Co-cre­at­or of the concept of “endem­ic tour­ism”, Ian Oel­richs OAM passed away Feb­ru­ary 24, 2019.

A land­scape archi­tect and urb­an design­er by trade, Mr Oel­richs had more than 40 years of exper­i­ence in devel­op­ment, nat­ur­al resource man­age­ment, and tour­ism. (Linked­In.)

In 2011 Mr Oel­richs received the Medal of the Order of Aus­tralia (OAM) hon­our for his work in the area of region­al devel­op­ment and tour­ism edu­ca­tion.

Steve Noakes, a col­lab­or­at­or and friend, said: “In 1992, Ian played a key role in devel­op­ing a report called Endem­ic Tour­ism for the (then) San Fran­cisco-based Pacific Asia Travel Asso­ci­ation (PATA).

“This rep­res­en­ted cut­ting-edge think­ing for the time which led into our cur­rent concept of sus­tain­able tour­ism.

“Ian had the cre­at­ive foresight to con­sider not only how the eco­nom­ic bene­fits of tour­ism can con­trib­ute to com­munit­ies, but also how import­ant it was to recog­nise and man­age the neg­at­ive impacts on the loc­al envir­on­ment and the loc­al socio-cul­tur­al fab­ric.

“He recog­nised the bene­fits of bring­ing togeth­er loc­al com­munit­ies, indus­tries, gov­ern­ments, and research insti­tu­tions to plan for bet­ter places to live in and to vis­it.

“We have lost a great stra­tegic thinker and vis­ion­ary for des­tin­a­tions where com­munit­ies wel­come vis­it­ors.”

The PATA think tank of which Mr Oel­richs was a key mem­ber broadly defined endem­ic tour­ism as:

… tour­ism which recog­nises a) that each indi­vidu­al loc­al­ity or com­munity has its spe­cial char­ac­ter, and b) that par­tic­u­lar char­ac­ter or iden­tity may well con­sti­tute its major attract­ive­ness to tour­ists.

Endem­ic tour­ism can be thought of as the tour­ism asset or product of a place, which includes the envir­on­ment, cul­ture, and her­it­age.

The fore­word to the think tank’s report — Endem­ic Tour­ism, a Prof­it­able Industry in a Sus­tain­able Envir­on­ment: Towards a Vis­ion for Aus­tralia and the Region — raises “over­tour­ism” without using the word:

It is clear that, bey­ond a cer­tain point, increas­ing the volume of tour­ists becomes counter-pro­duct­ive. Dam­age and pol­lu­tion res­ult­ing from sheer num­bers reduce the value of the tour­ism asset and the incre­ment­al costs arising from high­er volume can more than off­set the addi­tion­al rev­en­ue gen­er­ated.

Accord­ing to Mr Noakes, who brought the sad news to “GT” Blo­g’s atten­tion, Mr Oel­richs suffered a stroke and died while try­ing to drive him­self to a hos­pit­al near his home in Byron Bay, New South Wales, Aus­tralia.

Mr Oel­richs is sur­vived by his wife Claire and two sons, Cooper and Dex­ter.

Dr Claire Oel­richs foun­ded the Save Indone­sian Endangered Spe­cies Fund, a not-for-profit work­ing with grass­roots groups in Indone­sia “cre­at­ing change and deliv­er­ing real con­ser­va­tion out­comes”.