(Photo by Daniel Foster via Flickr/CC BY-NC 2.0 DEED)
Listen to this article:
Tourism is an industry like any other, with workers, consumers, and systemic issues that affect the overall well-being of the region where it operates. Famous examples include the City of Venice, the Islands of Hawaii, and the nations of the Caribbean. These areas show how high tourist demand can harm the local environment and its people.
Major issues confronting tourism hotspots include the use of local housing for tourists, overpollution hurting the region’s environmental health, and the need to balance the number of tourists to benefit workers. These issues are important because they hamper the overall success of tourism as a sustainable industry for both people and the environment, which is important if people wish to keep visiting parts of the world.
Sustainable tourism aims at longer-term sustainable practices that often benefit the local environment and people. For tourism to be sustainable, often consider the effects of people visiting but not living permanently in a place and how to reduce the impact of the negative effects previously mentioned. Solutions often mean prioritizing the people and the environment there, as only then will these places be worth visiting in the long term. Whether it is stronger union protections, improving access to affordable housing, or more reusable products used, these will have lasting impacts on the sustainability of people living there and the environment in places most touristed.
Difficult Conditions in Paradise
Communities must find ways to balance the number of tourists with the financial benefits they provide to locals. Too many tourists can overburden the industry’s workers due to the lack of low pay. For example, workers in the Hawaiian tourist industry experienced a painful situation of needing to work immediately after the deadly fires in 2023 in Maui. This situation and others show the impact of low-wage work in people’s homelands, which puts them in a dire situation of being tied to home, but the costs of tourism overwhelm any benefits of their profits.
An analysis by the European Institute of the Mediterranean reported the industry’s unique seasonality and the intensity of the work. The study shows that hospitality or tourism workers are not seeing growth in individual workers’ pay or well-being due to low union strength, high turnover, and lack of stability in consistent employment throughout the year. As such, with more people going on vacation, workers may not see the benefits due to the instability of these jobs, as many are low-wage and intense.
One solution to mitigate the negative effects of tourism is to place fees on travellers by the city or state to reduce the number of people coming in for day trips. Venice, Italy — the first city to do this — has given the city a reprieve from crowded areas and hopefully induce people to visit during less busy times to spread the tourism revenue across the year. However, this can be a limited response to the overarching tourism issue of making a city or place solely centered around tourists.
Housing Rights, Not Profits
Access to affordable housing is critical to making any city safe and sustainable; however, when people use housing as an investment in the tourism industry. This problem is global in highly sought-after places like Venice or Hawaii, and it can have a profound impact when limited housing is available. Purchasing houses for short-term rentals can be very lucrative. In Hawaii, this profoundly impacts the native Hawaiians, who make up 28% of unhoused people on the islands. Housing laws have yet to catch up to the demand for tourism outside of typical hotels and other resorts intended for tourists.
The lack of affordable housing adds a long-term drain on people who can afford to live there while working in the tourism industry. Making housing inaccessible will force locals to move in search of affordable housing or better work opportunities. Less affordable housing creates a drain on people who could benefit the local community as they are likely to find better opportunities elsewhere. Especially when considering the current working conditions in the industry and its conditions, affordable housing is essential.
Additionally, when increasing housing, whether for locals or tourist rental, it is important to economize the space per unit so that people can use alternative forms of transport like buses, trains, and bikes, and less sprawl will preserve cultural and natural landmarks by decreasing road traffic. Outright bans on short-term rentals have been implemented in cities like New York, which put strict parameters for when a short-term rental is valid. The owner often occupies the location throughout most of the stay. This practice brings more possibilities to center tourism around connecting with the local culture and people in a way that is impossible when tourists have a whole housing unit to themselves. This policy, and similar ones aimed at building denser, would increase housing access for Hawaiians and improve their well-being by having shelter.
Washed Up Waste and Other Pollutants
Tourism should be environmentally friendly and harmonious with the people who call highly-visited regions home, which there are many ways to achieve. Most significantly, lowering carbon dioxide emissions in travel, especially when travelling to and from said areas, can help. Cutting down on private jet flights and other commercial travel with high emission rates would also significantly bring down emissions, which is important for the long-term sustainability of tourism industries in coastal areas, especially as more tropical storms and flooding can dramatically impact both locals and tourism businesses. Local policies to ban or limit these transportation methods would be strict but reasonable.
Another way that pollution can impact the tourism industry is in waste management, especially for concentrated areas of people. In the Bahamas, the government has banned all single-use plastic items to mitigate the waste coming ashore. In a world where single-use products are common, tourism generates a lot of waste from single-use items because people will not bring or forget many items they’ll need. As such, utensils, weather gear, and other travel essentials can create a lot of waste that could overload a waste management system in the long run. Therefore, more reusable and public goods could go a long way in minimizing the impact of tourism waste and its impact on local people and nature.
Short-term Sacrifices in Profit for Long-Term Sustainability
Tourism can bring a dependence on tourism that is tough to dispel without harming people who don’t have available alternatives to provide for themselves. Spreading the influx of tourism outside of seasonal trends, ensuring affordable housing, and mitigating waste and pollution tourism can bring long-term success for tourism. By practicing this, it would mean fewer tourists overall, reducing profit but increasing the sustainability of these communities and the environment. By orienting the industry towards long-term residents and more sustainable practices in these locations, the people and places will be kept in good hands, ensuring the longevity of attractive tourism spots.
Edited by Gustavo Villela
