Crowded beach. Rent is expensive. Tourist spots are crowded with people.
Randy Debande, CEO of the Global Sustainable Tourism Council, says when it comes to overtourism, don’t blame tourists.
Rather, it was a “lack of management,” he told “Squawk Box Asia” on Monday.
“I have been in the travel industry for 40 years, working on committees and trade associations in Europe, North America and Asia,” he said. “Governments around the world have traditionally not seen themselves as having a role in governance.”
From marketing to management
Dubande said before being interviewed by CNBC that destination marketing organizations “must change the ‘M’ in DMO from marketing to management.”
He added that this shift has begun but is still in its infancy.
“This is a great awakening that needs to happen and governments need to understand – tourism is a sector that needs to be managed,” he said. “There are ways to manipulate, to control, to increase capabilities…to solve this problem.”
He pointed to several examples of places that are already doing this well.
“us Seeing good management of protected areas and national parks,” he said. “But there’s a lot more work that needs to be done to get people to realize what needs to be done at the government level.
The “Master” of Crowd Control
But that’s not the case in China, he said.
“The Chinese are masters of increasing capacity and managing traffic,” Debande said. he quoted Leshan Giant Buddha Give an example.
“Everyone comes for the Buddha, but the city government built a huge attraction nearby…distracting tourists,” he said of the area, which now includes developed parks and a cave filled with giant carved figures. .
Chinese officials also set up a control center with video screens to track tourists at different locations, he said. On the narrow stairs leading to the Buddha: “They knew before they were about the danger of the stairs being crowded,” he told CNBC Travel after the interview.
“I believe that many iconic cultural heritage sites around the world suffer from overcrowding issues and would therefore benefit from complementary, ideal initial viewing sites that can prepare visitors so they do not feel forced Lingering.
But, he said, all popular websites need technology to “monitor visitor traffic.”
Managing travel “flow”
He said the small French village of Saint-Guillain-les-Deserts had changed the “flow” of visitors because someone in the town had died of a heart attack and traffic jams prevented ambulances from delivering aid.
Residents can drive into the village, but weekend and summer visitors will be directed to park in designated areas outside the village and then reach the village by bicycle, foot or electric shuttle, Debande said.
He said the strategy could even work in a city like Barcelona, which receives about 17 million tourists a year. On July 6, protesters marched in Barcelona, demanding that the city reduce the number of tourists.
Demand will not go down.
Randy Duband
CEO of the Global Sustainable Tourism Council.
But a spokesperson told CNBC Travel last week that the city’s focus is “traffic.”
A spokesman for Barcelona City Council said: “The measure of success for tourism in Barcelona cannot be focused on visitor numbers, but on managing the flow of people so as not to exceed social and environmental limits.”
Duband said managing tourist flows in Barcelona would be particularly difficult. Unlike other big cities, tourists tend to cluster in the same areas that residents like, adding to friction between the two groups, he said.
“Everyone wants to go to the same little area of Old Town, so dispersion requires a pretty big strategy to achieve that,” he said.
However, he said it was “absolutely” possible.
“Demand is not going to go down,” he said, referring to the eight billion people currently living on the planet and the growing middle class in the Asia-Pacific region. “Capacity will therefore need to be increased and management methods for dispersing visitors must be significantly improved.”
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