We rightly obsess over the sustainability impact of travel. But beyond the debate about ‘overtourism’ in a handful of very popular tourism destinations, why are we hardly talking about the sustainability impact of in-destination experiences – and instead just focusing on flights and maybe hotels? The short answer is that the experiences sector is so highly fragmented and services are unstandardised, making it almost impossible to measure.
Thankfully the recent digitalisation of the tours & activities space along with the white hot heat of new AI tools means that we should be able to overcome the challenge of measurement very soon – and not just for measuring environmental impact, important as that is, but also the social and economic impact of tourism. But more importantly the same tools will in the longer term mean that we will actually enable, not just measure, our sector to become more sustainable. And not just because we have new data to hand, valuable as that will be.
However, to really make this work and quickly there needs to be unified action at an industry level to set standards and drive adoption. Who specifically should lead this? Rather counter-intuitively perhaps, this change should be led by the Destination Management Organisations (DMOs). Yes of course, the providers of tours & activities must be involved too. But because they are often so small and fragmented across thousands of destinations globally, they are unlikely to be able to do this alone in the near or even far future. Particularly when considering the social and economic changes required.
There is also a very significant motive for the DMOs to get this right as evidently their destinations are the ones directly impacted by unsustainable practices – and unlike aviation impact, this is something more within their power to influence. More fulfilled workforces, higher incomes, increased local tax take, in short more benefits for local communities who can embrace tourism as a motor for growth.
So what kinds of actions should they be taking and what role would technology play in making that happen? At a destination level there’s really three areas that need to be considered. Firstly by supporting the local businesses and economy to ensure that monies spent in destination directly benefit local people and not outside businesses. Secondly by addressing the impacts of overtourism to disperse tourists around a destination. And thirdly the environmental impact that visitors are having on a destination.
When it comes to ensuring a fairer and more evenly spread economic benefit for the local communities, the creation of destination marketplaces would drive visitors towards unique and local-run experiences and away from the OTA high-volume model of top-attractions. As travellers more and more want experiences, and less local souvenirs (often made somewhere else!), this represents a big opportunity for local tours & activities providers.
When compared to the hotel or aviation model, where international companies are the main beneficiaries, this model has great potential for distributing income to locals and favouring local entrepreneurs. Sadly currently too much of tourism income generated in a destination doesn’t stay there, with one 2014 UN study showing some locations where 95% of revenue ended up abroad. And OTAs help perpetuate that.
When we look at the challenges of tourism hot spots causing overtourism what we have is a rather ironic situation where sometimes just a few miles away – in some cases even streets away – there are local businesses that would simply love to have some of those visitors. With DMOs investing in the right tech and creating appealing experiences marketplaces they could begin to disperse those visitors across wider areas and also throughout the tourism season (or even day!). There’s a lot of other tech at their disposal too, including cameras for monitoring flows and the ability to create digital tickets / passes for certain areas and so on. But as said earlier, this can really only be introduced by the DMOs, only their have the authority and visibility to make this work – no one or combined group of companies could ever have the same impact.
One final area of importance of where the right tech, led by the DMO, could make a huge impact would be in promoting ethical and sustainably operated experience vendors. This should of course include the environmental aspects of things too.
Marketing sustainably operated experiences to travellers is increasingly more appealing and should be pushed more, but interntional OTAs and tour operators who aren’t based in the destination are never going to be as committed to change as local, government run DMOs would. Within this agro-tourism experiences are growing in popularity and are a great way to move people away from overcrowded areas. Needless to say, with the tools and tech available to us now a DMO led initiative would surely provide improved monitoring and measurement than what we have now in many destinations.
To make all of this work though DMOs have really got to up their game when it comes to providing websites, apps, social media channels and B2B portals that all in general act as a gateway to their destination. That means aggregating all the experiences available in their destination and making them not only visible, but bookable. Too often a DMO’s website only serves, at best, as a source for inspiration. That needs to change and they need to adopt an e-commerce approach – dare we say, take on the OTAs at their own game. That’s not going to be easy, but it is unavoidable if they want to make their destination sustainable.
As said at the outset here, it really does seem that the sustainability impact of tours & experiences is the last missing piece of the sustainability jigsaw puzzle. To a significant extent the simple act of measurement – something now within reach if the global tourism industry takes action to implement standards and protocols – will give us a much better picture of what’s going on. But we fully believe that steps like those outlined can further mitigate some of the negative impacts tourism undoubtedly have, and in many cases result in positive impacts almost unimaginable for local communities right now. Now wouldn’t that be an experience to remember?
