disadvantages of urban tourism

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What's the problem with overtourism?

With visitor numbers around the world increasing towards pre-pandemic levels, the issue of overtourism is once again rearing its head.

When locals in the charming Austrian lakeside village of Hallstatt staged a blockade of the main access tunnel, brandishing placards asking visitors to ‘think of the children’, it highlighted what can happen when places start to feel overrun by tourists. Hallstatt has just 800 residents but has opened its doors to around 10,000 visitors a day — a population increase of over 1,000%. And it’s just one of a growing number of places where residents are up in arms at the influx of travellers.

The term ‘overtourism’ is relatively new, having been coined over a decade ago to highlight the spiralling numbers of visitors taking a toll on cities, landmarks and landscapes. As tourist numbers worldwide return towards pre-pandemic levels, the debate around what constitutes ‘too many’ visitors continues. While many destinations, reliant on the income that tourism brings, are still keen for arrivals, a handful of major cities and sites are now imposing bans, fines, taxes and time-slot systems, and, in some cases, even launching campaigns of discouragement in a bid to curb tourist numbers.

What is overtourism?

In essence, overtourism is too many people in one place at any given time. While there isn’t a definitive figure stipulating the number of visitors allowed, an accumulation of economic, social and environmental factors determine if and how numbers are creeping up.

There are the wide-reaching effects, such as climate change. Coral reefs, like the Great Barrier Reef and Maya Bay, Thailand, made famous by the Leonardo DiCaprio film, The Beach , are being degraded from visitors snorkelling, diving and touching the corals, as well as tour boats anchoring in the waters. And 2030 transport-related carbon emissions from tourism are expected to grow 25% from 2016 levels, representing an increase from 5% to 5.3% of all man-made emissions, according to the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO). More localised issues are affecting locals, too. Renters are being evicted by landlords in favour of turning properties into holiday lets, and house prices are escalating as a result. As visitors and rental properties outnumber local residents, communities are being lost. And, skyrocketing prices, excessive queues, crowded beaches, exorbitant noise levels, damage at historical sites and the ramifications to nature as people overwhelm or stray from official paths are also reasons the positives of tourism can have a negative impact.

Conversely, ‘undertourism’ is a term applied to less-frequented destinations, particularly in the aftermath of the pandemic. The economic, social and environmental benefits of tourism aren't always passed on to those with plenty of capacity and, while tourist boards are always keen for visitors to visit their lesser-known attractions, it’s a more sustainable and rewarding experience for both residents and visitors.

What’s the main problem with it?

Overcrowding is an issue for both locals and tourists. It can ruin the experience of sightseeing for those trapped in long queues, unable to visit museums, galleries and sites without advance booking, incurring escalating costs for basics like food, drink and hotels, and faced with the inability to experience the wonder of a place in relative solitude. The absence of any real regulations has seen places take it upon themselves to try and establish some form of crowd control, meaning no cohesion and no real solution.

Justin Francis, co-founder and CEO of Responsible Travel, a tour operator that focuses on more sustainable travel, says “Social media has concentrated tourism in hotspots and exacerbated the problem, and tourist numbers globally are increasing while destinations have a finite capacity. Until local people are properly consulted about what they want and don’t want from tourism, we’ll see more protests.”

A French start up, Murmuration, which monitors the environmental impact of tourism by using satellite data, states that 80% of travellers visit just 10% of the world's tourism destinations, meaning bigger crowds in fewer spots. And, the UNWTO predicts that by 2030, the number of worldwide tourists, which peaked at 1.5 billion in 2019, will reach 1.8 billion,   likely leading to greater pressure on already popular spots and more objection from locals.

Who has been protesting?

Of the 800 residents in the UNESCO-listed village of Hallstatt, around 100 turned out in August to show their displeasure and to push for a cap on daily visitors and a curfew on tour coach arrivals.

Elsewhere, residents in Venice fought long and hard for a ban on cruise ships, with protest flags often draped from windows. In 2021, large cruise ships over 25,000 tonnes were banned from using the main Giudecca Canal, leaving only smaller passenger ferries and freight vessels able to dock.

In France, the Marseille Provence Cruise Club introduced a flow management system for cruise line passengers in 2020, easing congestion around the popular Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde Basilica. A Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) spokesperson said, “Coaches are limited to four per ship during the morning or afternoon at the Basilica to ensure a good visitor experience and safety for residents and local businesses. This is a voluntary arrangement respected by cruise lines.”

While in Orkney, Scotland, residents have been up in arms at the number of cruise ships docking on its shores. At the beginning of 2023, the local council confirmed that 214 cruise ship calls were scheduled for the year, bringing around £15 million in revenue to the islands. Following backlash from locals, the council has since proposed a plan to restrict the number of ships on any day.

What steps are being taken?  

City taxes have become increasingly popular, with Barcelona increasing its nightly levy in April 2023 — which was originally introduced in 2012 and varies depending on the type of accommodation — and Venice expects to charge day-trippers a €5 fee from 2024.

In Amsterdam this summer, the city council voted to ban cruise ships, while the mayor, Femke Halsema, commissioned a campaign of discouragement, asking young British men who planned to have a 'vacation from morals’ to stay away. In Rome, sitting at popular sites, such as the Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps, has been restricted by the authorities.

And in Kenya’s Maasai Mara, meanwhile, the Narok County governor has introduced on-the-spot fines for off-roading. He also plans to double nightly park fees in peak season.

What are the forecasts for global tourism?  

During the Covid pandemic, tourism was one of the hardest-hit industries — according to UNWTO, international tourist arrivals dropped 72% in 2020. However, traveller numbers have since been rapidly increasing, with double the number of people venturing abroad in the first three months of 2023 than in the same period in 2022. And, according to the World Travel Tourism Council, the tourism sector is expected to reach £7.5 trillion this year, 95% of its pre-pandemic levels.

While the tourism industry is forecast to represent 11.6% of the global economy by 2033, it’s also predicted that an increasing number of people will show more interest in travelling more sustainably. In a 2022 survey by Booking.com, 64% of the people asked said they would be prepared to stay away from busy tourist sites to avoid adding to congestion.

Are there any solutions?  

There are ways to better manage tourism by promoting more off-season travel, limiting numbers where possible and having greater regulation within the industry. Encouraging more sustainable travel and finding solutions to reduce friction between residents and tourists could also have positive impacts. Promoting alternative, less-visited spots to redirect travellers may also offer some benefits.

Harold Goodwin, emeritus professor at Manchester Metropolitan University, says, “Overtourism is a function of visitor volumes, but also of conflicting behaviours, crowding in inappropriate places and privacy. Social anthropologists talk about frontstage and backstage spaces. Tourists are rarely welcome in backstage spaces. To manage crowds, it’s first necessary to analyse and determine the causes of them.

Francis adds: “However, we must be careful not to just recreate the same problems elsewhere. The most important thing is to form a clear strategy, in consultation with local people about what a place wants or needs from tourism.”

As it stands, overtourism is a seasonal issue for a small number of destinations. While there is no one-size-fits-all solution, a range of measures are clearly an option depending on the scale of the problem. For the majority of the world, tourism remains a force for good with many benefits beyond simple economic growth.

Related Topics

• OVERTOURISM
• SUSTAINABLE TOURISM

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Urban Tourism in the Global South pp 1–37 Cite as

The Other Half of Urban Tourism: Research Directions in the Global South

• Christian M. Rogerson 4 &
• Jayne M. Rogerson 4  
• First Online: 14 July 2021

578 Accesses

7 Citations

Part of the book series: GeoJournal Library ((URPGS))

In mainstream urban tourism scholarship debates there is only limited attention given to the urban global South. The ‘other half’ of urban tourism is the axis in this review and analysis. Arguably, in light of the changing global patterns of urbanization and of the shifting geography of leading destinations for urban tourism greater attention is justified towards urban settlements in the global South. The analysis discloses the appearance of an increasingly vibrant scholarship about urban tourism in the setting of the global South. In respect of sizes of urban settlement it is unsurprising that the greatest amount of attention has been paid to mega-cities and large urban centres with far less attention so far given to tourism occurring either in intermediate centres or small towns. In a comparative assessment between scholarship on urban tourism in the global North versus South there are identifiable common themes and trends in writings about urban tourism, most especially in relation to the phenomenon of inter-urban competition, questions of sustainability and planning. Nevertheless, certain important differences can be isolated. In the urban global South the environment of low incomes and informality coalesce to provide for the greater significance of certain different forms of tourism to those which are high on the urban global North agenda. Three key issues are highlighted by this ‘state of the art’ overview, namely the significance of an informal sector of tourism, the distinctive characteristics of the discretionary mobilities of the poor, and the controversies surrounding slum tourism.

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In 2020 the World Bank introduced a new classification of countries: low-income, low-middle income, upper-middle income and high income. Macao SAR, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Qatar are classed as high income. As the focus of this book is South Africa, which the World Bank classifies as falling in the category of upper-middle income bracket, the high income urban destinations are viewed as Norths within the South and thus not included in our research overview of the global South.

This section builds upon and extends certain of the discussion presented in Rogerson and Saarinen ( 2018 ).

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Rogerson, C.M., Rogerson, J.M. (2021). The Other Half of Urban Tourism: Research Directions in the Global South. In: Rogerson, C.M., Rogerson, J.M. (eds) Urban Tourism in the Global South. GeoJournal Library(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71547-2_1

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UN Tourism and WTCF Advance Data-Driven Approach to City Tourism

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UN Tourism and the World Tourism Cities Federation (WTCF) have launched a new report highlighting the need to measure the social and environmental impact of tourism on urban destinations.

The report assesses into the current situation and challenges of tourism data at the city level . The analysis will help advance the creation of global database of urban tourism, enabling better understanding and benchmarking of its size and value, both globally and by region.

More and better data needed

The new report provides an overview of the current situation of tourism data collection and reporting in 22 destinations in Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, Europe and the Middle East. The study:

• Identifies existing indicators and relevant data, highlighting the efforts taken to pave the path towards a creation of a global urban tourism database .
• Addresses the importance of measuring impacts beyond the economic factors and adding the socio-cultural and environmental dimensions of city tourism .
• Provides an overview of the potential use of big data for measuring urban tourism , including the main challenges, with a view to enhancing key elements of a smart destination including technology and governance.

The report was launched during the 2024 edition of the leading global travel and tourism trade fair, ITB Berlin

Towards a global urban tourism database

UN Tourism, with the support of the the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), the International Labour Organization (ILO) and other parties, is leading the development of a Statistical Framework for Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism (SF-MST) . This will develop a common approach to building harmonized data at the national and subnational level to support the analysis of tourism activity and its sustainability at all scales.

To date, the UN Tourism International Network of Sustainable Tourism Observatories has played a crucial role in helping destinations in its endeavours towards monitoring and evaluating the economic, environmental and social impacts of tourism fostering sustainable tourism practices locally and globally. 

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Urban tourism: the growing role of VFR and immigration

Journal of Tourism Futures

ISSN : 2055-5911

Article publication date: 28 July 2017

Issue publication date: 15 December 2017

The purpose of this paper is to offer some insights into the future of urban tourism with particular consideration given to immigration and visiting friends and relatives (VFR) travel. The discussion highlights the fact that cities are increasingly home to immigrants and transitory residents who host visitors, blurring resident-visitor distinctions, with implications for cultural and economic development, and tourism practitioners. These trends are highlighted, and discussions relating to the future are offered.

Design/methodology/approach

This discussion is based on a literature review and a conceptual approach.

The number of immigrants to cities keeps growing. These immigrants are shaping their new communities and changing local culture. They contribute to increased tourism through generating VFR travel and creating new tourist attractions.

Research limitations/implications

The implications of VFR and immigration on urban tourism are most visible in large urban centers that are major points of entry into a country and international magnets. They are not, however, limited to big cities.

Practical implications

There are potential implications for municipal governments and destination marketers to consider how cultural development and the touristic promotion of the city overlap with areas and direction for possible partnerships with community groups.

Social implications

This paper promotes the idea that for immigrants, to experience their communities through hosting VFR has positive social implications in terms of integration and cultural development.

Originality/value

This paper discusses a topic rarely addressed the impact of VFR and immigration on shaping urban tourism.

• Immigration

Griffin, T. and Dimanche, F. (2017), "Urban tourism: the growing role of VFR and immigration", Journal of Tourism Futures , Vol. 3 No. 2, pp. 103-113. https://doi.org/10.1108/JTF-10-2016-0036

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2017, Tom Griffin and Frederic Dimanche

Published in Journal of Tourism Futures. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial & non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode

Introduction

Urban centers are now home to the majority of the global population. The forecast is for this trend to continue as increasing immigration drives urban population growth ( International Organization for Migration, 2015 ; World Health Organization, 2016 ). With diversifying populations, the culture, infrastructure, trade and travel flows of cities are evolving and expanding ( Dwyer et al. , 2014 ). Simply put, the world is becoming more urban, with greater diversity in populations living in the same areas, creating burgeoning and increasingly cosmopolitan metropolises whose residents have expanding ties and networks across the globe.

One tourism-related implication of this rising urbanization and immigration is the increasing demand for travel among disparate friends and family members. This phenomenon is broadly conceptualized as visiting friends and relatives (VFR) travel. Despite global growth, both in volume and market share ( United Nations World Tourism Organization, 2000, 2016 ), VFR travel has been largely disregarded by researchers and misunderstood by city tourism organizations. The activity of VFR hosts and their visitors is therefore ever more relevant to urban centers and regions, as more residents arrive from diverse areas, increasing the cumulative social network of the urban population with implications for cultural and economic development.

Large urban centers are therefore already active VFR destinations. However, this paper aims to identify and demonstrate the importance of the links between urban places and VFR activity, and then argues that this type of travel will become more important for cities in the future. A review of urban tourism literature is followed by a discussion of trends and implications regarding immigration to cities. VFR travel is then discussed as a conceptual framework that helps identify links between resident, guest and community with implications for tourism marketing and business development, immigrant integration, and communal cultural development. Finally, the implications of future immigration patterns, consumption of travel and family demographics are considered regarding the ongoing importance of VFR for urban communities in the decades to come.

Urban tourism

Cities are central to much tourism activity. They are convenient and multi-layered destinations for travelers, and are in turn impacted by visitors in terms of economic, social and cultural development ( Edwards et al. , 2008 ). Edwards et al. (2008) suggest the term urban should refer to “busy, interactive built environment[s] purposely developed to meet the needs of many stakeholders” (p. 1035). Urban centers are distinct from rural areas in population, with greater volume and often more diverse residents, who for varying needs and desires live in comparatively close proximity ( Page and Hall, 2003 ). Cities are typically more accessible to visitors than rural areas with better transportation and tourism infrastructure. Further, because of their diversity, cities are hubs that offer a greater variety of reasons for tourists to visit, including business and culture, and as gateways to other regional destinations ( Edwards et al. , 2008 ; Page and Hall, 2003 ).

Scholarly interest in urban tourism has certainly increased in recent years, but is still comparatively limited given its size and significance ( Ashworth, 2003 ; Ashworth and Page, 2011 ; Page and Hall, 2003 ; Selby, 2004a ). Much urban tourism research has considered visitor activity within specific destinations ( Shaw and Williams, 1994 ), produced within a discourse of marketing and regeneration, marginalizing cultural and social implications ( Selby, 2004b ). This reflects the political nature of much urban destination marketing that is often influenced by the hotel sector ( Ford and Peeper, 2009 ; Gartrell, 1988 ; Heeley, 2015 ; Pike, 2004 ; Wang, 2011 ), creating a discourse of “putting heads in beds” as a measure of success for many destination marketing organizations (DMOs) despite the growing diversity of stakeholders ( Ford, 2008 ; Wang, 2011 ).

Tourism can transform cities, and is often directed by investment and policy development goals. Ioannides and Petridou (2016) argue that the neo-liberal shift in the USA (and experienced elsewhere) since the 1980s, and the subsequent lack of public funds, lead many city governments to pursue tourism as a tool for regeneration. However, there are concerns that the development inspired in this political environment created homogenized manifestations of “waterfront developments, repackaged culture and heritage, and café culture” ( Maitland and Newman, 2009 , p. 1) undermining local distinctiveness and smothering distinction. Tourism development should enhance resident quality of life through the development of cultural attractions made possible or enhanced by additional visitors, benefiting them psychologically and practically from the outcomes of tourism ( Ashworth and Page, 2011 ). However, development instigated by the desire to attract temporary visitors and the economic benefits they bring risks inauthenticity and avoids genuine resident engagement on how their community should evolve ( Heeley, 2015 ; Ioannides and Petridou, 2016 ).

Immigration to urban areas

Different countries and regions receive various groups of immigrants for different reasons including existing family connections, historical ties and a common language, immigration policies relating to labor and asylum, and political and economic links between countries ( Bell et al. , 2010 ; Rigg et al. , 2014 ; Skeldon, 2013 ). Historically, urban centers have attracted most of the immigrant population, and this is driving city populations upwards ( Edwards et al. , 2008 ; OECD, 2016 ; Seaton and Palmer, 1997 ). Globally there are around 3.9 billion people living in cities presently, with 6.3 billion forecast by 2050 ( United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2014 ). Immigrants are naturally drawn to cities as hubs of transportation, existing diaspora and employment opportunities ( International Organization for Migration, 2015 ). In major global gateway cities, such as London, Toronto or New York, upwards of a third of the populations are immigrants, with urban centers in Asia and Africa generally showing lower, but ever increasing numbers ( International Organization for Migration, 2015 ; Skeldon, 2013 ).

Immigrants bring their culture and increase cultural diversity in cities. New traditions, food, festivals and more add to urban vibrancy, producing new hybrid forms of culture that are distinct to the new immigrant community. Immigrant districts are traditional tourism attractions, and reflect the new waves of immigration from different diaspora to new neighborhoods across the city ( Griffin and Dimanche, 2016 ). Most urban areas receive migrants who are seeking a peaceful life and employment opportunities unavailable in their own communities. International events and economic necessity shape immigration flows. For example, the current Syrian crisis has led to an influx of Syrian refugees to European cities. In the 1970s, the political situation in Southeast Asia contributed to heavy flows of Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodian immigrants to France and the USA. Host countries can open the door to immigration because they need a larger workforce. For example, fast growing economies in the 1960s such as France, Germany, the UK or Canada and the USA attracted immigrants from poorer countries. The job opportunities were in the urban areas of Europe, North America and other economically powerful regions.

Researchers have long studied the impact of immigration on cities and their labor markets, economy (e.g. James et al. , 1998 ; Saiz, 2003 ) and crime ( Ousey and Kubrin, 2009 ). Cities that are strategic in managing immigrants can benefit significantly through the provision of skills and labor, and cultural development that diversity brings ( International Organization for Migration, 2015 ; OECD, 2016 ). As many developed nations’ populations age, communities are competing for highly skilled, healthy and young immigrants to help develop industries and public services, and make contributions to the tax pool ( Skeldon, 2013 ). Although recent political waves may contradict this, the opinion of international organizations remains that broadly speaking immigration brings positive impacts ( International Organization for Migration, 2015 ).

A large number of trips worldwide are initiated by the desire to visit friends and relatives ( Backer, 2007, 2010 ; Seaton, 1994 ). However, VFR has received comparatively little attention despite its substantial volume and importance to many travelers and communities. This is arguably due to the political nature of much destination marketing discourse ( Backer, 2007, 2011 ; Lee et al. , 2005 ; Morrison and O’Leary, 1995 ; Poel et al. , 2006 ; Scheyvens, 2007 ; Seaton and Palmer, 1997 ; Seaton and Tagg, 1995 ). The term VFR typically refers to one of four common visitor categories: respondents to visitor surveys are asked for their self-reported trip purpose and ascribed to either VFR, pleasure, business, or other ( Seaton, 1994 ). This conceptualization has been increasingly challenged, however, ( Moscardo et al. , 2000 ; Munoz et al. , 2017 ), as trip purpose alone excludes visitors who state alternate reasons (e.g. pleasure and business) but stay with a friend or relative, spend time with a resident they know, or even visit other destinations on route to a friend or relative that would otherwise not be considered.

Backer (2011) argued for the inclusion of accommodation use in conceptualizing VFR travel. Griffin (2013) went further to suggest that VFR should “broadly refer to all tourism experiences that involve a prior personal relationship between a visitor and resident no matter the stated trip purpose, accommodation used, or activities engaged in” (p. 235). These more comprehensive understandings better allow the impact personal relationships between residents and their VFR to be considered. For example, the convention visitor who chooses one event over another because she can catch up with an old friend for dinner, or the vacationers who choose a trip across Canada so they can spend time with their relatives in a town along the way, or the regional benefits of VFR visitors and their hosts in urban centers choosing side trips to downtown and rural areas ( Griffin, 2016 ; Griffin and Nunkoo, 2016 ); all of these examples, and more, would be excluded from VFR using the traditional trip purpose operationalization.

Not only is the volume of visitation generated through VFR underestimated, but the cultural and economic impacts on a destination are also distinct from other forms of tourism development. VFR is a more stable source of demand, with less seasonality and less significantly impacted by external threats ( Griffin, 2013 ). Further, economic benefits are more widely dispersed across a community and not concentrated in a tourism core, benefitting a wider range of stakeholders, and creating demand that is more easily subsumed within the routine of a city. VFR is more consistent with local demand and interests as residents guide and interpret their surroundings ( Shani and Uriely, 2012 ; Young et al. , 2007 ), creating greater political and economic capital for residents in the development of their own communities and culture ( Griffin, 2013 ). Residents as hosts also consume and co-create tourism with their guests ( Andrades and Dimanche, 2014 ), taking vacation time to host, keeping their spending in the region, creating demand for cultural infrastructure that enables further tourism promotion ( Griffin and Dimanche, 2016 ). VFR creates a context of leisure where disparate friends and relatives can reconnect affecting identity and well-being ( Griffin, 2015 ; Humbracht, 2015 ), where visitors can receive an “authentic” experience that creates reliable and influential word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing ( Litvin et al. , 2008 ), and residents are more obliged to take a leisure view of their own community that can improve attachment and pride ( Griffin, 2016 ).

The general disregard of VFR is at best a missed marketing opportunity. Worse, it is the exclusion of residents in shaping their community’s image, that otherwise is skewed to attract supposedly high-yield visitors with little connection destination, affecting the direction of investment in related marketing and cultural infrastructure. VFR demand helps to retain a connection with residents and the production and consumption of culture and tourism ( Caffyn, 2012 ; Mundt, 2011 ), avoiding the homogeneity and superficiality that other types of (urban) tourism development can create ( Ioannides and Petridou, 2016 ).

VFR and immigration

VFR and immigration are closely connected ( Williams and Hall, 2000 ), with implications for both communities and individuals. Cities with a large foreign population are likely to see flows of visitors from countries that were sources of immigration. As demand develops, and travel flows between the two communities are established, opportunities for further cultural connections, increased trade, and additional types of tourism open up ( Dwyer et al. , 2014 ). For immigrants who host, the VFR experience can inspire interaction with the new community in a leisure context, but importantly the experience is shared with someone who likely has familiar cultural understandings and mutual history. This has implications for immigrant hosts and their relationships with their visitors and new community.

VFR enables face-to-face interaction between host and guest, who can perform relationship roles, and demonstrate mutual care toward each other ( Baumeister and Leary, 1995 ; Cohen and Wills, 1985 ). For recent immigrants, isolation and culture shock can be an issue ( Mainil and Platenkamp, 2010 ), and the opportunity to spend quality time with a loved one or close friend can positively affect well-being after their guest has left ( Griffin, 2015 ). Hosting can also shift the gaze of the immigrant resident, from newcomer to expert, and of the community as a place of residence to a place of leisure. Leisure participation in general has been found to help immigrant integration (e.g. Horolets, 2012 ; Lange et al. , 2011 ; Rublee and Shaw, 1991 ; Stodolska and Livengood, 2006 ), and the added context of hosting a guest adds context to these experiences. Guiding a guest can help build attachment and pride for the host to the new community which becomes an essential and contextual backdrop to the personal relationship, establishing a sense of home through the collection of stories and souvenirs that bridge old and new worlds that endures beyond the visit itself ( Humbracht, 2015 ; Lange et al. , 2011 ; Larsen, 2008 ; Larsen et al. , 2007 ). The integration of immigrants, their sense of belonging to the place and culture, and the community’s positive response, adaptations and acceptance of new groups is vital for all of society to prosper ( Frideres, 2008 ; International Organization for Migration, 2015 ), and hosting is consistent with these goals.

VFR and urban communities

Urban residents have often been viewed as the demand side of tourism ( Ashworth and Page, 2011 ), but they are also an important component of supply for their own communities. Cities are natural VFR destinations because they often have large and diverse populations (e.g. Statistics Canada, 2015 ). There is overlap between VFR and the nature of urban populations. As a growing number of people live and work in multiple cities on a rotating basis ( International Organization for Migration, 2015 ; OECD, 2016 ) and populations are made up of new or temporary residents who, to varying extents, treat their new communities as destinations to explore ( Edwards et al. , 2008 ; Griffin, 2016 ), the dichotomous view of resident and visitor becomes ever more blurred. Cities are therefore a “complex mix of ‘intersecting mobilities’” ( Maitland and Newman, 2009 , p. 14), and the distinction between visitor and local is, in many cases, uninformed ( Cohen and Cohen, 2012 ). Arbitrary definitions shape binary understandings of tourist and resident. A tourist is technically someone who stays for less than a year ( Govers et al. , 2008 ), and an immigrant someone who stays for a year or more ( Skeldon, 2013 ). Although useful for measurement, many individuals will struggle to categorize themselves this simply; for example, international students, temporary workers, those seconded to a satellite office for a period of months, or who visit places on a regular but seldom frequency ( Skeldon, 2013 ). Rigid distinctions between home and away, “extraordinary and ordinary, pleasure and boredom, liminality and rules, exotic others and significant others” ( Larsen, 2008 , p. 21) limit an appreciation for the lived realities of many. Many transitory and newcomer residents will attract and cause mobility to their cities, whether for short leisure-based trips, or more permanent migration. Mobile residents, of which urban areas are home to, create reason and demand for others to visit.

Ashworth (2003) asked urban tourism researchers to consider “‘[w]hat is particularly urban about urban tourism?’ and; ‘Which special characteristics of all or some cities are relevant to which kinds of tourism?’” (p. 147). Arguably the nature of residents’ own mobilities and their relationships with others is a consistent and recognizable phenomenon at varying levels across cities. This three-way relationship between resident-visitor-community in VFR urban travel experiences challenges issues of homogenized neo-liberal tourism development and binary views resident-visitor ( Heeley, 2015 ; Ioannides and Petridou, 2016). This is consistent with a shift in demand for post-fordist experiences ( Mowforth and Munt, 2008 ; Page and Hall, 2003 ), with individualized and authentic experiences that accrue cultural capital ( Bourdieu, 1986 ). VFR travel and its confluence with immigration may not strictly be a uniquely urban experience, but is predominantly consumed within and affects urban environments ( Page and Hall, 2003 ).

VFR and urban destinations in the future

The following section draws together some key predictions that have implications for the rising importance of VFR-related travel for urban communities.

Increasing immigration and new political environments

Recent politics in Europe and the USA have seen pushes to slow immigration, but it is difficult to predict to what extent the intent and values that have fueled these political movements will endure and affect global migration into the future. Despite empirical evidence that demonstrates the generally positive impacts of migration on economies, it is vital to note that immigration is experienced differently within a country ( OECD, 2016 ). Urban areas receive more immigrants, and governments are increasingly seeking ways to either encourage or require newcomers to settle away from the large metropolises to smaller urban areas ( OECD, 2016 ). It is likely, therefore, that the overall volume of immigration will not be diminished in the future, but newcomers may be dispersed to a greater number of smaller urban centers. This will see VFR demand to a greater number of urban centers grow, both from source countries, but also between cities as immigrants travel domestically to visit each other.

Nature of demand for VFR travel

This changing political environment is also creating instability for the travel industries. For some, movement is increasingly restricted, and for others the desire for travel is reduced. Political instability within a destination harms the appeal of the place for vacation and convention visitors, and with present uncertainties within many source communities the desire for frivolous travel is also likely to be limited ( Frommer, 2017 ; Rosenbloom, 2016 ; Sönmez, 1998 ). However, where demand for other types of travel may decline in times of uncertainty, VFR travel will persist, as “[c]opresent interaction remains […] the fundamental mode of human intercourse and socialization” ( Boden and Molotch, 1994 , p. 258). The desire to spend time with loved ones does not dissipate because of the need for belonging, identity, and well-being ( Baumeister and Leary, 1995 ; Cohen and Wills, 1985 ; Schänzel and Yeoman, 2015 ; Urry, 2002 ), and VFR demand overrides to a greater extent these issues that affect other more fluctuating types of tourism. Further, knowing a local as a host may help visitors feel extended comfort and security knowing they are being guided by someone they trust. The stronger the attachment to a destination the easier it is to convert potential visitors to actual, and personal connections with resident friends and relatives can be a powerful attraction and reason for repeat visits ( Ashworth and Page, 2011 ). In these increasingly politically uncertain times may prove an important and stable source of demand for urban centers. If current political environments continue, and travel is either restricted or made less appealing, then VFR will become a more important part of urban destinations’ activity.

Evolution of the family

The structure and nature of relationships among families is evolving and forecast to continue, with “most extended families [that] live geographically apart” ( Schänzel and Yeoman, 2015 , p. 142). Family travel is therefore an increasingly important and developing segment ( Schänzel and Yeoman, 2015 ). As family members are often distant, it is not just demand for broadly speaking leisure-based travel, but mobility that enables the performance of social roles and exchange of social capital. For example, increasing numbers are living longer and healthier, and for grandparents to provide child care, they must now travel to do so. In many communities the number of people living alone has also increased, and due to advances in medicine and quality of life there are likely to be a growing number of people who will live alone in their older years, another predictor that VFR demand will remain and grow as people seek quality time and interaction with their distant loved ones ( Hall and Ogden, 2003 ; Ortman et al. , 2014 ). Further, family celebrations such as marriage or birthdays are also requiring travel to be made in order for distant friends and family to share milestones together ( Backer and King, 2015 ; Schänzel and Yeoman, 2015 ). In addition, as the middle classes of many nations grow, particularly India and China, the context of strong family ties and immigration hold particular interest and implications for VFR travel from and within these new economies ( Backer and King, 2015 ). Although not specific for urban areas, as cities expand and become more diverse the demand and opportunities for these types of travel experiences, and the multi-purpose travel opportunities they bring, will rise accordingly.

Changing world order

Looking even further ahead beyond the immediate future and potential impact of current immigration policies and environments is the changing world order. Many countries that are the source for much emigration around the world are also seeing a rising middle class and economic development, which are stimulating outbound tourism ( Webster and Ivanov, 2015 ). Whereas the potential for vacation- and business-related travel has been often considered ( Mariani et al. , 2014 ; Smeral, 2010 ), the cultural and historical connections between countries that send and receive immigrants will influence all future travel flows ( Webster and Ivanov, 2015 ). Cities that have been traditional destinations for immigrants from these developing economies and who already see cultural connections are likely to see a growing demand for VFR-related travel as middle classes increase.

Climate change

As impacts of climate change become more severe and frequent some are predicting that the price of transport will increase, with some calling for carbon rationing and limitations on air travel ( Gössling et al. , 2008 ; Higham et al. , 2016 ; Peeters and Dubois, 2010 ). It is possible that in the future, unless significant changes in technology are made, excessive air travel could become less socially acceptable, more expensive and restricted. If this happens, VFR demand will become a much higher proportion of all travel. Cities with immigrants will likely become hubs for VFR visitors as distant friends and relatives use their limited air travel to see each other. Regions around cities that are accessible by other forms of transport could become more appealing as leisure destinations for urban VFR visitors and their hosts. Visitors in general are increasingly seeking multi-destination trip experiences for the variety, efficiency, and reduced risk of dissatisfaction ( Lue et al. , 1993 ), and immigrant hosts in urban destinations are already taking their guests to regional destinations as side trips ( Griffin, 2016 ; Griffin and Nunkoo, 2016 ). If long-haul travel becomes limited or restricted, this type of multi-destination trip will become more prevalent.

Implications for practitioners

There are important implications for urban tourism practitioners. Initially, urban DMOs need to view tourism within the context of their communities. Even if the promotion of traditional leisure and convention tourism is the priority, viewing these travel patterns in isolation from other mobility flows is short-sighted. Urban DMOs should engage and work with other agencies that promote the destination reputation and image to other groups, whether this be trade missions, universities seeking international students, or other government agencies with international connections. The role of DMOs is shifting from marketing to communication ( Heeley, 2015 ) and developing long-term awareness among all forms of mobility is vital. As an ever increasing proportion of residents are newcomers, the services, information and experiences they seek will overlap those traditionally provided for tourists. Traditional tourism marketing and services therefore have a substantial role to play in helping attract and integrate new residents. Conversely, engaging new residents has implications for tourism promotion and activity. A community with happy and engaged residents develops culture and a spirit of hospitality making it an appealing place to visit. Helping newcomers feel settled should be of primary interest to many agencies, but should also be important for urban DMOs regarding the image and reputation of their community.

Urban tourism practitioners should therefore be concerned with the quantity and quality of VFR-related experiences that happen in their community, and the actual and potential influence they have in furthering the destination image and awareness through personal and online networks. Policy makers and marketers should consider tourism not just as a promotion and development of experiences for outsiders, but also from a cultural development perspective ( Edwards et al. , 2008 ) that attempts to link “local urban social cohesion to economic growth and global competitiveness” ( International Organization for Migration, 2015 , p. 4). DMOs should partner with settlement agencies and companies, welcoming newcomers, encouraging them to invite and host friends and relatives. Populations are different from one city to another, but identifying the types of relationships that residents have with their distant networks, and who those networks include, will provide valuable insight into how experiences of the destination are produced and disseminated through WOM marketing.

This discussion offers some insights into the future of urban tourism. Simply put, cities are receiving more immigrants, from more places, for varying amounts of time, who are first exploring the city as newcomers, and hosting friends and relatives. When immigrants settle, their collective activity, behavior, and influence in turn affect the culture and tourism offerings made available for other visitors and residents alike. Their neighborhoods, restaurants and festivals, for example, often become tourist attractions. VFR is important for cities; first, it brings more people to the destination. Second, it spreads authentic WOM marketing. Third, it encourages residents to become familiar, engaged with or refresh their attachment and awareness of their community as a place to explore and spend leisure, co-creating experiences and culture that affect the experiences of other tourists. Finally, the long-term impacts of hosting for immigrants are likely to make them feel more comfortable and settled. Adopting binary distinctions between residential and tourism development risks blunting culture and residents’ voice. The future of urban tourism will see the blurring of resident-visitor continue, and immigrant hybrid culture will offer distinct culture and narratives for cities. Urban DMOs need to better identify and feature cultural assets resulting from immigrant populations, but need to remain true to the authentic voice of the local communities; and understanding and engaging VFR and the relationship between residents and visitors will help.

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Acknowledgements

© Tom Griffin and Frederic Dimanche. Published in Journal of Tourism Futures. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial & non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode

Corresponding author

About the authors.

Tom Griffin is an Assistant Professor at the Ted Rogers School of Hospitality and Tourism Management, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada.

Frederic Dimanche is Professor and Director at the Ted Rogers School of Hospitality and Tourism Management, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada.

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• Published: 31 March 2023

The benefits of tourism for rural community development

• Yung-Lun Liu 1 ,
• Jui-Te Chiang 2 &
• Pen-Fa Ko 2  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  10 , Article number:  137 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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• Development studies

While the main benefits of rural tourism have been studied extensively, most of these studies have focused on the development of sustainable rural tourism. The role of tourism contributions to rural community development remains unexplored. Little is known about what tourism contribution dimensions are available for policy-makers and how these dimensions affect rural tourism contributions. Without a clear picture and indication of what benefits rural tourism can provide for rural communities, policy-makers might not invest limited resources in such projects. The objectives of this study are threefold. First, we outline a rural tourism contribution model that policy-makers can use to support tourism-based rural community development. Second, we address several methodological limitations that undermine current sustainability model development and recommend feasible methodological solutions. Third, we propose a six-step theoretical procedure as a guideline for constructing a valid contribution model. We find four primary attributes of rural tourism contributions to rural community development; economic, sociocultural, environmental, and leisure and educational, and 32 subattributes. Ultimately, we confirm that economic benefits are the most significant contribution. Our findings have several practical and methodological implications and could be used as policy-making guidelines for rural community development.

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Introduction

In many countries, rural areas are less developed than urban areas. They are often perceived as having many problems, such as low productivity, low education, and low income. Other issues include population shifts from rural to urban areas, low economic growth, declining employment opportunities, the loss of farms, impacts on historical and cultural heritage, sharp demographic changes, and low quality of life. These issues indicate that maintaining agricultural activities without change might create deeper social problems in rural regions. Li et al. ( 2019 ) analyzed why some rural areas decline while others do not. They emphasized that it is necessary to improve rural communities’ resilience by developing new tourism activities in response to potential urban demands. In addition, to overcome the inevitability of rural decline, Markey et al. ( 2008 ) pointed out that reversing rural recession requires investment orientation and policy support reform, for example, regarding tourism. Therefore, adopting rural tourism as an alternative development approach has become a preferred strategy in efforts to balance economic, social, cultural, and environmental regeneration.

Why should rural regions devote themselves to tourism-based development? What benefits can rural tourism bring to a rural community, particularly during and after the COVID pandemic? Without a clear picture and answers to these questions, policy-makers might not invest limited resources in such projects. Understanding the contributions of rural tourism to rural community development is critical for helping government and community planners realize whether rural tourism development is beneficial. Policy-makers are aware that reducing rural vulnerability and enhancing rural resilience is a necessary but challenging task; therefore, it is important to consider the equilibrium between rural development and potential negative impacts. For example, economic growth may improve the quality of life and enhance the well-being index. However, it may worsen income inequality, increase the demand for green landscapes, and intensify environmental pollution, and these changes may impede natural preservation in rural regions and make local residents’ lives more stressful. This might lead policy-makers to question whether they should support tourism-based rural development. Thus, the provision of specific information on the contributions of rural tourism is crucial for policy-makers.

Recently, most research has focused on rural sustainable tourism development (Asmelash and Kumar, 2019 ; Polukhina et al., 2021 ), and few studies have considered the contributions of rural tourism. Sustainability refers to the ability of a destination to maintain production over time in the face of long-term constraints and pressures (Altieri et al., 2018 ). In this study, we focus on rural tourism contributions, meaning what rural tourism contributes or does to help produce something or make it better or more successful. More specifically, we focus on rural tourism’s contributions, not its sustainability, as these goals and directions differ. Today, rural tourism has responded to the new demand trends of short-term tourists, directly providing visitors with unique services and opportunities to contact other business channels. The impact on the countryside is multifaceted, but many potential factors have not been explored (Arroyo et al., 2013 ; Tew and Barbieri, 2012 ). For example, the demand for remote nature-based destinations has increased due to the fear of COVID-19 infection, the perceived risk of crowding, and a desire for low tourist density. Juschten and Hössinger ( 2020 ) showed that the impact of COVID-19 led to a surge in demand for natural parks, forests, and rural areas. Vaishar and Šťastná ( 2022 ) demonstrated that the countryside is gaining more domestic tourists due to natural, gastronomic, and local attractions. Thus, they contended that the COVID-19 pandemic created rural tourism opportunities.

Following this change in tourism demand, rural regions are no longer associated merely with agricultural commodity production. Instead, they are seen as fruitful locations for stimulating new socioeconomic activities and mitigating public mental health issues (Kabadayi et al., 2020 ). Despite such new opportunities in rural areas, there is still a lack of research that provides policy-makers with information about tourism development in rural communities (Petrovi’c et al., 2018 ; Vaishar and Šťastná, 2022 ). Although there are many novel benefits that tourism can bring to rural communities, these have not been considered in the rural community development literature. For example, Ram et al. ( 2022 ) showed that the presence of people with mental health issues, such as nonclinical depression, is negatively correlated with domestic tourism, such as rural tourism. Yang et al. ( 2021 ) found that the contribution of rural tourism to employment is significant; they indicated that the proportion of nonagricultural jobs had increased by 99.57%, and tourism in rural communities had become the leading industry at their research site in China, with a value ten times higher than that of agricultural output. Therefore, rural tourism is vital in counteracting public mental health issues and can potentially advance regional resilience, identity, and well-being (López-Sanz et al., 2021 ).

Since the government plays a critical role in rural tourism development, providing valuable insights, perspectives, and recommendations to policy-makers to foster sustainable policies and practices in rural destinations is essential (Liu et al., 2020 ). Despite the variables developed over time to address particular aspects of rural tourism development, there is still a lack of specific variables and an overall measurement framework for understanding the contributions of rural tourism. Therefore, more evidence is needed to understand how rural tourism influences rural communities from various structural perspectives and to prompt policy-makers to accept rural tourism as an effective development policy or strategy for rural community development. In this paper, we aim to fill this gap.

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: the section “Literature review” presents the literature review. Our methodology is described in the section “Methodology”, and our results are presented in the section “Results”. Our discussion in the section “Discussion/implications” places our findings in perspective by describing their theoretical and practical implications, and we provide concluding remarks in the section “Conclusion”.

Literature review

The role of rural tourism.

The UNWTO ( 2021 ) defined rural tourism as a type of tourism in which a visitor’s experience is related to a wide range of products generally linked to nature-based activity, agriculture, rural lifestyle/culture, angling, and sightseeing. Rural tourism has been used as a valid developmental strategy in rural areas in many developed and developing countries. This developmental strategy aims to enable a rural community to grow while preserving its traditional culture (Kaptan et al., 2020 ). In rural areas, ongoing encounters and interactions between humans and nature occur, as well as mutual transformations. These phenomena take place across a wide range of practices that are spatially and temporally bound, including agriculture, forestry, fishing, hunting, farm tourism, cultural heritage preservation, and country life (Hegarty and Przezbórska, 2005 ). To date, rural tourism in many places has become an important new element of the regional rural economy; it is increasing in importance as both a strategic sector and a way to boost the development of rural regions (Polukhina et al., 2021 ). Urban visitors’ demand for short-term leisure activities has increased because of the COVID-19 pandemic (Slater, 2020 ). Furthermore, as tourists shifted their preferences from exotic to local rural tourism amid COVID-19, Marques et al. ( 2022 ) suggested that this trend is a new opportunity that should be seized, as rural development no longer relies on agriculture alone. Instead, other practices, such as rural tourism, have become opportunities for rural areas. Ironically, urbanization has both caused severe problems in rural areas and stimulated rural tourism development as an alternative means of economic revitalization (Lewis and Delisle, 2004 ). Rural tourism provides many unique events and activities that people who live in urban areas are interested in, such as agricultural festivals, crafts, historical buildings, natural preservation, nostalgia, cuisine, and opportunities for family togetherness and relaxation (Christou, 2020 ; Getz, 2008 ). As rural tourism provides visitors from urban areas with various kinds of psychological, educational, social, esthetic, and physical satisfaction, it has brought unprecedented numbers of tourists to rural communities, stimulated economic growth, improved the viability of these communities, and enhanced their living standards (Nicholson and Pearce, 2001 ). For example, rural tourism practitioners have obtained significant economic effects, including more income, more direct sales, better profit margins, and more opportunities to sell agricultural products or craft items (Everett and Slocum, 2013 ). Local residents can participate in the development of rural tourism, and it does not necessarily depend on external resources. Hence, it provides entrepreneurial opportunities (Lee et al., 2006 ). From an environmental perspective, rural tourism is rooted in a contemporary theoretical shift from cherishing local agricultural resources to restoring the balance between people and ecosystems. Thus, rural land is preserved, natural landscapes are maintained, and green consumerism drives farmers to focus on organic products, green chemistry, and value-added products, such as land ethics (Higham and Ritchie, 2001 ). Therefore, the potential contributions of rural tourism are significant and profound (Marques, 2006 ; Phillip et al., 2010 ). Understanding its contributions to rural community development could encourage greater policy-maker investment and resident support (Yang et al., 2010 ).

Contributions of rural tourism to rural community development

Maintaining active local communities while preventing the depopulation and degradation of rural areas requires a holistic approach and processes that support sustainability. What can rural tourism contribute to rural development? In the literature, rural tourism has been shown to bring benefits such as stimulating economic growth (Oh, 2005 ), strengthening rural and regional economies (Lankford, 1994 ), alleviating poverty (Zhao et al., 2007 ), and improving living standards in local communities (Uysal et al., 2016 ). In addition to these economic contributions, what other elements have not been identified and discussed (Su et al., 2020 )? To answer these questions, additional evidence is a prerequisite. Thus, this study examines the following four aspects. (1) The economic perspective: The clustering of activities offered by rural tourism stimulates cooperation and partnerships between local communities and serves as a vehicle for creating various economic benefits. For example, rural tourism improves employment opportunities and stability, local residents’ income, investment, entrepreneurial opportunities, agricultural production value-added, capital formation, economic resilience, business viability, and local tax revenue (Atun et al., 2019 ; Cheng and Zhang, 2020 ; Choi and Sirakaya, 2006 ; Chong and Balasingam, 2019 ; Cunha et al., 2020 ). (2) The sociocultural perspective: Rural tourism no longer refers solely to the benefits of agricultural production; through economic improvement, it represents a greater diversity of activities. It is important to take advantage of the novel social and cultural alternatives offered by rural tourism, which contribute to the countryside. For example, rural tourism can be a vehicle for introducing farmers to potential new markets through more interactions with consumers and other value chain members. Under such circumstances, the sociocultural benefits of rural tourism are multifaceted. These include improved rural area depopulation prevention (López-Sanz et al., 2021 ), cultural and heritage preservation, and enhanced social stability compared to farms that do not engage in the tourism business (Ma et al., 2021 ; Yang et al., 2021 ). Additional benefits are improved quality of life; revitalization of local crafts, customs, and cultures; restoration of historical buildings and community identities; and increased opportunities for social contact and exchange, which enhance community visibility, pride, and cultural integrity (Kelliher et al., 2018 ; López-Sanz et al., 2021 ; Ryu et al., 2020 ; Silva and Leal, 2015 ). (3) The environmental perspective: Many farms in rural areas have been rendered noncompetitive due to a shortage of labor, poor managerial skills, and a lack of financial support (Coria and Calfucura, 2012 ). Although there can be immense pressure to maintain a farm in a family and to continue using land for agriculture, these problems could cause families to sell or abandon their farms or lands (Tew and Barbieri, 2012 ). In addition, unless new income pours into rural areas, farm owners cannot preserve their land and its natural aspects; thus, they tend to allow their land to become derelict or sell it. In the improved economic conditions after farms diversify into rural tourism, rural communities have more money to provide environmental care for their natural scenic areas, pastoral resources, forests, wetlands, biodiversity, pesticide mitigation, and unique landscapes (Theodori, 2001 ; Vail and Hultkrantz, 2000 ). Ultimately, the entire image of a rural community is affected; the community is imbued with vitality, and farms that participate in rural tourism instill more togetherness among families and rural communities. In this study, the environmental benefits induced by rural tourism led to improved natural environmental conservation, biodiversity, environmental awareness, infrastructure, green chemistry, unspoiled land, and family land (Di and Laura, 2021 ; Lane, 1994 ; Ryu et al., 2020 ; Yang et al., 2021 ). (4) The leisure and educational perspective: Rural tourism is a diverse strategy associated with an ongoing flow of development models that commercialize a wide range of farming practices for residents and visitors. Rural territories often present a rich set of unique resources that, if well managed, allow multiple appealing, authentic, and memorable tourist experiences. Tourists frequently comment that the rural tourism experience positively contrasts with the stress and other negatively perceived conditions of daily urban life. This is reflected in opposing, compelling images of home and a visited rural destination (Kastenholz et al., 2012 ). In other words, tourists’ positive experiences result from the attractions and activities of rural tourism destinations that may be deemed sensorially, symbolically, or socially opposed to urban life (Kastenholz et al. 2018 ). These experiences are associated with the “search for authenticity” in the context of the tension between the nostalgic images of an idealized past and the demands of stressful modern times. Although visitors search for the psychological fulfillment of hedonic, self-actualization, challenge, accomplishment, exploration, and discovery goals, some authors have uncovered the effects of rural tourism in a different context. For example, Otto and Ritchie ( 1996 ) revealed that the quality of a rural tourism service provides a tourist experience in four dimensions—hedonic, peace of mind, involvement, and recognition. Quadri-Felitti and Fiore ( 2013 ) identified the relevant impact of education, particularly esthetics, versus memory on satisfaction in wine tourism. At present, an increasing number of people and families are seeking esthetic places for relaxation and family reunions, particularly amid COVID-19. Rural tourism possesses such functions; it remains a novel phenomenon for visitors who live in urban areas and provides leisure and educational benefits when visitors to a rural site contemplate the landscape or participate in an agricultural process for leisure purposes (WTO, 2020 ). Tourists can obtain leisure and educational benefits, including ecological knowledge, information about green consumerism, leisure and recreational opportunities, health and food security, reduced mental health issues, and nostalgia nurturing (Alford and Jones, 2020 ; Ambelu et al., 2018 ; Christou, 2020 ; Lane, 1994 ; Li et al., 2021 ). These four perspectives possess a potential synergy, and their effects could strengthen the relationship between rural families and rural areas and stimulate new regional resilience. Therefore, rural tourism should be understood as an enabler of rural community development that will eventually attract policy-makers and stakeholders to invest more money in developing or advancing it.

Methodology

The literature on rural tourism provides no generally accepted method for measuring its contributions or sustainability intensity. Although many statistical methods are available, several limitations remain, particularly in terms of the item generation stage and common method bias (CMB). For example, Marzo-Navar et al. ( 2015 ) used the mean and SD values to obtain their items. However, the use of the mean has been criticized because it is susceptible to extreme values or outliers. In addition, they did not examine omitted variables and CMB. Asmelash and Kumar ( 2019 ) used the Delphi method with a mean value for deleting items. Although they asked experts to suggest the inclusion of any missed variables, they did not discuss these results. Moreover, they did not assess CMB. Islam et al. ( 2021 ) used a sixteen-step process to formulate sustainability indicators but did not consider omitted variables, a source of endogeneity bias. They also did not designate a priority for each indicator. Although a methodologically sound systematic review is commonly used, little attention has been given to reporting interexpert reliability when multiple experts are used to making decisions at various points in the screening and data extraction stages (Belur et al., 2021 ). Due to the limitations of the current methods for assessing sustainable tourism development, we aim to provide new methodological insights. Specifically, we suggest a six-stage procedure, as shown in Fig. 1 .

Steps required in developing the model for analysis after obtaining the data.

Many sources of data collection can be used, including literature reviews, inferences about the theoretical definition of the construct, previous theoretical and empirical research on the focal construct, advice from experts in the field, interviews, and focus groups. In this study, the first step was to retrieve data from a critical literature review. The second step was the assessment of omitted variables to produce items that fully captured all essential aspects of the focal construct domain. In this case, researchers must not omit a necessary measure or fail to include all of the critical dimensions of the construct. In addition, the stimuli of CMB, for example, double-barreled items, items containing ambiguous or unfamiliar terms, and items with a complicated syntax, should be simplified and made specific and concise. That is, researchers should delete items contaminated by CMB. The third step was the examination of construct-irrelevant variance to retain the variances relevant to the construct of interest and minimize the extent to which the items tapped concepts outside the focal construct domain. Variances irrelevant to the targeted construct should be deleted. The fourth step was to examine intergroup consistency to ensure that there was no outlier impact underlying the ratings. The fifth step was to examine interexpert reliability to ensure rating conformity. Finally, we prioritized the importance of each variable with the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP), which is a multicriteria decision-making approach. All methods used in this study are expert-based approaches.

Selection of experts

Because this study explores the contributions of rural tourism to rural community development, it involves phenomena in the postdevelopment stage; therefore, a few characteristics are essential for determining the choice of experts. The elements used to identify the experts in this study were (1) the number of experts, (2) expertise, (3) knowledge, (4) diversity, (5) years working in this field, and 5) commitment to participation. Regarding the number of experts, Murphy-Black et al. ( 1998 ) suggested that the more participants there are, the better, as a higher number reduces the effects of expert attrition and rater bias. Taylor-Powell ( 2002 ) pointed out that the number of participants in an expert-based study depends not only on the purpose of the research but also on the diversity of the target population. Okoli and Pawlowski ( 2004 ) recommended a target number of 10–18 experts for such a purpose. Therefore, we recruited a group of 18 experts based on their stated interest in the topic and asked them to comment on our rationale concerning the rating priorities among the items. We asked them to express a degree of agreement or disagreement with each item we provided. We adopted a heterogeneous and anonymous arrangement to ensure that rater bias did not affect this study. The 18 experts had different backgrounds, which might have made it easier for them to reach a consensus objectively. We divided the eighteen experts into three subgroups: (1) at least six top managers from rural tourism businesses, all of whom had been in the rural tourism business for over 10 years; (2) at least six academics who taught subjects related to tourism at three different universities in Taiwan; and (3) at least six government officials involved in rural development issues in Taiwan.

Generating items to represent the construct

Step 1: data collection.

Data collection provides evidence for investigation and reflects the construct of interest. While there is a need to know what rural tourism contributes, previous studies have provided no evidence for policy-makers to establish a rural community strategy; thus, it is essential to use a second source to achieve this aim. We used a literature review for specific topics; the data we used were based on the findings being presented in papers on rural tourism indexed in the SSCI (Social Sciences Citation Index) and SCIE (Science Citation Index Expanded). In this study, we intended to explore the role of rural tourism and its contributions to rural development. Therefore, we explored the secondary literature on the state of the questions of rural development, sustainable development, sustainability indicators, regional resilience, farm tourism, rural tourism, COVID-19, tourist preferences, and ecotourism using terms such as land ethics, ecology, biodiversity, green consumerism, environmentalism, green chemistry, community identity, community integration, community visibility, and development goals in an ad hoc review of previous studies via Google Scholar. Based on the outcomes of this first data collection step, we generated thirty-three subattributes and classified them into four domains.

Step 2: Examine the face validity of omitted variables and CMB

Face validity is defined as assessing whether a measurement scale or questionnaire includes all the necessary items (Dempsey and Dempsey, 1992 ). Based on the first step, we generated data subattributes from our literature review. However, there might have been other valuable attributes or subattributes that were not considered or excluded. Therefore, our purposes for examining face validity were twofold. First, we assessed the omitted variables, defined as the occurrence of crucial aspects or facets that were omitted (Messick, 1995 ). These comprise a threat to construct validity that, if ignored by researchers, might result in unreliable findings. In other words, face validity is used to distinguish whether the researchers have adequately captured the full dimensions of the construct of interest. If not, the evaluation instrument or model is deficient. However, the authors found that most rural tourism studies have not assessed the issue of omitted variables (An and Alarcon, 2020 ; Lin, 2022 ). Second, we mitigated the CMB effect. In a self-report survey, it is necessary to provide a questionnaire without CMB to the targeted respondents, as CMB affects respondent comprehension. Therefore, we assessed item characteristic effects, item context effects, and question response process effects. These three effects are related to the respondents’ understanding, retrieval, mood, affectivity, motivation, judgment, response selection, and response reporting (Podsakoff et al., 2003 ). Specifically, items containing flaws from these three groups in a questionnaire can seriously influence an empirical investigation and potentially result in misleading conclusions. We assessed face validity by asking all the experts to scrutinize the content items that we collected from the literature review and the questionnaire that we drafted. The experts could then add any attribute or subattribute they thought was essential that had been omitted. They could also revise the questionnaire if CMB were embedded. We added the new attributes or subattributes identified by the experts to those collected from the literature review.

Step 3: Examine interexpert consensus for construct-irrelevant variances

After examining face validity, we needed to rule out items irrelevant to the construct of interest; otherwise, the findings would be invalid. We examined the interexpert consensus to achieve this aim. The purpose was to estimate the experts’ ratings of each item. In other words, interexpert consensus assesses the extent to which experts make the same ratings (Kozlowski and Hattrup, 1992 ; Northcote et al., 2008 ). In prior studies, descriptive statistics have often been used to capture the variability among individual characteristics, responses, or contributions to the subject group (Landeta, 2006 ; Roberson et al., 2007 ). Many expert-based studies have applied descriptive statistics to determine consensus and quantify its degree (Paraskevas and Saunders, 2012 ; Stewart et al., 2016 ). Two main groups of descriptive statistics, central tendencies (mode, mean, and median) and level of dispersion (standard deviation, interquartile, and coefficient of variation), are commonly used when determining consensus (Mukherjee et al., 2015 ). Choosing the cutoff point of interexpert consensus was critical because we used it as a yardstick for item retention and its value can also be altered by a number on the Likert scale (Förster and von der Gracht, 2014 ). In the case of a 5-point Likert scale, the coefficient of variation (CV) is used to measure interexpert consensus. Hence, CV ≤ 0.3 indicated high consensus (Zinn et al., 2001 ). In addition, based on the feedback obtained from the expert panel, we used standard deviation (SD) as another measurement to assess the variation in our population. Henning and Jordaan ( 2016 ) indicate that SD ≤ 1 represents a high level of consensus, meaning that it can act as a guideline for cutoff points. In addition, following Vergani et al. ( 2022 ), we used the percentage agreement (% AGR) to examine interexpert consensus. If the responses reached ≧ 70% 4 and 5 in the case of a 5-point Likert scale, it indicated that the item had interexpert consensus; thus, we could retain it. Moreover, to avoid the impact of outliers, we used the median instead of the mean as another measurement. Items had a high consensus if their median value was ≥4.00 (Rice, 2009 ). Considering these points, we adopted % AGR, median, SD, and CV to examine interexpert consensus.

Step 4: Examine intergroup consistency

In this expert-based study, the sample size was small. Any rater bias could have caused inconsistency among the subgroups of experts; therefore, we needed to examine the effect of rater bias on intergroup consistency. When the intergroup ratings showed substantially different distributions, the aggregated data were groundless. Dajani et al. ( 1979 ) remarked that interexpert consensus is meaningless if the consistency of responses in a study is not reached, as it means that any rater bias could distort the median, SD, or CV. Most studies have used one-way ANOVA to determine whether there is a significant difference between the expected and observed frequency in three or more categories. However, this method is based on large sample size and normal distribution. In the case of expert-based studies, the expert sample size is small, and the assessment distribution tends to be skewed. Thus, we used the nonparametric test instead of one-way ANOVA for consistency measurement (Potvin and Roff, 1993 ). We used the Kruskal‒Wallis test (K–W) to test the intergroup consistency among the three subgroups of experts. The purpose of the K–W test is to determine whether there are significant differences among three or more subgroups regarding the ratings of the domains (Huck, 2004 ). The judgment criteria in the K-W test depended on the level of significance, and we set the significance level at p  < 0.05 (Love and Irani, 2004 ), with no significant differences among groups set at p  > 0.05 (Loftus et al., 2000 ; Rice, 2009 ). We used SPSS to conduct the K–W test to assess intergroup consistency in this study.

Step 5: Examine interexpert reliability

Interexpert reliability, on the one hand, is usually defined as the proportion of systematic variance to the total variance in ratings (James et al., 1984 ). On the other hand, interexpert reliability estimation is not concerned with the exact or absolute value of ratings. Rather, it measures the relative ordering or ranking of rated objects. Thus, interexpert reliability estimation concerns the consistency of ratings (Tinsley and Weiss, 1975 ). If an expert-based study did not achieve interexpert reliability, we could not trust its analysis (Singletary, 1994 ). Thus, we examined interexpert reliability in this expert-based study. Many methods are available in the literature for measuring interexpert reliability, but there seems to be little consensus on a standard method. We used Kendall’s W to assess the reliability among the experts for each sample group (Goetz et al., 1994 ) because it was available for any sample size or ordinal number. If W was 1, all the experts were unanimous, and each had assigned the same order to the list of objects or concerns. As Spector et al. ( 2002 ) and Schilling ( 2002 ) suggested, reliabilities well above the recommended value of .70 indicate sufficient internal reliability. In this study, there was a strong consensus when W  > 0.7. W  > 0.5 represented a moderate consensus; and W  < 0.3 indicated weak interexpert agreement (Schmidt et al., 2001 ). To measure Kendall’s W , we used SPSS 23 to assess interexpert reliability.

Step 6: Examine the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process

After examining face validity, interexpert consensus, intergroup consistency, and interexpert reliability, we found that the aggregated items were relevant, authentic, and reliable in relation to the construct of interest. To provide policy-makers with a clear direction regarding which contributions are more or less important, we scored each attribute and subattribute using a multicriteria decision-making technique. Fuzzy AHP is a well-known decision-making tool for modeling unstructured problems. It enables decision-makers to model a complex issue in a hierarchical structure that indicates the relationships between the goal, criteria, and subcriteria on the basis of scores (Park and Yoon, 2011 ). The fuzzy AHP method tolerates vagueness and ambiguity (Mikhailov and Tsvetinov, 2004 ). In other words, fuzzy AHP can capture a human’s appraisal of ambiguity when considering complex, multicriteria decision-making problems (Erensal et al., 2006 ). In this study, we used Power Choice 2.5 software to run fuzzy AHP, determine weights, and develop the impact structure of rural tourism on sustainable rural development.

Face validity

To determine whether we had omitted variables, we asked all 18 experts to scrutinize our list of four attributes and 33 subattributes for omitted variables and determine whether the questionnaire contained any underlying CMB. We explained the meaning of omitted variables, the stimuli of CMB, and the two purposes of examining face validity to all the experts. In their feedback, the eighteen experts added one item as an omitted variable: business viability. The experts suggested no revisions to the questionnaire we had drafted. These results indicated that one omitted variable was revealed and that our prepared questionnaire was clear, straightforward, and understandable. The initially pooled 34 subattributes represented the construct of interest, and all questionnaires used for measurement were defendable in terms of CMB. The biasing effects of method variance did not exist, indicating that the threat of CMB was minor.

Interexpert consensus

In this step, we rejected any items irrelevant to the construct of interest. Consensus measurement played an essential role in aggregating the experts’ judgments. This study measured the AGR, median, SD, and CV. Two items, strategic alliance (AGR = 50%) and carbon neutrality (AGR = 56%) were rated < 70%, and we rejected them accordingly. These results are shown in Table 1 . The AGR, median, SD, and CV values were all greater than the cutoff points, thus indicating that the majority of experts in this study consistently recognized high values and reached a consensus for the rest of the 32 subattributes. Consequently, the four attributes and 32 subattributes remained and were initially identified as determinants for further analysis.

Intergroup consistency and interexpert reliability

In this study, with scores based on a 5-point Likert scale, we conducted the K–W test to assess intergroup differences for each subattribute. Based on the outcomes, the K–W test yielded significant results for all 32 subattributes; all three groups of experts reached consistency at p  > 0.05. This result indicated that no outlier or extreme value underlay the ratings, and therefore, intergroup consistency was reached. Finally, we measured interexpert reliability with Kendall’s W . The economic perspective was W  = 0.73, the sociocultural perspective was W  = 0.71, the environmental perspective was W  = 0.71, and the leisure and educational perspective was W  = 0.72. These four groups of W were all ≧ 0.7, indicating high reliability for the ranking order and convergence judged by all subgroup experts. These results are shown in Table 2 .

The hierarchical framework

The results of this study indicate that rural tourism contributions to rural community development comprise four attributes and thirty-two subattributes. The economic perspective encompasses nine subattributes and is weighted at w  = 0.387. In addition, rural tourism has long been considered a possible means of sociocultural development and regeneration of rural areas, particularly those affected by the decline in traditional rural

activities, agricultural festivals, and historical buildings. According to the desired benefits, the sociocultural perspective encompasses nine subattributes and is weighted at w  = 0.183. Moreover, as rural tourism can develop on farms and locally, its contribution to maintaining and enhancing environmental regeneration and protection is significant. Therefore, an environmental perspective can determine rural tourism’s impact on pursuing environmental objectives. Our results indicate that the environmental perspective encompasses seven subattributes and that its weight is w  = 0.237. Furthermore, the leisure and educational perspective indicates the attractiveness of rural tourism from visitors’ viewpoint and their perception of a destination’s value and contributions. These results show that this perspective encompasses seven subattributes and is weighted at w  = 0.193. This specific contribution model demonstrates a 3-level hierarchical structure, as shown in Fig. 2 . The scores for each criterion could indicate each attribute’s importance and explain the priority order of the groups. Briefly, the critical sequence of each measure in the model at Level 2 is as follows: economic perspective > environmental perspective > leisure and educational perspective > sociocultural perspective. Since scoring and ranking were provided by 18 experts from three different backgrounds and calculated using fuzzy AHP, our rural tourism contribution model is established. It can provide policy-makers with information on the long-term benefits and advantages following the completion of excellent community development in rural areas.

The priority index of each attribute and sub-attribute.

Discussion/Implications

In the era of sustainable rural development, it is vital to consider the role of rural tourism and how research in this area shapes access to knowledge on rural community development. This study provides four findings based on the increasing tendency of policy-makers to use such information to shape their policy-making priorities. It first shows that the demand for rural tourism has soared, particularly during COVID-19. Second, it lists four significant perspectives regarding the specific contributions of rural tourism to rural community development and delineates how these four perspectives affect rural tourism development. Our findings are consistent with those of prior studies. For example, geography has been particularly important in the rural or peripheral tourism literature (Carson, 2018 ). In terms of the local geographical context, two contributions could be made by rural tourism. The first stems from the environmental perspective. When a rural community develops rural tourism, environmental protection awareness is increased, and the responsible utilization of natural resources is promoted. This finding aligns with Lee and Jan ( 2019 ). The second stems from the leisure and educational perspective. The geographical context of a rural community, which provides tourists with geographical uniqueness, advances naturally calming, sensory-rich, and emotion-generating experiences for tourists. These results suggest that rural tourism will likely positively impact tourists’ experience. This finding is consistent with Kastenhoz et al. ( 2020 ). Third, although expert-based approaches have considerable benefits in developing and testing underlying phenomena, evidence derived from interexpert consensus, intergroup consistency, and interexpert reliability has been sparse. This study provides such evidence. Fourth, this research shows that rural tourism makes four main contributions, economic, sociocultural, environmental, leisure, and educational, to rural community development. Our results show four key indicators at Level 2. The economic perspective is strongly regarded as the most important indicator, followed by the environmental perspective, leisure and educational perspective, and sociocultural perspective, which is weighted as the least important. The secondary determinants of contributions have 32 subindicators at Level 3: each was identified and assigned a different weight. These results imply that the attributes or subattributes with high weights have more essential roles in understanding the contributions of rural tourism to rural community development. Policy-makers can use these 32 subindicators to formulate rural tourism development policies or strategies.

This study offers the following five practical implications for policymakers and rural communities:

First, we argue that developing rural tourism within a rural community is an excellent strategy for revitalization and countering the effects of urbanization, depopulation, deforestation, and unemployment.

Second, our analytical results indicate that rural tourism’s postdevelopment contribution is significant from the economic, sociocultural, environmental, leisure, and educational perspectives, which is consistent with Lee and Jan ( 2019 ).

Third, there is an excellent opportunity to build or invest more in rural tourism during COVID-19, not only because of the functions of rural tourism but also because of its timing. Many prior studies have echoed this recommendation. For example, Yang et al. ( 2021 ) defined rural tourism as the leading industry in rural areas, offering an output value ten times higher than that of agriculture in China. In addition, rural tourism has become more attractive to urban tourists amid COVID-19. Vaishar and Šťastná ( 2022 ) suggested that the COVID-19 pandemic created a strong demand for rural tourism, which can mitigate threats to public mental health, such as anxiety, depression, loneliness, isolation, and insomnia. Marques et al. ( 2022 ) showed that tourists’ preference for tourism in rural areas increased substantially during COVID-19.

Fourth, the contributions of this study to policy development are substantial. The more focused rural tourism in rural areas is, the more effective revitalization becomes. This finding highlights the importance of such features in developing rural tourism to enhance rural community development from multiple perspectives. This finding echoes Zawadka et al. ( 2022 ); i.e., policy-makers should develop rural tourism to provide tourists with a safe and relaxed environment and should not ignore the value of this model for rural tourism.

Fifth, our developed model could drive emerging policy issues from a supporting perspective and provide policy-makers with a more comprehensive overview of the development of the rural tourism sector, thus enabling them to create better policies and programs as needed. For example, amid COVID-19, rural tourism created a safe environment for tourists, mainly by reducing their fears of contamination (Dennis et al., 2021 ). This novel contribution that rural tourism destinations can provide to residents and visitors from other places should be considered and built into any rural community development policy.

This study also has the following four methodological implications for researchers:

First, it addresses methodological limitations that still impede tourism sustainability model development. Specifically, we suggest a six-stage procedure as the guideline; it is imperative that rural tourism researchers or model developers follow this procedure. If they do not, their findings tend to be flawed.

Second, to ensure that collected data are without extraneous interference or differences via subgroups of experts, the assessment of intergroup consistency with the K–W test instead of one-way ANOVA is proposed, especially in small samples and distribution-free studies.

Third, providing interexpert reliability evidence within expert-based research is critical; we used Kendall’s W to assess the reliability among experts for each sample group because it applies to any sample size and ordinal number.

Finally, we recommend using fuzzy AHP to establish a model with appropriate indicators for decision-making or selection. This study offers novel methodological insights by estimating a theoretically grounded and empirically validated rural tourism contribution model.

There are two limitations to this study. First, we examine all subattributes by interexpert consensus to delete construct-irrelevant variances that might receive criticism for their lack of statistical rigor. Future studies can use other rigorous methods, such as AD M( j ) or rWG ( j ) , interexpert agreement indices to assess and eliminate construct-irrelevant variances. Second, we recommend maximizing rural tourism contributions to rural community development by using the general population as a sample to identify any differences. More specifically, we recommend using Cronbach’s alpha, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the overall reliability and validity of the data and results. It is also necessary to provide results for goodness-of-fit measures—e.g., the goodness-of-fit index (GFI), adjusted goodness-of-fit index (AGFI), comparative fit index (CFI), normed fit index (NFI), Tucker–Lewis Index (TLI), standardized root mean square residual (SRMR), or root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA).

Numerous empirical studies have illustrated how rural tourism can positively and negatively affect the contexts in rural areas where it is present. This study reveals the positive contributions of rural tourism to rural community development. The findings show that using rural tourism as a revitalization strategy is beneficial to nonurban communities in terms of their economic, sociocultural, environmental, and leisure and educational development. The contribution from the economic perspective is particularly important. These findings suggest that national, regional, and local governments or community developers should make tourism a strategic pillar in their policies for rural development and implement tourism-related development projects to gain 32 benefits, as indicated in Fig. 2 . More importantly, rural tourism was advocated and proved effective for tourists and residents to reduce anxiety, depression, or insomnia during the COVID-19 pandemic. With this emerging contribution, rural tourism is becoming more critical to tourists from urban areas and residents involved in rural community development. With this model, policy-makers should not hesitate to develop or invest more in rural communities to create additional tourism-based activities and facilities. As they could simultaneously advance rural community development and public mental health, policy-makers should include these activities among their regional resilience considerations and treat them as enablers of sustainable rural development. We conclude that amid COVID-19, developing rural tourism is an excellent strategy for promoting rural community development and an excellent alternative that could counteract the negative impacts of urbanization and provide stakeholders with more positive interests. The proposed rural tourism contribution model also suggests an unfolding research plan.

Data availability

The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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We declare all authors involved in the work. The division of labor is stated as follows; Conceptualization: J-TC; Supervision: J-TC; Methodology: Y-LL; Investigation: Y-LL; Data collection, analysis, and curation: J-TC, Y-LL, P-FK; Original draft preparation: J-TC, Y-LL; Review: P-FK; Interpretation and editing: P-FK; Validation: J-TC, Y-LL, P-FK.

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Liu, YL., Chiang, JT. & Ko, PF. The benefits of tourism for rural community development. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 10 , 137 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-01610-4

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Travel Tips and Trivia

Last Updated: January 23, 2024

10 Primary Disadvantages of Tourism [Problems with Tourism]

Are you trying to find out about the main disadvantages of tourism? Read this article to learn about the biggest problems with tourism today, including the negative impact of tourism on the environment.

Danny Newman

Want to know about the disadvantages of tourism? In this post, I discuss 10 of them!

Travel is one of the best things in life, right?

Instagram-worthy sunsets, exploring new cultures, trying exotic foods — and tourism’s great for the host destination and its economy too.

Don’t get me wrong. There are a lot of wonderful things that come with tourism. It can boost economies, create jobs, generate wealth, and support conservation efforts.

But have you ever stopped to consider the potential disadvantages of tourism?

In this post, I’ll dive into the impact of tourism on the environment, the economy, local communities, and much more.

I’ll also discuss what we can all do to be more responsible travellers.

Let’s get started!

Here we go, then: Let’s start with the environmental impact of tourism!

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The Environmental Impact of Tourism

To begin, let’s start with some negative tourism impacts that can occur to the area’s environment and ecology.

1. Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Let’s face it — almost everything about our modern lifestyle contributes to global warming through greenhouse gas emissions.

Unfortunately, this also includes travelling.

In fact, experts estimate that as much as 5% of the world’s emissions of carbon dioxide are directly related to travel.

The most polluting type of travel, not surprisingly, is flying.

Planes account for 40% of greenhouse emissions within the tourism sector, with cars and taxis making up another 32%.

There’s also an environmental impact from hotel emissions too. Most accommodations still rely on fossil fuel energy sources to run air conditioning, heating, laundry services, pools, and spas.

In addition, companies need transportation and power to build and maintain hotels, clean up waste, and bring in food (and other products) from other regions.

Although some tourism companies are “going green,” many have not yet made the switch to renewable energy resources.

2. Overuse of Water

Sadly, 40% of the world’s population doesn’t have access to clean drinking water, let alone “extra” water for tourists to use in hotels, pools, and spas.

As an example, Las Vegas, Nevada lies in the middle of the desert and receives an average of four inches of rainfall per year.

Meanwhile, its residents (and millions of tourists) use a whopping 489 million gallons of water every single day .

In most places, the high tourist season coincides with the drier or less rainy parts of the year.

This compounds the issue as limited groundwater gets directed to tourist accommodations and attractions, leaving residents and farmers without adequate water.

In drought-stricken areas like Spain, Greece, India, Bali, and Zanzibar, this can spell disaster for the local population, increasing salinity in remaining freshwater and hindering farmers’ abilities to grow crops.

Now you know the first 2 impacts of tourism on the environment ,  let’s take a look at what’s left on the list!

3. Increased Waste Production

Did you know that one tourist can produce as much as 12kg (26 pounds) of solid waste per day ?

Why does this happen? Your guess is as good as mine. But here’s one theory:

Most people want to relax and take it easy on holiday.

Even if they adopt good habits at home like reusable bottles and shopping bags, chances are they aren’t doing those things on vacation.

Many parts of the world still rely on single-use plastic items, a lot of which ends up in the ocean and on the beaches that tourists visit.

Even in more eco-conscious places like Europe, the trash is out of control during peak season — there’s 40% more marine litter in the Mediterranean during the summer months!

Trash isn’t the only waste product, either.

While on holiday, travellers tend to order (and waste) more food, especially in restaurants and buffet settings.

There’s also the issue of sewage pollution, as well, especially in countries that lack the resources to properly dispose of it.

Sewage runoff that hasn’t been properly treated often ends up in the ocean, lakes, wetlands, and other natural areas, harming the local plant and animal life.

4. Loss of Biodiversity & Ecosystems

The rise of ecotourism is a two-edged sword.

On one hand, it increases awareness of the fragile ecosystems on our planet. On the other, it’s destroying them.

As more travellers seek to get closer to nature, destinations that feature rainforests, coral reefs, wetlands, and alpine forests are more popular than ever before.

Unfortunately, this influx of humans wreaks havoc on the very environments they’re hoping to admire.

To make way for more tourism, local governments may need to mine, pave, drain, develop, or deforest the area.

The results can include soil and sand erosion and the destruction of natural habitats.

Of course, development also leaves less space for the animals and plants that thrive in the area. Worldwide, an estimated 1 million different species are threatened with extinction in the next few decades.

In the following section, we’ll run through the social problems with tourism.

Potential Social Problems With Tourism

Until now we’ve focused on the environmental impact of tourism, but this isn’t the only potential disadvantage. Let’s switch gears and consider some negative impacts of tourism on society.

5. Displacement of Local Populations

Have you ever stayed at a five-star resort on the beach or pulled into port on an exotic island ?

Chances are that the pristine coastal area wasn’t just sitting there empty. More than likely, local residents had homes and businesses there that got “bought out” to make room for hotels, chain restaurants, and tourist attractions.

This displacement leaves less room for locals, often pushing them into crowded, poorer areas to make way for more tourism.

It can also erode the culture and identity of the destination as major corporate chains replace smaller “mom-and-pop” type businesses.

For locals who choose to work in the tourism sector, their jobs are often menial, low-paying, and seasonal, with little job security or opportunity for upward movement.

Too much tourism or too much tourist in one place is another tourism impacts our society…

6. Over-tourism

A word that literally means “too much tourism,” over-tourism is exactly what it sounds like — too many tourists descending on one place.

Prime examples include Thailand’s beautiful Maya Bay, the now-famous filming location for The Beach .

The fragile reef ecosystem and island were so destroyed by boat traffic, foot traffic, and plastic trash that the Thai government closed the island to visitors — for four years.

Other places notorious for over-tourism include Barcelona, Venice, Capri, Bali, and Boracay.

In fact, Venice went so far as to ban cruise ships from its historic centre and impose a “tourist fee” for day-trippers.

Why are governments taking such drastic measures against over-tourism?

Aside from the environmental problems that come with too many people in one place, it can also have a damaging effect on the locals’ ability to survive there.

In Barcelona, for example, many homeowners have turned their apartments into Airbnbs and VRBOs, driving rent prices up a shocking 51% in just a decade.

This has forced many residents into the (more affordable) suburbs while adding fuel to the problem of over-tourism in the city centre.

7. Exploitation of Local Cultures

We all love to travel to enjoy different cultures, but in some destinations, there’s a fine line between “enjoyment” and “exploitation.”

As more tourists visit an area, especially for cultural exploration, something called commodification often occurs.

This means taking an original aspect of local culture and commercialising it for mass consumption.

For example, in parts of Canada and the United States, tourists pay money to witness spiritual ceremonies “staged” by Native American communities.

At the same time, they buy themed items (such as totem poles or amulets) that hold deep meaning for the local culture but have been degraded to little more than cheap souvenirs.

In other areas, commercialising culture leads to locals wearing traditional costumes and putting on shows solely to entertain tourists.

For some people, this can be viewed as mocking important traditions.

Next up: other negative impacts of tourism we must consider!

Other Negative Impacts of Tourism

To round out our discussion, here are a few more potential disadvantages of tourism to consider.

8. Poorly Behaved Tourists

From stealing beach sand and slapping immigration officials to falling off statues after a night of binge drinking, the headlines are full of tourists behaving badly.

For whatever reason, some travellers feel free to act in rude, disrespectful, and even dangerous ways that they would never behave at home.

Even if they don’t get drunk and rowdy, tourists sometimes fail to show honour to the cultures and traditions of the country they’re visiting.

They may break rules or codes of conduct by dressing or gesturing in a way that offends locals. Or they may hold themselves in higher regard than the locals, perhaps even making derogatory racist remarks.

All of these behaviours increase hostility towards tourists and may even widen the socioeconomic gap in the region.

9. Foreign-Owned Businesses

In many areas, the majority of hotels, resorts, restaurants, and attractions are not owned or managed by locals.

Often they’re built and maintained by large foreign corporations and conglomerates.

As a result, most of the money coming into the country is being used for and by visitors, which can lead to significant losses for smaller, locally-owned businesses.

Because these local businesses miss out on opportunities to grow and expand, the country’s economy may suffer.

10. Unequal Growth of Infrastructure

Closely tied to the previous point is the problem of unequal or unfair infrastructure growth.

In many cases, the money coming into a tourist destination goes right back into developing and maintaining only the destination.

While the money goes back into the local tourism industry, other regions that desperately need improvement are neglected.

Rather than putting funds into areas that need more infrastructure — and improving the lives of local citizens — the government may choose to build more resorts and tourist attractions instead.

Last but not least, here are the 20 ways to minimise the negative impact of tourism.

How to Minimise the Negative Impact of Tourism

Our discussion is starting to sound a bit gloom-and-doom, so how can we put a positive spin on it?

We may not be able to solve all these problems with tourism overnight, but there are some things you can do to minimise your tourism impacts.

Here are 20 simple ways you can become a more responsible and respectful traveller:

1. Educate yourself about the local culture, etiquette and customs before you travel.

2. Stay at and dine in locally-owned establishments rather than corporate-owned chains.

3. Explore destinations that are “off the beaten path” rather than places known for over-tourism.

4. Learn (and try to use) a few words and phrases in the local language.

5. Act respectfully at sites of religious, historical, and cultural significance.

6. Reduce or eliminate your use of plastic and other waste products — reuse and recycle whenever possible.

7. Avoid travelling during peak tourist season.

8. Travel via train, bus, or other public transportation when possible.

9. If you must fly to your destination, choose direct flights to minimise your carbon footprint.

10. If you wish to travel with a tour group, seek out an eco-friendly company that employs locals and uses locally-owned accommodations and attractions.

11. Avoid “tourist trap” destinations and everything that comes with them, such as all-inclusive resorts, mega cruise ships, and commercialised cultural displays.

12. Never take “natural” souvenirs such as rocks, wood, or beach sand — not only does it destroy the environment, but it’s probably illegal.

13. Don’t buy souvenirs made from endangered species (i.e., natural furs, crocodile skins, tortoiseshell, etc).

14. Stay in one destination longer rather than moving around between many different areas.

15. Avoid using platforms like Airbnb or VRBO, especially in overtouristed areas.

16. Bring your reusable water bottle, drinking straw, cutlery, and shopping bags from home to reduce plastic waste.

17. Buy food from local markets and independently-owned restaurants rather than chain grocery stores.

18. Be mindful when you take pictures and always ask permission before you photograph someone.

19. Dress appropriately for the culture you’re visiting — this might mean covering your shoulders, knees, feet, or head.

20. Buy locally-made souvenirs from local vendors rather than those “Made in China” knockoffs.

Battling the Disadvantages of Tourism

Tourism can do wonders for local economies, but there are some definite disadvantages of tourism we can’t ignore either.

Environmental problems, pollution, exploitation, and displacement of locals are just a few of the problems with tourism we’ve discussed today.

We also listed some ways you can be a more responsible traveller and minimise your impact while you travel.

Would you like to take this idea of responsible travel one step further?

Read this article next and learn more about the benefits of eco-friendly travel!

Winter is here! Check out the winter wonderlands at these 5 amazing winter destinations in Montana

• Travel Guide
• Sustainability

What Are The Pros And Cons Of Ecotourism?

Published: November 14, 2023

Modified: December 28, 2023

by Maurizia Giles

• Plan Your Trip

Introduction

Ecotourism, also known as sustainable tourism, is a form of travel that focuses on minimizing the negative impacts on the environment and supporting local communities. It is a growing trend in the tourism industry, as more and more travelers are becoming conscious of the need to protect and preserve our planet.

Unlike traditional tourism, which often contributes to environmental degradation and cultural erosion, ecotourism aims to provide unique and immersive experiences that educate visitors about the importance of conservation and sustainable practices. By choosing to engage in eco-friendly tourism activities, travelers can play a role in preserving natural habitats, supporting local economies, and fostering cultural exchange.

However, like any other form of tourism, ecotourism also has its pros and cons. In this article, we will explore the advantages and disadvantages of ecotourism, allowing you to make an informed decision about whether it aligns with your travel values and goals.

Pros of Ecotourism

Ecotourism offers numerous benefits, both for the environment and the local communities. Here are some of the key advantages:

• Conservation of Natural Resources: Ecotourism promotes the preservation of natural habitats and biodiversity. By visiting protected areas, tourists contribute to the funding of conservation efforts, ensuring the sustainability of these ecosystems for future generations.
• Economic Development: Ecotourism provides economic opportunities for local communities. By supporting locally-owned businesses, such as eco-lodges and community-based tour operators, tourists help to create jobs and generate income for the residents. This can lead to improved living standards and reduced reliance on activities that harm the environment, such as logging or unsustainable farming.
• Cultural Preservation: Ecotourism often focuses on immersing visitors in the local culture and traditions. This promotes a better understanding and appreciation of indigenous communities, their customs, and their knowledge of the natural environment. It helps to preserve traditional practices and craftsmanship.
• Educational Opportunities: Ecotourism offers a chance for visitors to learn about various environmental issues, conservation initiatives, and sustainable practices. By engaging with knowledgeable guides and participating in educational activities, travelers gain a deeper understanding of the importance of protecting the planet.
• Minimal Environmental Impact: Compared to traditional tourism, ecotourism strives to minimize its ecological footprint. With a focus on sustainable transportation, waste reduction, and responsible consumption, ecotourism ensures that the environmental impact is kept to a minimum.
• Support for Conservation Projects: Many ecotourism operators and organizations actively contribute to conservation projects and community development. Some allocate a portion of their profits towards funding research, habitat restoration, or local initiatives that benefit the environment and the local communities.

These benefits make ecotourism a powerful tool for promoting sustainable practices while allowing travelers to experience unique and enriching destinations. However, it is important to also consider the potential drawbacks of ecotourism, as discussed in the next section.

Cons of Ecotourism

While ecotourism has many positive aspects, it is not without its challenges and potential negative impacts. Here are some of the key drawbacks:

• Overcrowding and Degradation of Natural Areas: The popularity of ecotourism can lead to overcrowding in delicate ecosystems, causing damage to the environment. Trampling of vegetation, disruption of wildlife habitats, and pollution from increased foot traffic can all have detrimental effects on fragile ecosystems.
• Greenwashing and Lack of Regulation: The term “ecotourism” is sometimes used as a marketing ploy, with businesses claiming to be environmentally friendly without adhering to sustainable practices. Lack of regulation and standardized certification make it difficult for tourists to differentiate genuine ecotourism operators from those that are simply exploiting the label for profit.
• Cultural Commodification: The influx of tourists can bring about cultural commodification and exploitation. Local traditions and customs may be altered or modified to cater to tourist expectations, leading to the loss of authentic cultural experiences.
• Displacement of Local Communities: The development of ecotourism infrastructure can sometimes result in the displacement of local communities. Land may be taken away from indigenous people or small-scale farmers to make way for tourist resorts or protected areas, causing social and economic disruption.
• Dependency on Tourism: In some cases, communities that heavily depend on tourism may become overly reliant on this industry. A decline in tourism can have significant economic consequences, leaving communities vulnerable to economic shocks.
• Carbon Footprint: Despite efforts to minimize environmental impact, transportation to ecotourism destinations can still contribute to carbon emissions. Long-haul flights and fuel use for transportation within the destination can undermine the sustainability goals of ecotourism.

It is important to consider these potential downsides when engaging in ecotourism. Recognizing these challenges can help address them and promote a more responsible and sustainable approach to ecotourism.

Ecotourism offers a unique and rewarding way to explore the world while actively contributing to the preservation of the environment and the well-being of local communities. The advantages of ecotourism are evident, from the conservation of natural resources to the economic development of local communities. It provides educational opportunities and supports cultural preservation.

However, it is crucial to be aware of the potential drawbacks of ecotourism. Overcrowding and degradation of natural areas, greenwashing, cultural commodification, and displacement of local communities are some of the challenges that need to be considered. It is important to address these issues through responsible and sustainable practices, ensuring that the positive impacts outweigh the negative.

In conclusion, ecotourism, when practiced responsibly, has the potential to create a positive change in the world. By choosing sustainable travel options, supporting local communities, and being mindful of our environmental impact, we can enjoy meaningful and enriching travel experiences that preserve our planet for future generations. So, whether you’re hiking through a pristine rainforest, snorkeling in a coral reef, or exploring a local community, embrace the essence of ecotourism and become a responsible traveler.

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