Writ­ing for The Con­ver­sa­tion, Freya Hig­gins-Des­bio­lles of the Uni­ver­sity of South Aus­tralia points to examples of how host com­munit­ies have regained some con­trol of their tour­ism assets.

Tour­ism today has a prob­lem and needs an entire rethink. Pun­dits are debat­ing over­tour­ism, peak tour­ism and tour­is­mpho­bia. Cit­ies such as Bar­celona, Venice and Dubrovnik are wit­ness­ing a back­lash against imposed forms of tour­ism.

In response, new tac­tics have been tried, ran­ging from tour­ist “police” and tour­ist taxes to entry fees and crowd con­trol. Cit­ies are hav­ing to rethink their engage­ment with tour­ism if they want to keep the loc­als from riot­ing.

Fun­da­ment­al con­cerns are being raised. If tour­ism is to have a sus­tain­able future, we need to reori­ent our focus and put the well-being and interests of loc­al res­id­ents at the fore­front.

Understanding tourism

Tour­ism is typ­ic­ally under­stood from two angles. On the one hand, the focus is on the tour­ists and the nature of their motiv­a­tions and demand, in the hope of enti­cing more. On the oth­er is the busi­ness side, focused on devel­op­ing products and ser­vices to provide to tour­ists.

The industry seeks to grow tour­ism for profits. Gov­ern­ments sup­port the industry for the jobs and rev­en­ues it provides. The res­ult has been a relent­less growth in tour­ism in forms that loc­als have often not appre­ci­ated.

Devel­op­ments like Airb­nb are pla­cing tour­ists in the heart of loc­al neigh­bour­hoods, dis­rupt­ing the rhythms of daily life. Events are imposed on com­munit­ies, driv­ing out loc­als or blight­ing their qual­ity of life. A case in point is the New­castle 500 Super­cars event, which some loc­als claim has harmed loc­al busi­nesses and dis­rup­ted res­id­ents’ lives.

Pub­lic assets like the Adelaide Park­lands and Aus­trali­an nation­al parks and World Her­it­age areas are being com­mer­cial­ised and privat­ised for tour­ism devel­op­ments.

Shifting the focus to the local community

We could cre­ate a dif­fer­ent future for tour­ism if it was reori­ented to be centred on the loc­al com­munity. Our recently pub­lished research paper redefined tour­ism as:

The pro­cess of loc­al com­munit­ies invit­ing, receiv­ing and host­ing vis­it­ors in their loc­al com­munity, for a lim­ited time dur­a­tion, with the inten­tion of receiv­ing bene­fits from such actions.

Such forms of tour­ism may be offered by com­mer­cial busi­nesses or made pos­sible by non-profit organ­isa­tions. But in this restruc­ture of tour­ism, tour­ism oper­at­ors would be allowed access to the loc­al community’s assets only under their author­isa­tion and stew­ard­ship.

The seeds of such a trans­ition to more sus­tain­able forms of tour­ism are already grow­ing.

Respect and fairness go a long way

Venice provides a good example. In 2017, the author­it­ies launched a #EnjoyRe­spectVe­nezia cam­paign to over­come prob­lems of poor tour­ist beha­viour.

In 2019, Vene­tian author­it­ies have gone even fur­ther by intro­du­cing an entry fee this year and, later, a book­ing sys­tem. May­or Luigi Brug­naro said:

We intend to guar­an­tee a bet­ter live­ab­il­ity for cit­izens and, above all, for the res­id­ents.

But loc­al com­munit­ies and organ­isa­tions are not wait­ing for author­it­ies to act. Com­munity act­iv­ists are organ­ising to take con­trol of tour­ism for them­selves.

A grass­roots ini­ti­at­ive from Ams­ter­dam and Venice has res­ul­ted in Fairb­nb. It’s a social cooper­at­ive designed to chal­lenge the dam­aging and dis­rupt­ive mod­el of Airb­nb. The new plat­form “provides a com­munity-centred altern­at­ive to cur­rent vaca­tion rent­al plat­forms that pri­or­it­ises people over profit and offers the poten­tial for authen­t­ic, sus­tain­able and intim­ate travel exper­i­ences”.

Like Airb­nb, Fairb­nb offers a plat­form to book vaca­tion rent­als. The dif­fer­ence is that 50% of rev­en­ues will be dir­ec­ted to loc­al com­munity pro­jects. It also has a “one host, one home” policy – only one prop­erty on the mar­ket for each host – to lim­it neg­at­ive impacts on loc­al res­id­en­tial hous­ing mar­kets.

Meanwhile in Australia …

Aus­tralia does not have the same level of over­tour­ism that places in Europe are suf­fer­ing. But pres­sures are build­ing right around the coun­try from Byron Bay and the Great Ocean Road to our big­ger cit­ies like Sydney and Mel­bourne. Loc­als are com­plain­ing about hous­ing afford­ab­il­ity, con­ges­ted roads and badly behaved tour­ists.

Aus­tralia would bene­fit from strategies to reori­ent tour­ism to loc­al well-being and con­trol. Some prom­ising examples already exist.

Lir­rwi Tour­ism in Arnhem Land, North­ern Ter­rit­ory, stands out. The Yolngu Abori­gin­al oper­at­ors have embraced tour­ism access but only under a vis­ion­ary set of guid­ing prin­ciples. These declare “Yolngu have a respons­ib­il­ity to care for coun­try” and “Tour­ism should nev­er con­trol what hap­pens on coun­try”. It’s an example of tour­ism on the loc­al community’s terms.

Melbourne’s lane­ways strategy has demon­strated one way CBD revital­isa­tion, res­id­ent well-being and vis­it­or exper­i­ences can be brought togeth­er for great out­comes.

Tour­ists can play their part by meet­ing loc­al com­munit­ies halfway. In a resource-con­strained world the pleas­ures of tour­ism must be bal­anced with some basic respons­ib­il­it­ies.

Tour­ists must gain some basic under­stand­ing of loc­al liv­ing con­di­tions and shape their travel plans accord­ingly. The focus must be to give loc­als the max­im­um bene­fits from the vis­it with the min­im­um neg­at­ive impacts. The recent cam­paign “Help­ful or harm­ful: what sort of trav­el­ler are you?” provides a place to start.

The long-term sus­tain­ab­il­ity of tour­ism depends on ensur­ing vis­it­ors do not wear out their wel­come. Reori­ent­ing tour­ism to enhance loc­al well-being is the way for­ward.

This art­icle by Freya Hig­gins-Des­bio­lles, Seni­or Lec­turer in Tour­ism Man­age­ment, Uni­ver­sity of South Aus­tralia, was ori­gin­ally pub­lished on The Con­ver­sa­tion, May 23, 2019. It has been repub­lished on the “GT” Blog under a Cre­at­ive Com­mons license. (The “GT” Blog slightly shortened the head­line and used dif­fer­ent images.) Read the ori­gin­al art­icle.

Fea­tured image: Anti-tour­ism, pro-refugee graf­fiti in Coim­bra, Por­tugal. By Tm (CC BY 2.0) via Wiki­me­dia. GT cropped and enhanced it.