Crowded beaches. Expensive rent. Tourist sites with wall-to-wall people.
On the subject of overtourism, don’t blame the travelers, said Randy Durband, CEO of the Global Sustainable Tourism Council.
Somewhat, it’s “lack of management,” he told “Squawk Box Asia” Monday.
“I have been in travel and tourism for 40 years, working on committees and trade associations in Europe, North America and Asia,” he said. “Governments world wide traditionally just didn’t think they’d a job in managing.”
From marketing to managing
Destination marketing organizations “must change the ‘M’ in DMO from marketing to management,” Durband told CNBC before the interview.
He added that this shift has began, but still in its infancy.
“That is the nice awakening that should happen, that government needs to know — tourism is a sector that needs management,” he said. “There are methods to govern, to manage, so as to add capability … to tackle the issue.”
He pointed to several examples of places where that is already being done well.
“We see good management of protected areas and national parks,” he said. “But a lot must be done simply to create awareness that what must be done at the federal government level.”
‘Masters’ of crowd control
But that may not true of China, he said.
“The Chinese are masters at adding capability and managing flows,” Durband said. He cited the Leshan Giant Buddha as one example.
“Everyone comes for the Buddha, however the municipal government built an infinite attraction adjoining to it … that disperses the visitors,” he said of the world that now includes developed parkland and a cave filled with enormous carved figures.
He said Chinese officials also created a control center with video screens that track visitors at various locations. Of the narrow staircases used to access the Buddha: “They know before the staircases are dangerously full,” he told CNBC Travel after the interview.
“I believe that many iconic cultural heritage sites world wide, where over-crowding is a problem, would profit from supplementary, and ideally preliminary sites to view, that prepare the visitor in such a way that they do not feel compelled to linger on the fundamental attraction,” he said.
But, he said, all popular sites need technology to “monitor visitor flows.”
Managing tourism ‘flows’
He said that the small French village of Saint Guilhem le Désert modified the “flow” of travelers after someone within the town died from a heart attack and traffic prevented an ambulance from rendering aid.
Residents can drive into the village, Durband said, but visitors are directed to park in a delegated area outside of the village on weekends and through the summer, after which bicycle, walk or take an electrical shuttle bus to achieve the village.
The strategy may even work in a city like Barcelona, he said, which receives some 17 million visitors a 12 months. Protestors marched through Barcelona on July 6 demanding that town reduce the variety of tourists who visit.
Demand isn’t going to go down.
Randy Durband
CEO of the Global Sustainable Tourism Council.
But town is concentrated on “flow,” a spokesperson told CNBC Travel last week.
“The measure of success of tourism in Barcelona cannot deal with the amount of holiday makers but quite on managing the flow of people in order not to exceed a social and environmental limit,” the Barcelona City Council spokesperson said.
Durband said managing visitor flows shall be particularly difficult in Barcelona. Unlike other major cities, visitors are likely to congregate in the identical areas that residents prefer, which increases friction between the 2 groups, he said.
“Everybody desires to go to the identical small area of Old Town, so the dispersion would require a quite substantial technique to make that occur,” he said.
Still, he said it’s “absolutely” possible.
“Demand isn’t going to go down,” he said, citing the 8 billion those who now inhabit the planet, and a growing middle class in Asia-Pacific. “So capability needs to extend, and management approaches to disperse the visitor must improve dramatically.”
