial benefits for conservation; provide financial benefits and empowerment for local people; raise sensitivity to host countries' political, environmental, and social climate. Secondly, we analysed statistics provided by TIES (The International Ecotourism Society) and CESD (Center on Ecotourism and Sustainable Development) on the situation of importance of socially and environmentally responsible travel to the consumers and the support from the operators. Here we found out that the very majority of people (that participated in the collecting of this statistics) were interested of very interested in the services they use while travelling to be sustainable. Moreover, our group mentioned the advantages and disadvantages and provided solutions in order to make the situation of ecotourism destinations and locations more sustainable. To conclude, we can state that our project is successful, as we have reached the goals we set for ourselves. We have analysed various articles, statistics and situations, therefore we offered some solutions. We strongly believe, that the knowledge we gained will be very useful in our future projects and maybe even our own future decisions. REFERENCES Books: S. Grössling, C. M. Hall, D. B. Weaver, 2009 “Sustainable tourism futures. Perspective on systems, restricting and innovations”, Routledge, Taylor & Francis group, New York, London PDF files: TIES/CESD working paper No. 104, April,2005; „Consumer Demand and Operator Support forSocially and Environmentally Responsible Tourism“ Websites: About.com, How Green are Your Travels - Reducing Your Environmental Impact

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