On the next Peace Talks Radio, the toll of over tourism.
The more people we have traveling, the need for regulation becomes more. Government authorities at all levels are the key to this, and they need to be sophisticated in how they do it.
On today's Peace Talks Radio, correspondent Michelle Aslam explores how tourism can be a source of conflict and a tool for peace.
This is Peace Talks Radio, the radio series and podcast on peacemaking and nonviolent conflict resolution. I'm series producer Paul Ingles today with correspondent Michelle Aslam. Destinations around the globe have become popular travel spots for people looking for excitement, adventure, or just a moment's respite away from home.
But these destinations are also communities, homes to people, and ecosystems that are affected by that travel. Local residents have organized demonstrations in places like the Canary Islands, France and Spain to call attention to the issues caused by over tourism. In the summer of 2024, for example, protesters took to the streets in Barcelona, spraying tourists with water guns and carrying signs that read, Tourists Go Home.
Governing boards in the Canary Islands and certain locales in Spain took measures to limit the use of housing for tourist rentals in response. First we hear Michelle Aslam's conversation with journalist Paige McClanahan, author of the book The New Tourist, waking up to the power and perils of travel.
McClanahan has reported from destinations across the globe on how tourism can change the world for the better and for the worse.
Paige: You know, as someone who loves to travel, I mean, part of me hates to see the kind of headlines that we saw in Barcelona, where we had anti tourism protesters shooting tourists with water guns in the street.
But as a journalist, and as just a human being, I have to say, I love to see that the community of Barcelona is arriving in the conversation, that they're speaking up. And if they have a grievance. They need to air it and it needs to be heard. So I'm grateful for those anti tourism protesters for speaking their truth and for doing so in a way that got a lot of attention.
And also, you know, those communities speaking out has triggered a bigger conversation that's going to hopefully reach, you know, millions of people around the world, um, about tourism and how we need to think about tourism, how we can go about tourism in a better and more constructive way.
Michelle: So while we might not intend for our travel to cause any kind of conflict or harm for anyone, when we hear from people who live in destinations that get a lot of visitors every year, places like Barcelona and Hawaii, it seems to be the case that it often can, uh, cause problems in ways we may not even really understand.Can you talk about some of the ways in which that can happen?
Paige: Well, I think in general, you know, if we as travelers fail to appreciate the fact that when we're traveling, we're always a guest in someone's home, you know, our presence can inflict damage on a place. Or even if we realize that, if we don't take the time to really educate ourselves about the impact of our presence in a place, then we can inflict damage.
And as we've seen in a lot of the headlines over the summer, these You know, the challenges and the damages of tourism can take a lot of different forms. And we have pure overcrowding, as we see in some European cities and natural areas. We have environmental damage of, you know, people, um, going off trail or like, you know, damaging, damaging species, damaging fragile natural environments.
Um, we can also have damage to sort of cultural heritage. You hear people kind of picking out the stones, the mosaics, you know, in Pompeii sort of thing. Um, I think a lot of the damages of tourism come from a lack of awareness on the part of the traveler and be a lack of an appropriate structure or infrastructure in the environment that's, you know, that we're visiting, um, because if we don't have the right infrastructure to welcome us as tourists, um, and that's really the, you know, the job of the local government.
then it's going to be really hard for us not to have, um, a negative impact on the place. You know, the place needs to be ready to welcome us. It needs to have the right kind of tax policies as well as the physical infrastructure and the, you know, the rules and regulations to, to put some framework around our presence in the place as tourists.
And if governments fail to do that, then it's much more likely that, you know, that we even unwittingly might have a negative impact on a place. So I would really put the responsibility on both travelers and Governments and of course, tour operators have an important role to play there as well.
Michelle: So the word that we tend to use and see in a lot of the headlines around these issues is the word overtourism.But I think a lot of people, when they hear that word, it can make it sound like the issue here is that there are too many people traveling to the same few destinations. They might think of big crowds and long lines, that sort of thing. But it sounds like the word overtourism can describe a lot more than that.
Paige: Yeah. Overtourism, I think, is a really interesting word. I mean, it's been kind of floating around for a while, but, um, it really kind of started to appear much more regularly in the public discourse just in 2016, um, when the travel media outlet, Skift, wrote an article about Iceland and it used the word overtourism.
And since then, like I said, the word had been around for a little bit before, but we, that's when we really started to see it pick up in the media discourse. And I think it's an interesting term and certainly helpful in that it kind of encapsulates the you know, when you turn up the volume on tourism, you can get, um, you can encounter challenges.
And I think it's just important for us to have that concept in society because it's very true. At the same time, I think the word over tourism can be misleading or it's very general. I mean, you know, this, this gift article about Iceland, um, in 2016, you know, that used the word over tourism, a lot of people who I have spoken to in Iceland really pushed back against the word over tourism with respect to Iceland, because they say, You know, the challenges of tourism in Iceland are very specific both to time, you know, time of day and time of the year and to place, you know, that one particular parking lot might be overflowing on, you know, a Saturday afternoon in July, but go there any other time of year and it's going to be fine.
So it kind of, the word over tourism can kind of paint a place with a really, really broad brush in a way that doesn't necessarily serve the interests of the place or the people who might want to visit that place. So I think it's important that whenever we see that word, we kind of, We pick it apart and we look at what's really the problem that's underlying the term that's being used there.
Michelle: Mm. Another word that we might want to think more deeply about is the word tourist or tourism. In your book you talk about how people actually rarely use the word tourist to describe themselves. Why is that and why do you think addressing that is an important part of addressing the larger issue?
Paige: Yeah, well, I mean, I think tourism carries a lot of stigma, doesn't it?
I mean, the word tourism or the word tourist, because it's very easy for us to say, oh, I'm, you know, a traveler, or I'm sort of, you know, an adventurer, or I'm someone who likes to visit other countries for cultural reasons, etc. Um, but I'm not necessarily a tourist. Like, you know, the tourists are all the other people who are waiting in line ahead of me as I wait to get into the Louvre.
So none of us really likes to sort of pin this label on ourselves, but I don't think that's helpful necessarily. And part of my goal in writing the book was to try to shake loose some of the stigma around the word tourist and tourism, because I think, you know, we need to own tourism for everything that it is, which, you know, I see tourism as an incredibly potent social force.
that if channeled in one way can be very destructive, um, but if channeled in a different way can be an incredibly potent and constructive force for humanity. So I think we need to embrace tourism in all of its, you know, the good, the bad, and the ugly. And, um, if we say we're not tourists, other people are tourists, then we dissociate ourselves from the problems of tourism, which means we don't implicate ourselves in the problems of tourism.
You know, which means we don't implicate ourselves in the solutions either because, you know, the problems of tourism, those belong to other people. So those other people need to sort of worry themselves about the solutions. No, no, no. If you like to travel, um, you travel for pleasure. You're a tourist. I'm a tourist.
I'm implicated in the problems of tourism and I'm implicated in making sure that this phenomenon that I'm so privileged to be able to take part in is a constructive force in humanity. So I hope people might start to just play with the idea of considering themselves as tourists. Two.
Michelle: One of the things that we associate with tourists is what we call the tourist trap.
Can you break down what these are for us and also help us understand how they might be representative of some of the issues of overtourism?
Paige: If you look up the dictionary definition of tourist trap, you'll usually see things like, you know, a place that's overcrowded, um, that's aimed at tourists and where there's some sort of element of tourist exploitation, like with, you know, the prices are, you know, really kind of, there's some price gouging there of the tourists, et cetera.
I would also add to that definition of tourist trap, a sense of kind of like a fake version of reality, or maybe sort of a dumbed version of, you know, a culture reality, something that's kind of You know, streamlined for tourists, easy consumption. I'm thinking here to give an example of like, um, a very commercialized sort of luau in Hawaii, which is a very oversimplified and skewed version of an ancient cultural tradition that most native Hawaiians Wouldn't recognize at all.
Um, but this is done for tourists and these things are, and I described one of these in the book that I went to literally inside a shopping mall in Waikiki, you know, tourist traps hold a lot of appeal because, you know, so many of us still go to these places. And I wanted to understand that too. Um, and I think that, you know, a lot of us, when we travel, we are just looking for that fantasy.
We're looking for that break from reality. And I think that, What's the most important thing for us to keep in mind as we're, you know, thinking about how and where, you know, we might, we might like to travel is that if we're looking to sort of live out a fantasy when we travel, um, that we go to a place that's ready to welcome us in that state, you know, so go to Las Vegas.
Go to Disney World, go to a place that's built for fantasy, don't, you know, if you want to go to Amsterdam and go to the Red Light District and live out a fantasy, realize that you're doing that in a place that's also home to thousands of people, even in the historic Red Light District. Um, and so, you know, the problem with tourist traps is when the fantasy world they represent kind of bumps up against everyday life.
But I think, you know, there's really. There's space for fantasy in the world of travel, and we shouldn't, we shouldn't ignore that. We can embrace tourist traps within, within the right framework, I think.
Michelle: In your reporting for your book, you got to speak to residents who live in some of these popular travel destinations and hear about their perspectives on tourism.
In some cases, you even got to see for yourself how tourism was impacting their local communities. Did you see anything that surprised you?
Paige: One that really That really jumps out and that I'd like to speak to is an interview that I did or, you know, several hours that I spent with a man named Koike on the island of Oahu and in Hawaii, who I met at a conference for Native Hawaiians in Honolulu.
Um, and he stood up at the conference and he spoke out in very strong words against tourism. Um, and he said that all tourists should leave Hawaii and, you know, that, that native Hawaiians need to take ownership of their land and then decide on what terms they want to welcome tourists back if they want to welcome tourists back.
So we had very strong words. So I heard him speak. And then right after I walked up to him and said, hi, I'm Paige. I'm a journalist. Can we hang out? And he was like, come to meet me in Waimanalo in my hometown next week. So the next week I took an Uber out to Waimanalo, which is a community that has been known for tensions between residents and tourists for decades.
Um, you know, the beach there has been known as a place where tourists might get ripped off, have their belongings stolen while they're swimming. And he grew up there, Kawiki grew up in Waimanalo and he wanted to show me around. And we stood there, I met him in this, you know, kind of the edge of this parking lot and this, um, this kind of beach park that's run by the government.
And he was like, okay, here's what I want to show you. Look over here on this side, you have the beautiful beach, you have the palm trees, you have the tourists and their picnics. And on this side, just on the other side of the beautifully kind of kept lawn, you have, uh, a line of tents that are homes for native Hawaiians who cannot afford houses in the community.
And it was a very long line of tents. And he was like, this is what I wanted to show you. He said, you know, Hawaii gets 17 billion from tourism every year. How much of that goes to our Native Hawaiian communities? And pointed to the, his fellow Native Hawaiians who are sleeping there in their tents, um, along the beach.
So that really was very striking. And he, you know, had very strong words against tourism, but he was incredibly gracious, incredibly gracious man. And I knew I wanted his voice to be in the book, even if I wasn't entirely sure how to, how to, tell my readers what to do with that. I just wanted to sort of show his voice because I knew it needed to be part of the conversation.
And really it's on, it's on all of us to better understand these issues and include people like Kuike in the conversation as we're trying to find solutions.
Michelle: In the part of the book where you are speaking about this debate that's happening around tourism in Hawaii, you say that it's important for us to understand who gets to tell the story of a destination.
What do you mean by that?
Paige: If you see like a hula girl on the dashboard of a taxi or something in New York, you know, you think of Hawaii, that's the result of a tourism marketing campaign that started in the 50s and 60s. Tourism marketing has a profound impact on our understanding of other places. And in the case of Hawaii, starting very early in the state's kind of tourism journey, Um, the image of the Native Hawaiian was chosen very specifically to, um, set Hawaii apart from its competitors.
You know, the other places that you can get to from the United States that have like warm temperatures and nice beaches. Um, you know, what you can't find in Cancun, what you can't find in Florida or the Caribbean is the Native Hawaiian culture, right? The image of the Native Hawaiian, and in the case of the Native Hawaiian woman, you know, sort of a sexualized, fetishized image of Native Hawaiian woman, was really used very explicitly to, to sell, um, Hawaii as a tourist destination.
And, um, and the, the debate that was really ongoing when I was in Hawaii in the summer of 2022 to do the research for the book, Was on whether the big, the huge, you know, 100 million over multiple years, um, tourism marketing contract was going to go to the same company that had been doing it for decades and decades, or was it going to go for the very first time to a charitable organization?
Um, that's led by a native Hawaiian. And, um, and this was under dispute when I was in Hawaii in the summer and it was really loaded, but. The, the question for me was really very representative of, you know, who is going to tell the story of Hawaii to, um, to the world really, and, you know, and telling it, you're also selling Hawaii to the world because that's really the, the goal of tourism marketing.
Michelle: So non essential travel isn't new. I mean, people have been traveling throughout human history for many, many years. Why overtourism has become a more serious issue in recent years? What's sort of changing about travel?
Paige: The biggest difference is the number of people traveling. We've seen such an explosion in international visitors, you know, over the course of the last 70 years, say, if we go back to 1950, I think we had 25 million international visitors, um, like international tourist arrivals in the year 1950.
Cut to 2024, we're going to have over 1. 5 billion, right? And that number grew very steadily with some, you know, with some jumps. And right before the pandemic, it was really going up, of course, dropped back down with the pandemic and has, has shot straight back up. And, you know, in 2024, we're going to beat the 2019, um, record, uh, you know, international tourist arrivals.
So just the sheer number of bodies going to other places, this is, this is going up and this is a lot of factors driving this. You know, the rise in global wealth, the, you know, the flights are becoming cheaper. More people are, you know, the travel, travel information is a lot more accessible. It's a lot easier to book travel and, you know, a lot of, a lot of factors are contributing to this rise, but it's really, you know, a growing global force and it's going to continue to grow.
It's going to continue to become a bigger share of the global economy. So I think really now is the moment where we have to come to grips with this issue. We have to grapple with this issue because. All the problems that we see, you know, whether it's headlines from Amsterdam or Barcelona or Venice or, um, you know, the Galapagos or, you know, an island in Hawaii, um, these challenges aren't going to go away.
We're going to see them in more and more places because tourism is going to continue to grow. So it's important that we come to grips with these issues now and that the places that are working really hard to attract more tourists, there are a lot more of those than there are places that are saying no to tourists, right?
We need to make sure that they're paying attention to everything that's happening in the news and that they're taking all the steps that they need to take to make sure that they're not going to fall into the same traps that other places before them have fallen into.
Michelle: Are there examples of governments who are doing this well, who maybe have figured out how to prevent some of the negative consequences of tourism or maybe are learning how to mitigate the harm that tourism might be causing to their communities?
Paige: One place that I visited that is just really active in responding to the challenges of tourism is Amsterdam, um, a city that, you know, welcomes a huge number of tourists where tourism is a big part of both the city's economy and the economy of the Netherlands. Overall, the city of Amsterdam took a really bold measure, just, I think it was enacted on January 1st of 2024, that raised its tourist tax from 7%, I believe, to 12.
5%, which is a huge increase today. It already was one of the highest tax, if not the highest tourist tax in Europe, even before that increase. They've also put in place, you know, a cruise tax, they've put in place a huge number of restrictions in terms of how tourists are able to experience the red light district.
Like they've, they've banned, um, group walking towards the red light district. They've banned smoking cannabis on the street and certain kind of streets in the red light district. They've also hired. A kind of a band of young people, they look to me like when I saw them in their 20s, um, who are kind of all wearing red t shirts, who are out there at night when people are moving around, kind of to answer questions, to help with the traffic flow, to put up little kind of barriers, to make a one way system when the traffic's getting, the foot traffic is getting really heavy.
Um, and to just be kind of like, um, you know, soft skill crowd manager types, not to say that they've solved it completely. Um, but they are really actively engaged and the government really cares about this and the local citizens are really engaged in this debate as well, how to do this well. So I would, um, I would point to Amsterdam as a city that I hope other, other tourist destinations might look to see what they're doing and follow their example.
Michelle: This is Peace Talks Radio. I'm Michelle Aslam speaking today with author Paige McClanahan about the issue of overtourism. So one of the factors that we might consider at least partially responsible for how tourism has grown and changed in recent years is social media. It can feed into this sort of exploitative relationship with the world around us, but in your book you make it pretty clear that at least when it comes to tourism it's a little bit more complicated than that because in a lot of ways social media has also made travel more accessible.
Paige: Yeah. I mean, I, I really enjoyed the research for that part of the book because I, you know, going into the research, I really thought social media is a negative thing for tourism. This is something that we need to kind of like push back against, but actually it has been such a wonderful gift. I mean, if we think back to kind of the 1980s, 1990s, early 2000s, I mean, whose voices were telling travel stories at that moment, right?
It was, um, the people who had managed to overcome the incredibly high barriers to entry of the, like, publishing and journalism worlds, right? These were mainly privileged white men. I mean, with some very important exceptions. Um, with the rise of social media, the barriers to just being able to tell one story were really taken down.
And so now, you know, anyone with a smartphone is able to narrate their adventures, um, to an audience of millions. And that is something that, you know, I have certainly taken for granted, like, you know, you want to know what the LGBTQ life is in Singapore, or if you want to know what it's like to be a Nigerian woman living in Sweden, um, you know, there are Instagram accounts that you can follow to, to learn about that.
And I think that's a really wonderful gift. At the same time, of course, as you say, you know, social media has had kind of like this, this herding effect, or, um, where we're seeing lots of people sort of crowding into the same sites to get the same picture. I think even more challenging really is the fact that social media can encourage us to see a destination we're visiting as, you know, You know, something that's there to serve us, something that's there, like, I'm going to get that picture.
I'm going to put it on my Instagram. It's going to get a lot of likes like that. You know, I'm going to come in it, which is kind of a very colonial approach to traveling. There's a resource there. I'm going to go exploit it for my own gain. I'm going to be there quickly, extract what I want, exploit it and go home and it's going to serve me.
I'm not thinking at all about how it's going to serve the place. And it does encourage us to put ourselves at the center of the story all the time, which is a choice that we can make, right? How much we wanna center ourselves and what we share on social media. You know, when people ask me like, well, what should we do about social media?
I say, really try to decenter yourself and share something of value. Imagine like you had a friend who is from that place, um, that you're visiting. Yeah. You're posting about, I don't know, Cambodia, and you have a, you know, a Cambodian friend who's gonna, who's gonna see your post? Like, make, make sure that, like, would you feel comfortable with your Cambodian friends seeing that post and reacting to it?
You know, I think that's maybe a good little, like, rule of thumb. Would you feel happy for someone to post something like that about your own hometown? Maybe that's another, um, it's complicated social media. It's complicated.
Michelle: A lot of folks, maybe because of what they see on social media or on the news, feel drawn to a destination specifically because of the threats it poses.
That it might be facing, you know, the idea that it might be the last chance to experience the beauty or the significance of a place before it's gone or forever changed. Can you talk a little bit more about this last Chance Tourism Paradox?
Paige: Yeah. I mean, last chance tourism. Also known sometimes as doom tourism is this kind of phenomenon that's been talked about maybe the last like 20 years or so, and research has shown that the fact that a place like a glacier, you know, is disappearing because of climate change. For a lot of potential travelers, this increases the appeal of that place. They want to come see the sick patient quick before she dies on the operating table. You know, a lot of researchers say this is exploitative. This is awful. This is just hedonistic. People want to come and, you know, take, take this for themselves while they can.
There are other researchers who say that actually Okay, yes, that might be the case. And there's a really important potential there if we can harness the power of these people's interests in coming to see something that's, that we're losing to climate change. Um, they're implicated. And if we can use their visit as a chance to educate them in And help them see the connection between their own behavior and what they're witnessing there at the glacier that this can be a really powerful moment of learning that can potentially inspire behavior change in the visitor.
So, I tried to explore that potential in this section of the book, um, writing specifically about the Mer de Glace, um, a glacier in the French Alps that, um, Where, you know, which used to be about an hour from my home for five years. So it was a place that I visited on a regular basis. I also wrote a story for the New York Times and interviewed, you know, I remember I interviewed, I think he was an 80 year old guy, um, who was there with his adult son and he was very moved.
I mean, distressed to see the state of the glacier when he was visiting now at age 80. And the last time he'd been there was on a school trip with his son who was now in his fifties when his son was like in elementary school. So he'd been sort of what, 40 years earlier. And he was just blown away, like, you know, arriving there and seeing it and he was visibly moved by this.
So I think, you know, if we can, if a visit to a dying place can have that kind of an impact on a person, you know, that's something that might inspire change in his behavior. But yeah, I mean, the more the climate change threatens, um, our cultural heritage sites as well as our environmental, um, you know, landscapes, the more we're going to see this type of tourism, you know, on the rise in the future.
Michelle: It can be kind of difficult to understand how one person's change of heart can be very significant, you know, in the long run, because this issue does feel like it's so much bigger than any one of us. I mean, there are countries involved, private companies, tourism is this huge industry. Where do you think our responsibility is in addressing these larger issues with our individual choices as travelers?
Paige: Yeah. Well, exactly. You're exactly right. And that the responsibility lies with, with each of those, you know, different sort of sets of actors, right. With the individual travelers, with the governments and with the tour operators. But if I'm thinking of, you know, myself as a traveler, as a tourist who wants to do better, I think the only thing that we can do, I mean, to, to cite a very often cited quote, um, is to be the change we want to see in the world.
Right. Right. Right. We can be the kind of tourist that we want to welcome to our own home communities. You know, we can be thoughtful. We can do our homework before we travel. We can travel at a time of year that's not going to be at the height of the season when the crowds are already really high. And we can travel with a huge amount of humility and respect for the people in the place that we're visiting, and with a real curiosity and a real sense of modesty.
And I say, you know, travel to fewer places, but stay longer. Go back to places that you have visited before that really spoke to you. Don't feel like you need to take a box of, you know, getting to every country in Europe or whatever, or every major city. You had a wonderful visit to Rome, go back to Rome, you know, get to know it better, build a relationship with that place.
Um, another really concrete tip I love to give people is to, Take the time to like hire a local tour guide, even if it's just for a half a day or a couple of hours. This is going to give you the chance to have a real connection with somebody who lives in that place, have the chance to kind of Have a conversation, ask them what their childhood was like growing up there, what it's like to live there now, and maybe even like make a friend.
I've made friends with a lot of my tour guides over the years and that's really, I think, leaning into one of the more positive and constructive aspects of tourism, um, which is really the, the power to create human connections across cultural, you know, national borders. Um, so I think there are a lot of small decisions that we can make as travelers.
And as, you know, voting citizens, we can look, you know, change starts at home, right? If there are problems with how tourism happens in our home communities, that's how we can make the biggest impact. You know, most places get tourists these days, right? Even if you don't live in Rome or London, you know, your hometown probably gets tourists.
Look at how tourism is happening in your own home community. If there are ways you can improve it, like, Go to a, uh, you know, a town hall meeting and, and raise your hand, um, or if there are other challenges, like be, be upfront about addressing those challenges or calling out those challenges. A lot of us can experience the consequences of travel that might be happening a lot closer to home.
Michelle: And a lot of us also travel ourselves, you know, a lot closer to home. We might travel domestically or within our own state. Um, is a lot of this advice applicable to that kind of travel as well?
Paige: Absolutely. I mean, I think, you know, for me, the point of travel is to get outside of my comfort zone. Right. And it's, you know, I can do that.
I mean, I live in Paris now, Paris is my home. I can do that even just by walking a few blocks to get into, you know, another sort of community of people living right here in the, in the city that I call home. Travel isn't about the distance there. I'm paraphrasing my good friend, Aziz Abuserra, who likes to say that, you know, by just traveling to, you know, across town, across the state, you know, to another region of your home country, you can experience, you know, other cultures, other communities, other languages that offer the same kind of mind opening perspective, shifting potential, um, that we can have in traveling across an ocean.
So absolutely, absolutely. You know, we can lean into the constructive potential of travel, even if the travel we're doing is much closer to home.
Paul: That was Paige McClanahan, travel journalist and author of the book, The New Tourist, waking up to the power and perils of travel. I'm series producer Paul Ingles.
Thanks for listening to and for supporting Peace Talks Radio. Stay tuned. We'll be right back after this break with part two of our program today on the toll of over tourism seeking a peaceful balance.
Paul: This is Peace Talks Radio, the radio series and podcast on peacemaking and nonviolent conflict resolution. I'm series producer Paul Ingles, today with correspondent Michelle Aslam. We've called today's show The Toll of Overtourism, Seeking a Peaceful Balance. We're exploring the power of tourism, both as a source of conflict in some destination locales, and as a tool for peace for ourselves and for the places that we choose to visit.
This is part two of our program. In part one, correspondent Michelle Aslam spoke with travel journalist Paige McClanahan about her book, The New Tourist. Waking up to the power and perils of travel. This time we'll hear more from Dr. Freya she's an academic who's researched the topic of tourism and justice and the structural issues that enable over tourism.
But first we'll hear correspondent Michelle Aslan in conversation. with the founder of a regenerative tourism company called ReRoot Travel. It's Dr. Kiona speaking about how her experience growing up in Hawaii shaped her perspective on the impact of tourism.
Dr. Kiona: So our beaches are always populated by a ton of tourists who often don't take care of it because they don't live there.
So they throw their trash, they leave behind bottles, and like, if you're from Hawaii, we don't wear shoes. Like, I didn't own a pair of shoes until I was like 12. So our place is so clean. We're obsessed with like picking up trash, not littering. We consider the, I know, or the, the land as part of our existence.
And so we take care of it because. It's it's a deity. It's like some it's sacred, right? And so you don't want to trash something sacred. And then another thing growing up is also seeing that, you know, Native peoples, uh, are living on the beach. Um, they're camping on beaches and you see tourists in these high rise apartments or high rise hotels, like, paying 500 a night and like, Seeing the huge socioeconomic class divide between people who get to visit here and people who actually live here.
Um, and so because of all of these bad experiences, um, locals or natives would kick everybody off the beach and be like, Okay, you're not allowed to be here. You are a foreigner. You're haole. This is our beach. You have to get off. You know, I've seen people get punched in the water for surfing on a wave that they shouldn't be surfing or didn't ask permission from a local or cut off a local or it wasn't their hour to be surfing because sometimes some beaches have like locals only hours and so because I grew up watching, I guess you would say violence, um, around tourism because of all of these issues that it created.
I tried to be the best guest ever because I don't want that same, um, reception. Hawaii seems like such a glaring example of the ways that tourism can impact a community and its culture and environment.
Michelle: How do you think growing up there and seeing that sort of conflict? Helped inform your own approach to tourism?
Dr. Kiona: Tourism has left a mark on me as something that needs to be Very very well thought about and very delicate And when you're stepping into somebody else's home you take care of it.
You ask them permission for things you Um, want to leave a place better than you found it. You want to bring a gift when you go over to somebody's house. You want to share, you want it to be a mutually beneficial experience. You don't just walk into somebody's house and plop yourself on the sofa and choose a movie and eat from the refrigerator.
You definitely want to be accompanied through being in somebody's house. You want somebody to welcome you. You want to be walked through, like give me a home tour or, you know, how did you build this? Or, you know, What movies do you want to watch together? And I think tourism should be approached the same way.
I mean, that's just how we were taught as kids in Hawaii. Like the culture is super surrounded on like being mutually beneficial.
Michelle: Can you talk about ReRoot, your travel company, and how you approach tourism in a way that might be different from how people typically approach travel?
Dr. Kiona: ReRoot is my educational travel company. Um, the itineraries are based around professionals and their fields where tourists get to come in and talk to professionals in specific subjects, such as if you want to learn about socialism and medicine, we have a doctor that you talk to in Cuba. If you want to learn about luau, which is a, um, a celebration, a Hawaiian traditional celebration.
Well, we talked to a chef who cooks in the traditional ways. Um, if we're talking about El Salvador, we go to, uh, where the last remaining indigenous peoples are to discuss how they're preserving their language. Now what? Their original language. Um, so it's not something that you can just land, uh, in a place and have all of these things like just happen to you.
We specifically have lined up really important themes that are important to these communities or countries. Um, and we Place you with professionals, um, so that you can have, uh, a presentation or an interactive lesson or an interactive activity, experiential learning together in this, this vacation package.
Michelle: So ReRoute is a regenerative tourism company. How is that approach to tourism different from other terms we might've heard of, like responsible or sustainable tourism? Yeah, so I think regenerative travel, sustainable travel, ethical travel, they all get really interchanged. But like, what exactly does that even mean?
It's subjective, right? But for us, we want to make sure that the people that we interact with are, Being regenerated with our presence, and I don't mean like we're going and we're going to plant a tree. I mean, sometimes we do that, but it's not really the core base of our concept. We have a lesson with a Nahuatl elder.
He's one of the last 200 people who speak fluent Nahuatl, which is the indigenous language of El Salvador. And because of our presence and because we pay him lots of money. Now his daughter is inspired to learn Now what? Because it pays. And so she started like a singing group with five other women. So now they sing in.
Now what? Now her child goes to a, now what? Preschool, where he also is learning how to, and I now I make him like. Teach people how to count. So he's also a teacher, you know, children are teachers too. So now we have three generations speaking that language and continuing on this, uh, this now what language practice because of our presence, because it's, I don't want to say because it's profitable.
It's not just about money. It's like, he loves sharing his stories. Like he doesn't even want us to leave. Cause he gets to talk about his life. He gets to talk about what he's passionate about, what he's proud of. The purpose of us is like our presence should regenerate. Um, whether it be money or environment or language or whatever, it has to be regenerative.
I don't want to do anything that takes away from anybody or that doesn't feel mutually beneficial.
Michelle: Is that sort of regenerative approach something that you apply to domestic travel as well?
Dr. Kiona: Yeah, a hundred percent. We did a trip to North Carolina, um, and we called it the Black Dreamers tour. And, um, our goal was to make sure our tourism dollars went to Black vendors, um, And movers and shakers and dreamers doing cool things in their communities that we could learn from and pour back into economically as well with our presence to be regenerative.
Um, and that was a domestic location. It was just North Carolina. Like, people drove in. Where, in your view, do you think people typically go wrong when traveling? What sort of common travel choices might cause maybe more harm than people realize? I think two big mistakes people make is one, not budgeting appropriately.
Um, I think a lot of people, including myself, um, are big budget travelers. I, after I saw so many issues with budget traveling, with negotiating with vendors, you know, a surf class should be 35, but if the next guy's offering it for 30, then I have to offer it for 25. And then that's just not a livable wage for them.
And so after watching that go down so many times, I realized that like, No, I have to come in with a budget that is appropriate to somebody's life. Um, so I think people mess up on budget and how much they really should be budgeting for these things. And two, I think people don't have human relationships.
Usually they go to places and decide like, oh, I want to go here because of a beach, or I want to go here because Um, I want to see a gorilla, but like, do you have any sort of human connection there? Are you making any sort of human connection there? Is somebody accompanying you along the way so you know if you're going in a good way or what you're supposed to be doing beforehand?
Um, in Hawaii, for example, we have lots of rituals and protocols before we enter the water before we go on to Sacred Mountain. These are all things that I feel like you can't do or know without a human person accompanying you that's from that place. And the other thing is that when people say they don't want to learn, I think that's the worst thing.
We should be traveling to learn. I think that is the main thing that we should be traveling for. Yes, it's for a vacation, it's for self care, etc., but you should be learning about yourself, but you should also be learning about where you're going and who you're interacting with and how those people live.
Michelle: For people who are interested in taking this regenerative approach, what sort of advice can you share about how they should start?
Dr. Kiona: Um, again, I would just move at the speed of my relationships. Like, where do you know some, I mean, we're in such a global world. It's like, it's not like you only know people from your community anymore.
It's like the internet exists and like, where do you know people? And I would start there because every place is different and I can't, there's like no blanket statement advice that I could give because what's going to work in Sudan is not going to work in Cuba. It really depends. On the people, what do they need and what do they want?
If you don't know anybody and you're like, I want to go there anyway. Um, I think my advice would be just to think through your dollars. Like, where are you staying? Is that money staying on island or is it going to stay in the country? Is it going to stay with a local person? Is it going to. Help somebody regenerate their lives, or is it going to go to a corporate business, which will leave the lands, um, for example, in Hawaii, if you stay at the Sheraton, that money is going straight to the mainland.
It's never going to stay in Hawaii. Um, it's not regenerative in any way. Their cultural practices that they presented the Sheraton, like hula, for example, is a spiritual practice. It's a traditional dance. And the way that it's being presented is not that it's taken out of context. So like. When you think about spending your dollars, is it regenerating culture?
Is it regenerating a person? Is it regenerating a place?
Michelle: Can you speak a little bit more to why these sort of changes might be important?
Dr. Kiona: For example, again, in Hawaii, the most obvious, uh, It's just so hammered with tourism that it has warped the culture, it has warped the land, it has warped people's relationships.
I mean, like, we talk about the aloha spirit, and it's like some deep, profound, um, Hawaiian practice. And you're supposed to be welcoming to visitors, but how can you when those visitors are killing you, not even knowing it, you know, um, I mean, you see it in Spain where it's like, there's so many tourists that like people like Spanish, people are getting irritated and not even welcoming tourists, but is that the proper response?
Like, I don't know. I'm not the person to judge that, but I feel like we can evade all of that. If we were invited, like, are you being invited into that space? So I think the problem with overturism is, are you listening to the people, um, and are you doing it correctly? So for example, so many people won't book our trips to Hawaii because they're like, um, no, like the locals say, like, don't come to Hawaii.
And I'm like, yeah, in that way.
Michelle: Yeah, I remember after the fires in Maui in 2023 in Lahaina, there was a lot of debate about if it was okay to travel to Hawaii, you know, when they're still dealing with this disaster, if it would be supporting the economy, you know, that sort of thing. And I remember seeing posts on social media that were really shaming tourists for going at that time.
How do you navigate this idea of, you know, knowing if you're welcome or invited when there's a lot of mixed messaging sometimes?
Dr. Kiona: That's a really, really good question and something that I have struggled with as well. I mean, even when you, when you look at Lahaina, it's like snorkeling boats were like out there and they're like still counting dead bodies.
But you know what? Native boats weren't out there. However, Native owned boats were affected by people saying, don't come because they're like, yeah, we can't go three months without any snorkeling tours. Like we do need some, but like, while we're counting dead bodies, please don't come. And so I think it really is difficult.
And I think sometimes social media, It feeds off of conflict. And so I don't think that social media is the best place, honestly, to get a real vibe or a real pulse on like what's going on because the angrier you are on social media, the more comments you get, the more algorithm, et cetera. In my experience, there's always so much nuance baked into like whether or not you should come.
And it's usually not whether or not you should come. It's like. whether you should come in this way or not, or what you should be bringing or what you should not be occupying.
Michelle: This is Peace Talks Radio. I'm Michelle Aslan. That was my conversation with Dr. Kiona, founder of ReRoute Travel. Next, a conversation with Dr. Freya Higgins Desbiolles. She joins us to talk about addressing the systemic issues of overtourism.
Dr. Freya: I, uh, grew up in tourism basically. I grew up on an island off the coast of southern North Carolina, a place called Oak Island, and it was a second home holiday spot in my youth, and I watched it change my Um, community and its infrastructure and its connections to the outside world.
So one of the things I noticed was the prices and inflation became a problem for local people because we had less income than the tourists, but at the same time as a young person, I actually love the visitors because they brought excitement, they brought new, uh, youth to engage with. And, you know, they brought infrastructure.
So, for instance, we didn't have a cinema in my hometown when I was young and with, um, the visitors and the rise in numbers that resulted in that, from that, uh, we had cinema and other leisure opportunities as a result of that infrastructural spending, you know, over the years, I've seen the duality of tourism that it's both a.
A force for intercultural connections, and in my own work, I argue it can be a vehicle for peace, but at the same time, it has grave negative impacts when it's not managed appropriately. So that's why it's really important to be thoughtful and particularly as we have growing numbers of people traveling to be thoughtful about how we manage it and do it right.
Michelle: Can you talk about what sort of structural practices allow for overtourism? What are some of the larger systemic causes of this issue?
Dr. Freya: I think one of the most important reasons that this occurs is because our economies has our measure of success as continual growth and in terms of tourism, that means tourism marketing agencies and the government officials responsible for overseeing tourism want more growth and they measure that as the, the, um, metric for their success. That is one of the key factors that we don't think about quality tourism. Instead, we think about growing numbers year on year and looking at that increase in tourism. And then there's factors like the mass tourism industry, Which caters to those numbers and then tries to make profits from that.
And, of course, the profits are driven by those growth goals. So I'm thinking about the cruise ships and cruise ships are 1 of the things that communities complain about. Experiencing over tourism because the cruise ships are getting larger and larger, but when these cruise ships arrive at a old city of Europe, like Dubrovnik or Venice or Barcelona, they overwhelm the local community because they drop off those 4 to 5000 people within a period of maybe an eight hour shore visit, and those tourists all want to see the iconic sites of that destination, and it may be three or four ships that are in port at the same time. And, you know, these cheap flights from. Corporations like Ryanair mean that you could fly from London to a European destination, I don't know, Barcelona or Mallorca for as low as 30 euros, um, to enjoy a weekend getaway.
And with this, you get this cultural thing where. People are going on stag parties, and that's where that perception comes that people in Amsterdam have complained about the fact that these party tourists are disrespectful and that they have really negative impacts. And then I'll just say 1 last thing in this string of factors we're talking about, you've got the disruption of platforms like Airbnb, which are making the model of accommodations and tourism change so that people are able to book, um, family, um, stays in a residential community, rather than what was typical before in a hotel, um, tourism district where tourists were expected and then could behave as tourists when. Tourists book on a platform like Airbnb and stay in a apartment building where local people are living and they're doing intensive partying up until 3 and 4 am. But the neighbors need to go to work 8 a. m. the next morning. Then you get that disruption of local living as well as the impact upon the housing market and making it expensive for local people. to be able to afford housing because the housing stock is giving away to profit making for people that are owning multiple, um, Airbnb properties.
And how do we go about addressing some of those systemic practices, especially when they involve, you know, so many different kinds of actors? We have individual travelers, the tourism industry, and then governments, you know, on a variety of different levels.
Dr. Freya: Tourism is a somewhat unique economic engine of growth and development, because it's not one thing.
It's an amalgamation of businesses and service providers that cross a number of sectors. So it includes transport, hospitality, accommodation, tour operators. cultural and arts agency. So many different things make up the tourism industry, and that makes it hard to regulate. There's also this fact that The sector itself is seeking profits, and if it's not well regulated, most big businesses, the multinationals are not responsible to a particular community, and they're not embedded in the local environment.
So, you can't expect them to be the ones that will be answerable to that long term planning and management. They're seeking profits. Um, they will not limit themselves. That's the role of governments and government authorities at all levels. And those government authorities have been largely Convinced by this neoliberal model that less government is better, uh, less red tape, less regulation allows that free market to deliver profits and economic opportunities to investors, which then trickle down to the local community.
But in tourism, the more people we have traveling, the need for regulation becomes more. So that's where we are. I think government authorities at all levels are the key to this, and they need to be sophisticated in how they do it.
Michelle: Are there examples of governments who have tried, who have found some solutions or strategies that have been effective?
Dr. Freya: I think one of the extremes that's been used, but I liked it for its creativity, was that there were overwhelming numbers of visitors that were coming to a particular location that gave a unique view of Mount Fuji in Japan. And it was from social media influence that there was this iconic photo that people were seeking that would have a petrol station with Mount Fuji in the back.
And so social media influencers made that a desirable photo to capture, but people were causing a danger and a nuisance when they flock to this place to get those photos. And so what happened was local authority set up a wall as a barrier to actually block the ability to get that photo. So that's one interesting way.
Other places are looking at. Forms of rationing. This has been done in the United States for a very long time in terms of very popular national parks to have a lottery system to be able to visit some like Yellowstone um, to get access to the parks. So rationing is another way or tourism taxes as I mentioned.
There's also an opportunity though that's an interesting market solution and that's a tactic which is get the More, um, high income luxury tourists to pay more for exclusive experiences. And so this is a demand management practice that's been talked about for the Acropolis and for the Sistine Chapel.
I'm not necessarily in favor of that because it's elitist. And it goes against that idea of. Democratization of travel. I'm actually more interested, though, from my own research and my own experiences that the way that we manage over tourism is to preference and prioritize involvement of the local residents to ask them what their experiences of tourism are.
Where the pain points are and what their solutions might be to that. And then when we preference the local residents, what we'll find is there's divisions within the communities, business owners and entrepreneurs will be in favor of growing tourism because they economically benefit from that others that might be.
Um, environmentally concerned conservationists are the opposite of that, where they want to restrict tourism and limit it because they see tourism as a negative force for them in their conservation efforts in protecting biodiversity and the natural environment. When we have conversations, for instance, through something like citizens assemblies, we could bring facts and data to the local residents and get them to have a dialogue and debate and critical conversations about these tradeoffs between these tensions that exist from using tourism for our economic goals, and that's the purpose of engaging with tourism. We're using it to develop our economies, bring in foreign exchange, create jobs and income for the local community, but at the same time managing it and limiting it.
So that our traditions, our social customs, our cultures. Are protected and respected and the beautiful environments in which we live, which are the very things that attract the tourist are conserved and protected and to find that right balance. I really think 1 of the long term solutions is to send to the local resident, bring in their knowledge and respect their knowledge into our planning and our decision making and our management.
Have them in conversations about how do we do those tradeoffs in a way that creates viable futures for the community, but also them for future generations of that community.
Michelle: You mentioned earlier that you see tourism as a potential vehicle for peace.
How can something like a vacation play a meaningful role in building a better world?
Dr. Freya: Uh, if we, if we change our mindsets, we could make this, uh, vision of tourism as a force for peace come true. But the fact of the matter is holidays are a human right. Um, they are a source of wellbeing and regeneration for people. This tourism actually, when. It is used to give people respite from hard lives.
And, you know, the working class work very hard in, um, in these difficult economic circumstances that we're in, some people are doing 2 to 3 jobs. And I really would not want to denigrate. The value of holidays for people's restoration, for connecting with their families, for having some downtime for their nervous systems and for their health and well being, that is not trivial.
Our holidays and our experiences would be so much richer. If we approach these as opportunities to both receive and give so that we all grow. Um, so, as tourists, so, for instance, in my hometown that I mentioned when I was a kid, the tourists opened up our world, they brought new places to us when we couldn't travel.
So that's, you know, a possibility that the tourists become a vehicle of internationalization. intercultural connection when they approach it in a way of responsibility that I not only receive tours and experiences and great, great opportunities, but I'm also the source of giving those opportunities to the people I encounter in the local community.
Paul: Well, we've closed today's program called the toll of over tourism seeking a peaceful balance with Freya Higgins Desbiolles, an academic and educator on the topic of justice and tourism sharing her belief in the peacemaking potential for our travel. We've heard from our guests on today's episode that our trips can be personally enriching experiences, certainly, but all the more meaningful when they're mutually beneficial to the people and places we're visiting.
They emphasize the need to think more deeply about the communities that we visit and the connections we want to build on our journey. You can hear this program again and find out more about all of our guests and see photos, read and share transcripts. Check out all the programs in our series, in fact, dating back to 2002 at peacetalksradio.
com. That's peacetalksradio. com where you can also sign up for our podcast, a monthly newsletter, and importantly, consider a donation to our nonprofit media organization to keep this program going into the future. You can enjoy the content and do your part to help all at peacetalksradio. com. Nola Daves Moses is our executive director, Jessica Ticktin is our supervising producer. Allie Adleman composed and performs our theme music for co founder Suzanne Kryder and today's correspondent, Michelle Aslam and the rest of our team. I'm Paul Ingles. Thanks so much for listening to, and importantly for supporting Peace Talks Radio.
