“Tourism beyond Numbers” by Prateek Hira
Numbers are quite contradictory to the idea of sustainable tourism but surprisingly, we only use numbers to measure the success of tourism for a destination and for the business of tourism too. Destinations boast the number of arrivals to show success, travel businesses use numbers by way of number of tourists handled and the amount of turnover in their balance sheets to rate their success. Airlines and airports use passenger data to proclaim their success. Even government rewards are based on numbers, highest foreign exchange earnings, maximum tourist arrivals, passengers handled and so on. Quite a ‘number world’ we live in, where higher the number, higher the success.
The question we need to ask ourselves now is, should ‘number’ be the only parameter to measure success in tourism?
A very difficult and perplexing question indeed, especially in today’s context, when we are all living in a world that’s driven by economy and where ‘sustainability’ or ’responsibility’ is becoming merely a marketing gimmick, at least for most of us, rather than it being seriously considered for our ourselves and more for our future generations.
Given that ‘number’ is success in tourism, the terms ‘over-tourism’ should have had no meaning and the recent worrying reports of over-tourism in the hill states of India, particularly Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir and Uttarakhand or the international destinations like Venice in Italy, Amsterdam in Netherlands, Machu Picchu in Peru or Barcelona in Spain may then qualify for an award rather than stir our thoughts about the harm it may cause or it has caused to the ecosystem, which includes local communities apart from the local ecology and the burden on the existing infrastructure. It has also been proven that It adversely affects the economy, instead of boosting it.
The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) very aptly has defined over-tourism as “the impact of tourism on a destination, or parts thereof that excessively influence perceived quality of life of citizens and/or quality of visitor experiences in a negative way”. According to the World Travel & Tourism Council, around 150 countries may have or are just about to surpass the tourist arrival figures of pre-pandemic year 2019. So here ‘numbers’ are a curse rather than being a blessing.
Each destination competes with another to grow its number of tourist arrivals. In India we feel ashamed quoting our foreign tourist arrivals and we often feel jealous of the smaller destinations that are very tiny but do big numbers. This statement should definitely not be read as if we do not want more numbers or that India is sufficient in terms of foreign tourist arrivals. We ought to understand that India is too large a country and deserves to have much more than what it has but at the same time, it also deserves to have much better quality of tourists than what it gets. We seldom take into account the quality of tourists and only talk about the quantity of tourists when analyzing tourist arrivals in India. As a destination, our planning is quite misplaced and haywire so our priority for tourism too is misplaced. There is absolutely no talk about the tourist spends, average stays and no micro-detailing is done for the purpose of visit and repeat leisure visitors. In absence of this analytical data, it is hard to plan tourism marketing well in India. Then, the overall experience we deliver to the incoming tourists in India, at least to the majority, is very average in many senses. Majority of our travel trade in India competes on costs, is not aligned and conducts business by way of individualistic life, projecting India as a very seasonal destination and still projecting it as a cheap destination with all things average. This though is in contrast to actually what we have on the offer at many places in India but sadly, we are all eying only ‘numbers’ ignoring everything else.
To better understand the problem of overcrowding or over-tourism at places in India, we need to understand that we have failed in equated regional tourism development, which is the core of the principles of tourism. We have for long concentrated on only a very few places in India and have refused to expand our horizons including newer destinations to our itineraries. Tour operators here have only sold (or better let’s call it, ‘oversold’) a very few places in India. This is primarily because, as operators, at least the majority of us, do not want to come out of our comfort zones. We as tour operators refuse to take any risk and just go on deriving our profits from the source where it has been flowing in from. In India, tourism was never a priority for our governments, and the new successive governments only continued doing what their predecessors did, not wanting to professionally manage tourism and intending to make it a major economic contributor to our economy. This only further complicated the problem of tourism being concentrated to few cities, not even regions or periphery of the popular destinations. Our tourism is much localised in a radius of only 15 km or so from the main attraction. Tourism marketing has been largely flawed, unplanned and unorganised and then the unplanned social media took the center stage center stage, where only a few striking images influence people all around to mindlessly rush to a destination, without giving a thought about the available infrastructure or the capacity of the destination. And sadly, we begin thumping our chests when our destinations receive huge numbers, without giving a thought to the ill effects of over-tourism including the hampered experience of tourists due to overcrowding and above all, the hardships that local residents face when huge crowds of tourists emerge at such destinations.
Andaman, Kashmir, Himachal, Uttrakhand, and the North Eastern states of India, in fact now Lakshadweep, fall in the category of fragile tourist zones due to their habitat and topography but these states are now experiencing a huge surge of domestic tourists and most of these tourists being irresponsible. Regular news about landslides, flash floods, traffic jams etc keep pouring in, but none seem to deter tourists to venture to these places in hordes and only burden the overburdened destinations.
The issue of over-concentration on only a very few destinations in India and disregarding the concept of regional development, which otherwise is the core of tourism development, is an issue that needs to be addressed very seriously, in case we want to overcome the issue of over-tourism at our select destinations and take the advantage of increasing number of tourist footfall at our destinations.
I firmly believe that volumes seldom translate into success. Sadly, this is the only way taught to us to measure our success. ‘Happiness’, ‘Comfort’, ‘Sustainability’ and ‘Responsibility’ are almost unknown words by most businesses these days. Of course business means profits, but we need to ponder upon some thoughts such as, ‘Profit at what cost, and for how long?’ Are we looking at making profits only for a short term, or are we looking at sustainable profits, where we keep earning our profits for a long time? The story of the hen laying golden eggs being cut for greed of having all the golden eggs in one go is quite relatable to the point being made here.
Travel businesses for quite some time were businesses of passion and not only businesses for profits. There are many in this domain still, who operate niche tours, have small businesses, sustainability is at the core of their values and they do not run after numbers or profits but profits are only a byproduct of pursuing their passion.
Niche operators dealing with specific genres of travel and small tour operators, operating limited tours only for the discerning travellers, who otherwise are masters of their fields and are better qualified and more capable of attracting quality tourists with higher spending ability are sadly few. They are not as valued as the large operators who boast of numbers and show huge turnovers in their books of accounts. But there is a whole world unto itself of such small niche tour operators who have stuck to their specialisations due to their passion, and have consciously refused to expand beyond a certain limit. Turnover is not always proportional to profitability. Even at a low turnover, we can make better profits, or let’s call it, ‘sensible profit’, by attracting quality tourists and offering more personalised services, newer destinations, out-of-box programmes and with a lot of repeat and loyal clients coming back to us.
Really wish we could come out of the number fixation and think more creatively to increase the revenue from tourism and at the same time, also think logically about the carrying capacity of each destination, becoming ‘responsible tourism business’ and ‘responsible tourists’.
