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Unsustainable tourism and carrying capacity

By Matt Burdett, 23 January 2018

On this page, we look at the consequences of unsustainable touristic growth in rural and urban tourism hotspots, as well as the concept of carrying capacity in relation to tourism.

  • Note: ‘touristic’ is a contested word in English. In most situations, ‘touristic’ can be altered to ‘tourist’ or ‘tourism’.

unsustainable tourism case study

  • The Taj Mahal, Agra, India: Some visitors find the beauty of the Taj Mahal is marred by the overwhelming number of tourists, despite a limited-entry ticket system. Is this number of visitors sustainable?

What is ‘unsustainable’ about tourism?

Sustainable tourism can be defined as:

“Tourism that conserves primary tourist resources and supports the livelihoods and culture of local people.” (IBO, 2009)

Therefore unsustainable tourism refers to tourism that fails to conserve tourist resources, and/or does not support the lives and culture of local people. In addition, unsustainable tourism can also refer to environmental sustainability, because there are so many opportunities for an increase in resource consumption coupled with an increase in waste. For example:

  • More flights means more consumption of fuel, and more gas emissions that cause air pollution
  • More flights means more airports, which means more consumption of land
  • More flights means more consumption of disposable products (such as plastic meal trays and cups) which means more plastic waste

This links closely to the concept of the ecological footprint, which is measured in ‘biohectares’ which links to the amount of land required to create the resources and sequester the waste.

There are two further key issues with tourism:

  • The resources consumed in tourism are frequently produced very far away from the point of consumption. Therefore, it’s hard to measure the real environmental impact of tourism.
  • Tourism is a huge and complex industry. The number of variations within it make it hard to identify the true levels of consumption and waste and therefore the level of unsustainability.

Carrying capacity

Carrying capacity is a key geographical concept. The idea originally comes from farming: the carrying capacity is the maximum number of people that can be fed on the food produced in an area. Over time, the concept of carrying capacity has been expanded into other areas, such as tourism. There are three main types of carrying capacity that apply to tourism: physical, perceptual and environmental. These can be explored through the example of hiking a trail in a mountain area.

Physical carrying capacity

The physical carrying capacity refers to the maximum number of people who can use a space for the purposes of tourism.

An example is the number of people that can fit onto a hiking trail. Mowforth and Munt (2015) suggest that a person needs one meter of trail length in order to walk freely (assuming the trail is 1m wide), which means the physical carrying capacity would be 1000 people per 1000 metres of trail. However, they also recognise that to truly work out the physical carrying capacity, there would be need to be some spare space, and that to work out the maximum number of people who could use the trail we would need to know the time it took for each person to walk. Their calculations are shown below:

“For one of the trails, Sendero Los Cantarillos, other relevant assumptions made are:

• visitors follow the trails in groups of no more than 25 (each group with a guide);

• a distance of at least 100 metres is maintained between groups;

• the trail has a length of 1,100 metres;

• an average time of 1 hour is required for a visitor to complete this trail;

• the monument and trail are open to the public for 7 hours per day and 360 days per year.

Physical Carrying Capacity = length × visitors/metre × daily duration (hrs/day)

=1,100×1×7=7,700 visits per day

=7,700×360=2,772,000 visits per year” (Mowforth and Munt, 2015)

Perceptual carrying capacity

Perceptual carrying capacity is to do with the perception of people. It can be defined as:

“The level reached when local residents of an area no longer want tourists because they are destroying the environment, damaging the local culture or crowding them out of local activities.” (Mowforth and Munt, 2015.)

It can also apply to tourists themselves. For example, one group of people hiking the trail may be happy with a large number of people alongside them. But others might avoid the trail because it is too busy. Their perception is that a busy trail has too many people, i.e. their perception of the carrying capacity has been reached.

Environmental carrying capacity

Environmental carrying capacity is also known as the ecological carrying capacity. It is reached when the environment can’t cope with the number of people using it. It can be defined as:

“The level of tourist development or recreational activity beyond which the environment as previously experienced is degraded or compromised.” (Mowforth and Munt, 2015)

The Butler Model: Consequences of unsustainable tourism growth

In 1980, Richard Butler published an influential paper called “The Concept Of A Tourist Area Cycle Of Evolution: Implications For Management Of Resources”. He argued that the development of tourism in an area would eventually exceed carrying capacity and cause problems, and that the tourist destination would need to rethink its approach to tourism or it would become unsustainable. His model is shown below. If the tourism area successfully adapts, it can enter a period of sustainable tourism called ‘rejuvenation’. If not, unsustainable tourism will lead to a period of ‘decline’.

unsustainable tourism case study

  • Butler, 1980. A Tourism Area Cycle of Evolution.

The model suggests:

  • Six stages reflect the changes in a tourist destination.
  • Closely linked to carrying capacity and sustainability.
  • Suggests that destinations carry the seeds of their own destruction i.e. they are too popular for their own good.
  • In the original model there were five variations for Stage 6 “Decline”, with the most negative being a catastrophe such as war or disease.
  • Originally focused on ‘sea and sand’ tourism e.g. in Spanish seaside resorts, but was accepted for many alternative destinations.

And one more thing…“leakage”

“[Leakage] is the most frequently cited issue: although tourism can be a great form of wealth distribution, often as little as 5-10% of the money tourists spend remains in the destinations they visit.” (Mullis, 2017)

Leakage is the way that money spent by a tourist on their trip does not go to the destination. The money ‘leaks’ away from the destination through complex processes as shown in the diagram below:

unsustainable tourism case study

Brazier, 2008. Problems in paradise. Graphic originally sourced from: Tourism Concern/Leeds DEC, cited in Pamela Novicka, No-Nonsense Guide to Tourism, NI 2007. https://newint.org/features/2008/03/01/mainstream-tourism Accessed 23 January 2018.

Butler, R.W. (1980). The Concept Of A Tourist Area Cycle Of Evolution: Implications For Management Of Resources. Canadian Geographer, 24, pp. 5-12. Available at http://www.numptynerd.net/uploads/1/2/0/6/12061984/butler_model_1980.pdf Accessed 20 January 2018.

IBO [International Baccalaureate Organisation], 2009. Geography guide First examinations 2011. IBO, Cardiff.

Mullis, 2017. The growth paradox: can tourism ever be sustainable? https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/08/the-growth-paradox-can-tourism-ever-be-sustainable/ Accessed 23 January 2018.

Mowforth, M. and Munt, I., 2015. Tourism and sustainability; Development and new tourism in the third world, Routledge, London Available at https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/3277849/tourism_and_sustainability.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A&Expires=1516533584&Signature=0jVZC4p4O%2Fzgr0SqnFO9oEi5nG4%3D&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DTourism_and_sustainability_Development_g.pdf Accessed 20 January 2018.

Unsustainable tourism and carrying capacity: Learning activities

  • Define ‘unsustainable’. [2]
  • Explain why tourism can often risk being a highly unsustainable activity. [3]
  • What does ‘carrying capacity’ mean? [2]
  • Distinguish between environmental, perceptual and physical carrying capacity. [6]
  • The Butler Model outlines six stages that tourist areas go through as they develop. Name all six and briefly describe the features of each stage in terms of the number of tourists visiting. [6]
  • Suggest why some locations enter a decline while others rejuvenate. [4]

Other tasks

Look carefully at the Butler model below. Using research and your own knowledge, suggest at least one tourist destination that applies to each of the six stages. For the sixth stage, explain how the tourism area responded to the challenges of stagnation and how that led to either rejuvenation or decline.

Find one picture from each location and annotate it to show the evidence for its position at that stage of tourism.

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Book cover

  • © 2023

Environment, Resources and Sustainable Tourism

Goa as a Case Study

  • Ashoka G. Dessai 0

School of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, Goa University, Taleigao Plateau, India

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  • Provides an in-depth read to guide critical thinking on the complex issue of the impact of tourism
  • Discusses the impact of the geodynamics of the environment on the sociodynamics of Goa, India
  • Offers a comprehensive text for students, researchers, academics, policymakers, and professionals

Part of the book series: Advances in Geographical and Environmental Sciences (AGES)

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Table of contents (7 chapters)

Front matter, introduction.

Ashoka G. Dessai

Mineral Resources

Mining industry, water resources, environmental assessment, waste management, sustainable tourism, back matter.

This book suggests sustainable economy from the viewpoint of tourism fostering low carbon footprint. Focussed on conserving heritage, culture and endemic biota of a crucial biodiversity hotspot of the world, the book discusses the impact of a large population, fast-paced development and excessive consumption of earth resources by tourism in a developing economy.

The book (i) assesses the impact of overexploitation of earth resources on environmental components such as air, water, land and people, (ii) examines the sustainability of tourism on the physical, economic and socio-cultural environment including human lifestyles, (iii) presents  the potential of tourism in promoting sustainable development, poverty alleviation and conservation of nature and  (iv) formulates recommendations for tourism, fostering sustainable development in Goa, India.

The book offers students, researchers, academics and professionals a comprehensive discourse integrating geological and societal perspectives on core issues. It generates critical thinking on the complex issue of sustainable tourism by providing in-depth perspective on peoples of different hues and their role in safeguarding the future of this unique region.

  • Sustainable tourism
  • Biodiversity
  • Environmental pollution
  • Conservation
  • Waste disposal
  • Sustainability

Prof. Dr. Ashoka G. Dessai has over 40 years of experience in post-graduate teaching and research, initially at Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune, India, and later at Goa University, Goa, India. He has conducted research in India and abroad and has successfully supervised research leading to M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees. He has published more than 52 research papers in national and international peer-reviewed journals and has been a reviewer for international research journals. 

Prof. Dr. Dessai has authored two books:  The Lithosphere Beneath the Indian Shield:  A Geodynamic Perspective  (Springer Nature, Switzerland) and  Geology and Mineral Resources of Goa  (New Delhi Publishers, India). He has delivered lectures at several universities, professional organisations and research institutes in India and other countries.

Book Title : Environment, Resources and Sustainable Tourism

Book Subtitle : Goa as a Case Study

Authors : Ashoka G. Dessai

Series Title : Advances in Geographical and Environmental Sciences

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1843-0

Publisher : Springer Singapore

eBook Packages : Earth and Environmental Science , Earth and Environmental Science (R0)

Copyright Information : The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023

Hardcover ISBN : 978-981-99-1842-3 Published: 27 May 2023

Softcover ISBN : 978-981-99-1845-4 Due: 27 June 2023

eBook ISBN : 978-981-99-1843-0 Published: 26 May 2023

Series ISSN : 2198-3542

Series E-ISSN : 2198-3550

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XXIII, 234

Number of Illustrations : 2 b/w illustrations, 35 illustrations in colour

Topics : Environmental Geography , Natural Resource and Energy Economics , Tourism Management , Sustainable Development , Water, general , Waste Management/Waste Technology

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Sustainable Tourism Toolkit

UNESCO World Heritage Sustainable Tourism Toolkit

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  • Toolkit About the Sustainable Tourism Toolkit How to use this guide? Our Objective Resource Library
  • Guides Strategic foundations Guide 1: Understanding Guide 2: Strategy Guide 3: Governance Guide 4: Engagement Core Delivery Guide 5: Communication Guide 6: Infrastructure Guide 7: Value Guide 8: Behaviour Guide 9: Investment Guide 10: Monitoring
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Sustainable planning and management of tourism is one of the most pressing challenges concerning the future of the World Heritage Convention today and is the focus of the UNESCO World Heritage and Sustainable Tourism Programme.

These 'How To' guides for World Heritage Site managers and other key stakeholders will enable a growing number of World Heritage Site communities to make positive changes to the way they pro-actively manage tourism.

How to use this guide

These easily accessible 'How To' guides are focused on best practice approaches to sustainable economic development through tourism.  The first of their kind, the 'How To' resources offer direction and guidance to managers of World Heritage tourism destinations and other stakeholders to help identify the most suitable solutions for circumstances in their local environments and aid in developing general know-how for the management of each destination.

The 'How To' guides bring best practice knowledge to the full WH community, so that site managers, tourism professionals, conservation professionals, and communities around the world understand the possibilities of sustainable tourism and what key issues have already been achieved. These resources are a valuable asset to site managers in particular, who often lack the tools and know-how to effectively manage and maximise tourism benefits, while minimising its negative impacts.

Our series of guides have been structured as a step-by-step process for site managers.

  • Guides 1-4 establish the basic foundations for sustainable tourism (these are coloured yellow).
  • Guides 5-10 are tailored to more specific issues, which will have greater relevance at some sites than at others (these are coloured orange).

We recommend that site managers explore each guide, however,  as sustainable tourism is a holistic process, addressing all issues in a strategic manner.

Our Objective

The goal is to stimulate local solutions in communities through capacity-building in best practice. With the immense scale and variation of World Heritage Properties around the globe, coupled with scarce human and financial resources, this is now more important than ever. Site managers and other stakeholders in the tourism sector must have access to these types of  innovative sustainability tools in order to develop and formulate their own successful results.

Ideally, site managers and other users will begin to navigate through this system by learning basic ideas and guidance. The system then enables the user to delve deeper into any given subject that falls in line with their local interests, needs, and aspirations.

Our objective for these guidance resources is to enable the growth and success of an entire community of World Heritage Properties, making positive changes to their local surroundings and pro-actively managing tourism in their areas. In parallel, by establishing this community, we aim to facilitate knowledge exchange of the most progressive ideas, and encourage their implementation and evolution.

The driving ethic for the 'How To' guides is to explain critically important ideas for sustainable tourism in World Heritage sites in a clear and concise manner, conveying the key knowledge and processes in a reading time of under 20 minutes per idea. Our goal is to make implementing the ideas of sustainable tourism easier to understand and put into practice for all parties involved.

Getting started

We understand the complex range of different societies in which World Heritage sites exist, and the many challenges site managers face on a daily basis. While the intention is to encourage each site to undertake most, or at least many, of the tasks included in the guides, considering them together all at once may seem daunting and even impossible.

We have developed this tool as a source of guidance and inspiration. It is a menu of ideas from which you, the user, may choose to put into practice, helping your World Heritage site become more sustainable for its current and future visitors.

Getting to know these 'How To' guides will move your site towards better self-management and sustainability rather than demand a level of sophistication that might simply be unattainable for some World Heritage sites. We would urge all site managers to read through these resources thoroughly and begin to think about what positive steps can be taken to implement these changes. Again, we remind each user that results will differ for each site, and the circumstances of the local environment and community must always be taken into consideration.

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Tourism, Culture and Sustainable Development

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IUCN World Heritage Advice Note. Environmental Assessment & World Heritage

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Guidance on Heritage Impact Assessments for Cultural World Heritage Properties

ICOMOS (2011)

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Managing Tourism at World Heritage Sites: a Practical Manual for World Heritage Site Managers

UNESCO World Heritage Paper Series n°1 (2002)

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Climate Change. Adaptation and Mitigation in the Tourism Sector: Frameworks, Tools and Practices

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Enhancing our Heritage Toolkit

UNESCO World Heritage Paper Series n°23 (2008)

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Best Practice Guidelines for Great Ape Tourism

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Criteria for Sustainable Tourism for the three Biosphere Reserves Aggtelek, Babia Góra and Šumava

Ecological Tourism in Europe (ETE) and UNESCO-BRESCE (2009)

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Practical, profitable, protected. A starter guide to developing sustainable tourism in protected areas

ECEAT in partnership with the EUROPARC Federation (2012)

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The contribution of tourism to sustainable development and achieving the Millennium Development Goals

BMZ  Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development Position Paper 2|2011e (2012)

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Guide on EU funding for the tourism sector (2014-2020)

European Commission, Directorate-General for Entreprise and Industry (2014)

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Sustainable Tourism for Development Guidebook

UNWTO (2013)

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World Heritage: Challenges for the Millennium

UNESCO (2007)

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The Urban Rehabilitation of Medinas : The World Bank Experience in the Middle East and North Africa

The World Bank (2010)

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Adapting to change: the state of conservation of World Heritage forests in 2011

UNESCO World Heritage Paper Series n°30 (2011)

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UNESCO Pacific World Heritage Workshop (5-9 September 2011, Apia, Samoa)

UNESCO (2012)

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Safeguarding Precious Resources for Island Communities

UNESCO World Heritage Paper Series n°38 (2014)

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Terrestrial biodiversity and the World Heritage List: identifying broad gaps and potential candidate sites for inclusion in the natural World Heritage network

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Culture & Development Nº 11

UNESCO (2014)

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Mass tourism, biosecurity and sustainability challenges: prospects illustrated by the current COVID-19 pandemic

Journal of Tourism Futures

ISSN : 2055-5911

Article publication date: 23 March 2023

Using COVID-19 pandemic as a more immediate empirical reference, this paper aims to understand the biosecurity risks arising from tourist activities and, through a more prospective analysis, to consider the relevance of public health issues in the context of tourism-sustainability nexuses.

Design/methodology/approach

The text assumes a hybrid format, incorporating elements resulting from empirical research and essayistic viewpoints. The collection of empirical elements was based on documental research in several sources, such as newspapers, international institutions of an intergovernmental nature and the discussion forum of the travel platform TripAdvisor.

By assuming mobility and large agglomerations of people from different origins, mass tourism has fostered multiple outbreaks of COVID-19 and the rapid global spread of contagion chains. The pandemic clearly exemplified the responsibility of tourism in the dispersion of biotic agents with severe ecological, economic, social and public health repercussions. It is, therefore, urgent to rethink the tourism growth trajectory and more effectively consider the biosecurity risks associated with mobility in discussions on tourism and sustainability. At the same time, tourism must be delineated in terms of the great aims of sustainability, and this transversal purpose to which it contributes should be considered an intrinsic condition of its own sectorial sustainability as an economic activity.

Originality/value

The biosecurity challenges posed by mass tourism are a very topical issue, still little considered in sustainability policies and on which there is a marked deficit in scientific research.

  • Mass tourism
  • COVID-19 pandemic
  • Biosecurity
  • Sustainability

Sacramento, O. (2023), "Mass tourism, biosecurity and sustainability challenges: prospects illustrated by the current COVID-19 pandemic", Journal of Tourism Futures , Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/JTF-07-2022-0173

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2023, Octávio Sacramento

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 and 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/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

1. Introduction

Mass tourism produces a very negative ecological and social impact, and although it generates substantial economic benefits, they are generally unevenly distributed ( Chong, 2019 ; Fang et al. , 2021 ). It could have been expected that the COVID-19 pandemic might have constituted a decisive tipping point for a deprioritising of the economy, considering the tourism system as a means to serve society and the sustainable development goals (SDGs) that foresee the viability of our common future ( Gössling et al. , 2021 ; Higgins-Desbiolles, 2018 ). However, instead of considering the current crisis of the pandemic, together with the climate crisis, as imperative reasons for urgent structural changes in global mass tourism ( Jamal and Budke, 2020 ), it is quite likely – among other possible scenarios of “survival of the fittest” (collapse), “business as unusual” (transition) and “responsible tourism” (transformation) ( Postma et al. , 2020 ; Yeoman et al ., 2022 ) – that there will be a return to “business as usual” (growth) and the old normality of unsustainable tourism as soon as the health crisis is overcome ( Hall et al. , 2020 ; Ioannides and Gyimóthy, 2020 ; Vărzaru et al. , 2021 ). In fact, the dominant concern has been the profound negative economic impact of COVID-19, especially in regard to tourism ( Sharma and Nicolau, 2020 ; Uğur and Akbıyık, 2020 ; United Nations, 2020 ; Yeh, 2021 ), with a constant reiteration of the urgency of resuming stimulating activity, based on a “boosterist”, expansionary and pro-growth motivation ( Higgins-Desbiolles, 2021 ).

With this materialist immediacy, the fact that tourism is falling victim to itself as one of the main causes of the pandemic tends to be relegated to the background, being overlooked that he is suffering the consequences of a health crisis to which it contributed greatly. Something very similar has been happening for many years in the context of the climate crisis, which has also had very profound negative effects in the field of tourism, as the so-called pro-limits critics of tourism have been warning ( Bramwell and Lane, 2011 ; Gössling et al. , 2021 ; Hall et al. , 2020 ; Higgins-Desbiolles, 2021 ). Inspired by these standpoints, I discuss here the role of mass tourism flows in the development of the COVID-19 pandemic and, from there, I try to reflect on the future of tourism's sustainability. The theoretical framework of this analysis integrates several perspectives and contributions, predominantly sociological, that make up the so-called “critical tourism studies”: a set of approaches devoted to socioeconomic and political critique that seek to make tourism a more equitable and sustainable social space ( Ateljevic et al. , 2012 ; Pritchard et al. , 2011 ). Based on this conceptual lens, the analysis is guided by two central objectives: understand how tourism activities and mobility have contributed to generating epidemiological risks – raising enormous challenges in the field of biosecurity ( Chen et al. , 2021 ; Iaquinto, 2020 ; Hall, 2015 ) – and projecting the urgency of give greater visibility to public health issues in discussions about tourism and sustainability.

The article is written in a hybrid format, incorporating both empirical research and essayistic viewpoints through which I seek to develop some prospective reflections on the public health challenges in the context of tourism sustainability. The empirical research was predominantly directed towards the collection of data on mass tourism as a vector of the rapid globalization of COVID-19. To this end, I chose documentary research – mainly secondary data analysis and policy research ( Tight, 2019 ) – as the most appropriate methodological approach to collect data (documentary elements, statistical information, reports and written statements) that would enable sound analytical connections to be made between international tourism and biosecurity threats. Through this documentary research, I access mainly media sources (e.g. newspapers), information associated with large international institutions of an intergovernmental nature (e.g. World Tourism Organization [WTO]) and the discussion forum of the travel platform TripAdvisor. The triangulation of empirical content resulting from these sources enabled the development of sustained inferences about the tourism-pandemic nexus. At the same time, provided a factual basis for problematizing the challenges and conceptualizations around sustainability, seeking to show the relevance of including bio-risks and public health issues more effectively in this discussion. The aim is to point towards a desirable (and urgent) future in which the biosecurity risks associated with tourist mobility are consistently considered as sustainability risks, leading to policies and tourism governance strategies aimed at minimising these risks.

2. Tourism as a powerful contagion vector

In the 21st century, tourism has asserted itself as a strong sector in global expansion, in which more and more countries are investing to diversify or boost their economies, as well as promote rural areas in demographic decline ( Cheer et al. , 2019 ; Croce, 2018 ; Khan, 2020 ). Immediately before the COVID-19 pandemic crisis and the consequent mobility restrictions, the year 2019 ended with a record of 1,460 billion international tourist arrivals – around 60 times more than in 1950 ( WTO, 2021 ). Tourist mobility in 2019 represented 10.4% of the global gross domestic product (GDP), with a turnover comparable, for example, to that of oil production ( World Travel and Tourism Council [WTTC], 2021 ). The economic performance of world tourism has been celebrated by many, namely by the major international organizations of the sector (e.g. WTO, WTTC), as an unquestionable success and reason to continue to grow, without giving the due attention to the multiple risks arising from tourism and its global expansion.

Some of these risks – for tourists and their respective places of origin and destination – are located in the field of biosecurity and public health, with particular emphasis on the spread of infectious diseases such as COVID-19 ( Chen et al. , 2021 ; Gössling, 2002 ; Hall, 2015 , 2019a ; Hall and Baird, 2013 ; Iaquinto, 2020 ; Melly and Hanrahan, 2021 ; Sabin et al. , 2020 ; Sacramento, 2022 ). As highlighted by Gössling et al. (2021, p. 13) , “tourism is about movement, and transport does act as a vector for the distribution of pathogens at regional and global scales”. Today tourism is, to a large extent, driven by global air transport networks which create conditions conducive to rapid and widespread contagion and epidemiological dispersion processes ( Brockmann, 2018 ; Brockmann and Helbing, 2013 ). Air transport implies large concentrations of people, closed spaces and many health challenges (e.g. air filtration), generating increased risks in terms of transmission of infectious agents ( Grout et al. , 2017 ). It can also facilitate the circulation of infectious arbovirus vectors, such as mosquitoes ( Kraemer et al. , 2015 ; Wilson, 2020 ). Air mobility constitutes a powerful macro-vector for the amplification and acceleration of contagions, not only because of the material conditions of the transport itself but also because of the diversity of itineraries of those who cross at airports and planes ( Brown et al. , 2016 ; Findlater and Bogoch, 2018 ; Tatem et al. , 2012 ).

Tourism and its associated transport networks are the results of socio-material, more-than-human assemblages, in which multiple actors (e.g. humans, non-humans, technology, institutions and natural resources) interact contingently, contributing to the generation of unforeseen vitalities that pose serious risks of biocontamination and can even create epidemic scenarios ( Brito-Henriques, 2020 ; Hall, 2015 ; Lupton, 2021 ). The responsibility of tourism in the geographical dispersion of biotic agents is processed in two ways: (1) directly, through the tourists themselves, with luggage, food, transport and other material elements associated with the trip; (2) indirectly, because tourist activities are associated with industrial food production prone to outbreaks of zoonotic diseases, are responsible for the invasion of wildlife habitats and contribute to the emission of climate-changing pollutants that disrupt ecosystems ( Gössling et al. , 2021 ; Hall, 2019a ; Melly and Hanrahan, 2021 ).

The Ministry of Health and the Directorate-General for Health confirmed this Monday the first cases of infection by Covid-19 in Portugal. One patient was on vacation in northern Italy and another in Valencia [Spain]. Both are hospitalized in Oporto ( Diário de Notícias, 2020a );
On January 31, Italy detected the first two cases of Covid-19 in the country. They were two Chinese tourists from the birthplace of the new coronavirus, Wuhan, who had arrived on the 23rd and visited several Italian cities. That same day, on the remote Spanish island of La Gomera, in the Canary Islands, a German tourist became the first case diagnosed in Spain ( Diário de Notícias, 2020b );
France confirms the first death in Europe from coronavirus. The death of an 80-year-old Chinese tourist in a Paris hospital was the first known fatality from the new virus outside Asia ( The New York Times, 2020 );
There have now been four reported cases of novel coronavirus infection found in Thailand: three Chinese tourists and one Thai ( Bangkok Post, 2020 );
Brazil confirms that a new strain [of SARS-CoV-2] detected in Japan is circulating in the Amazon. The variant arrived in Japan after four Japanese travellers visited the Brazilian Amazon and presented a series of unprecedented mutations ( Público, 2021 ).

By accumulating large numbers of people from different origins in small compacted spaces and infrastructures with shared material elements, international tourism scenarios fostered multiple outbreaks of COVID-19 and boosted the rapid global spread of the infection, as has happened in other infectious disease events. Regardless of its scales, typologies and specific configurations, mass tourism presumes a high density of transit and coexistence of people. The “mobilities are made with the encapsulation of bodies in mobile closed spaces – planes, buses, cruises, etc. – and flows converge and compress as they pass through nodes – airports, hotels, congress centres, museums, etc. – that stimulate interactions and human contact with each other and with different forms of materiality” ( Brito-Henriques, 2020, p. 207 ). It is precisely this intense density of movement that caused the most immediate physical conditions to make tourism a phenomenon inseparable from the instigators that boosted the COVID-19 pandemic.

From January 2020, up until the generalization of travel restrictions, there were several contexts in which tourist mobilities were intrinsically associated with the geographic expansion of contagion chains ( Sacramento, 2022 ). As an example, I address one of these tourist contexts of super-spreading of SARS-CoV-2: the ski resort of Ischgl, in the Alps.

2.1 A paradigmatic tourism scenario of SARS-CoV-2 global dissemination: the Ischgl ski resort

During the 2020 and 2021 ski seasons, there were major outbreaks of COVID-19 in resorts in several countries, especially in the Alpine region (Austria, Switzerland and Italy) and North America. In the USA, the disease outbreaks in the first months of 2021 in around 15 resorts in the state of Colorado are the most noteworthy, particularly in Winter Park, which has recorded more than 100 positive cases of the disease among the respective workers alone ( CPR News, 2021 ). In neighbouring Canada, the Whistler Blackcomb resort, the largest in North America, closed in late March 2021, was linked to 200 of the 877 cases of the “Brazilian variant” (P1) in the province of British Columbia, at the time the largest outbreak of this variant outside Brazil ( The Guardian, 2021 ). Arguably the most problematic situation, however, occurred about a year earlier, in the first months of 2020, in the centre of the European continent, in the Alps, particularly in Ischgl (Paznaun, Austrian Tyrol). As such, this will be the example I give the most attention.

Before the outbreak of Covid-19, in the winter season of 2018–2019, the ski resort of Ischgl, famously known as the “Ibiza of the Alps”, registered 300,414 arrivals of tourists from different origins and 1,409,478 overnight stays ( Tyrol Provincial Government, 2019, p. 28 ). Its association with the Samnaun resort (Ischgl/Samnaun Silvretta Arena) places this ski destination among the 10 largest in Europe and among the 50 largest in the world ( Vanat, 2020 ). These resorts staged the scene of one of the largest global events of super-spreading of SARS-CoV-2. During the “peak” of the high ski season, between the end of February and the beginning of March 2020, it was estimated that more than 6,000 people from about half a hundred of nations may have been infected in Ischgl and transported the virus to their respective countries [1] , quickly dispersing it worldwide. The initial contagion was so massive that, according to a serological study carried out by the Innsbruck University of Medicine, at the end of April 2020 more than 42% of residents in Ischgl already had antibodies to the virus ( Van Laer et al. , 2020 ). Not only because of the number of infections, but also because of the multinationality of the infected and the fact that contagions occurred at an early stage of the pandemic, Ischgl played a very significant role, along with other alpine resorts, to the speed with which COVID-19 took hold in the European continent and its spread worldwide ( Correa-Martínez et al. , 2020 ; Kreidl et al. , 2020 ).

The specific question that remains is what socio-material conditions have fostered the viral outbreak in Ischgl and other ski resorts? There are immediate visible reasons of a structural nature, inherently characteristic to most touristic contexts: the sharp reduction in air travel costs and the unconditional “open doors” positioning of destinations – presented as free territories ready to be consumed –, which led to a spiral of hyper-massification of tourism with the potential to create epidemic scenarios. The photographs that follow ( Plates 1 and 2 ) illustrate the many directions that opened Ischgl to the rest of the world and brought thousands of people to it, who settled there in a compact and active way, living in (almost) “a state of exception” and transforming the resort into a “post-national zone”: “a space of which the traditional nation-state is not in complete control, meshing together, as it does, various kinds of ‘circulating’ populations with different kinds of ‘locals’. […] a space densely and continuously connected to places beyond the nation” ( Inda, 2000, pp. 92–99 ).

Besides the more general and structural conditions related to the wide concentration of people from different geographic origins, common to many other tourist destinations, the set of specific circumstances directly responsible for the massive contagion processes in ski resorts has not yet been unequivocally identified. However, some possibilities are already considered as quite probable, such as (1) the high weekly turnover of thousands of tourists; (2) socially intense après-ski recreational activities, which presuppose close contacts, especially in closed spaces; (3) the long queues and crowds that form on cable cars, lift lines, restaurants, shops and many other facilities; (4) sharing accommodation between groups of resort employees and between groups of tourists, which often result in situations of high concentration of people in the same dwelling; (5) frequent physical contact with a wide variety of shared surfaces (e.g. cable cars, perches, rented equipment, handrails and doors), facilitating possible contagion through fomites; (6) the presence of nasal secretions on gloves resulting from constant cold-induced rhinorrhoea ( Dalton et al ., 2020 ; Felbermayr et al ., 2021 ; Gianfredi et al. , 2021 ; Kreidl et al. , 2020 ).

Our only other comment is that it really is becoming too busy. You used to go out sure you’d not have to wait for lifts and sure the slopes would be safe. Last week (admittedly a holiday week when there was bad weather at times) there were times when the queues built up at bottlenecks and when some slopes were lethal because of the crowding, number of people on slopes they couldn’t handle and general idiocy of groups of young lads skiing recklessly. It’s also now really difficult to find a place to eat or drink for a pit stop - you have to reserve tables for lunch which never used to be the case and is really annoying. The self service restaurants are all far too busy. We’ll not be going back at peak season (LondonFriday, Gurugram-Índia, 01/03/2020).
This resort is huge and caters to the glitzy and well-healed skiers who like the party scene. The huge line-ups for the gondolas (at the base) set the tone for our stay. Everything was busy (the runs, the lifts and the restaurants). We had a mixed bag of skiing largely dependent on weather-which is to be expected. Some of the runs and lifts were closed down due to bad weather which made it challenging to get down to the bottom. Some people got stuck on the Swiss side during a storm and had to take long bus ride back to Ischgl (Sue S., Kingston-Canadá, 26/04/2020).

From these excerpts, a set of rhetorical elements (short, but significant) stand out to characterize Ischgl as a tourist destination and, to a certain extent, to qualify the experience of the tourists themselves. Through brief discursive descriptions – “becoming too busy”, “queues built up at bottlenecks”, “crowding”, “restaurants are all far too busy”, “glitz party scene”, “everything was busy” – the testimonies highlight several situations that describe a routine of crowd compression in the spaces and the constant frenetic atmosphere and partying, whether in large concerts with international bands ( Plate 2 , back) or in the day-to-day life in the various and not very large après ski bars existing in the resort. The result was a social ecology that turned out to be convenient for a pathogenic entity that, to a large extent, subsists and circulates based on what, ontologically, defines the human condition: proximity and interpersonal contact.

The analysis of the Ischgl ski resort case allows us to deduce that the rapid internationalisation and growth of mass tourism tends to exceed the ecological, social and organisational capacities of the receiving contexts in terms of welcoming tourist flows and providing unconstrained and pleasant stays for the visitors. This results in scenarios and challenges of over-tourism which, among many other impacts, generate biosecurity risks of a transnational scale and situations of health unsustainability, potentially responsible for severe public health emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

3. Biosecurity and public health: questioning tourism (and) sustainability

Around the world, in countries at all development levels, many millions of jobs and businesses are dependent on a strong and thriving tourism sector. Tourism has also been a driving force in protecting natural and cultural heritage, preserving them for future generations to enjoy (in https://www.unwto.org );
Tourism is far more than tourism alone. From infrastructure and communication to food production and transport, tourism’s considerable economic weight gives it the responsibility and the power to play a key role in the sustainable and responsible development of economies and societies. Not only has tourism been a sector of consistently above-average growth for eight straight years, with 1.3 billion international tourist arrivals recorded in 2017, but the sector’s cross-cutting nature and wide global reach make it an effective tool to contribute to all of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (in Fair Observer, 2019 ).

In the boosterism that characterizes the approach of the WTO and other entities and agents, the evaluation of tourism (and its success) is almost always done according to the numbers that reflect its expression as a market force and its influence on economic growth (e.g. GDP, % of total exports), assuming that the continuous expansion of tourist activities automatically assures a factor of well-being, development and sustainability ( Higgins-Desbiolles, 2021 ). However, this assumption is based more on wishful thinking than on real measures, results and concrete situations beyond those that fulfil a merely tokenistic function, as was the case of the proclamation of the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development, in 2017, by the United Nations (UN). In fact, “the idea of tourism being a responsible and sustainable industry is still a far-to-reach goal, as some of the game-changing and promising attempts quickly face the harsh reality of a highly competitive market” ( Stankov et al. , 2020, p. 708 ).

In general, the sector has shown the little capacity and/or willingness to implement structural changes and adopt procedures to face the great contemporary ecological and social challenges, thus becoming less and less sustainable as it expands economically ( Andria et al. , 2021 ; Hall, 2019b ; Moscardo and Murphy, 2014 ; Scott et al. , 2019 ; Sharpley, 2020 ). The inertia in truly facing the many negative impacts of tourist activity results, in the first place, from the blindness induced by market logics and by the unconditional search for growth. But it also results from the semantic complexity of the notion of “sustainable tourism” and the consequent divergence of understandings between academics, tourist agents and technicians about sustainability and the respective forms of operationalization and evaluation ( Andria et al. , 2021 ; Cernat and Gourdon, 2012 ; Gibson, 2012 ; Sørensen and Grindsted, 2021 ).

the potential for disease spread will only increase further as international tourism expands in terms of the number of tourists that travel, as well as the distance travelled. In addition, the risk of biological invasion is only likely to increase further in the future as a result of climate change […], while the potential lag between invasion, population growth on the new range, and impact on indigenous species and the physical environment, may mean that the effects of the rapid growth in tourism mobility from the late 1960s on, may only now be starting to become obvious in some destinations (p. 89).

As we have seen above, based on the example of the Ischgl ski resort, the responsibility of tourist flows in the rapid spread of the COVID-19 pandemic unequivocally proves the relevance of drawing attention to the fact that tourism induces multiple risks of biosecurity and is responsible for the dispersion of organisms with severe ecological, economic, social and public health repercussions at local and transnational scales ( Hall, 2015 ; Hall and Baird, 2013 ; Kim et al. , 2022 ; Mackay et al. , 2021 ; Melly and Hanrahan, 2021 ; Robinson and McNeill, 2022 ). Given the evident role of tourism in the viral globalization of SARS-CoV-2, it is to be expected that the biosecurity challenges raised by tourist mobilities will gain greater attention and be subject to more consistent and effective policy frameworks at international, national and local levels ( Melly and Hanrahan, 2021 ). To this end, it is essential to consider biosecurity and public health as even more relevant dimensions in the SDG ( Kim et al. , 2022 ), bringing to the forefront of the debate on (tourism) sustainability the biohazards generated by mass tourism and valuing health issues as another important pillar to consider in the conceptualisation of sustainability and in the respective policies. At the same time, it is fundamental to question the relationship between tourism and sustainability, assuming that “with the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is an urgent need not to return to business-as-usual when the crisis over, rather than an opportunity to reconsider a transformation of the global tourism system more aligned to the SDGs” ( Gössling et al. , 2021, p. 15 ).

Recognizing the responsibility of tourist activities in the production of risks and perverse impacts should lead to a rethinking of the tourism-sustainability nexus. In this sense, it is essential to start by clarifying whether tourism and its sustainability (i.e. future viability, mainly economic, in a given context) are an end in themselves or a means of transversally promoting the sustainable development of societies ( Butler, 1999 ; Postma et al. , 2017 ; Saarinen, 2020 ; Simão and Partidário, 2012 ). Given that tourist activities are, by definition, manifestations densely embedded in the social fabric, they must be viewed clearly as part of a much larger whole and positioned in their proper place, “at the service of local communities and societies. Tourism is not an end in itself; thus sustaining tourism is not the ultimate goal” ( Higgins-Desbiolles, 2021, p. 565 ). Only in this way, through its contributions to face the great contemporary social and ecological challenges can tourism truly assert itself as an agent of sustainability; and this transversal purpose to which it contributes is an intrinsic condition of its own sectorial sustainability as an economic activity ( Postma et al. , 2017 ).

The COVID-19 pandemic showed us these links in their most negative manifestations: tourism played a decisive role in the rapid viral circulation on a global scale, which, in turn, implied a kind of shutdown of tourist activities as a strategy of virus containment. The unsustainability of tourism in terms of biosecurity contributed significantly to a scenario of health crises that, in a reverse effect, ended up severely affecting the economic sustainability of the sector. For all these reasons, the eventual critical reconsideration of the tourism growth trajectory (i.e. more tourism equals more benefits) and its greater convergence with the SDGs could even be considered as one of the few “positive aspects” resulting from the pandemic crisis ( Gössling et al. , 2021 ). However, will the post-COVID in fact constitute the end of over-tourism ( Koh, 2020 ) and the emergence of meta-economic modes of tourism, organized primarily according to the social and natural contexts of which they are a part? If something has indeed been learned over the last two years of the pandemic, an increased concern for sustainability issues and responsible tourism models is quite likely ( Postma and Yeoman, 2021 ). In this sense, and taking into account the four post-COVID-19 scenarios for global tourism in 2025 that Yeoman et al. (2022) outlined, let us hope that will come true the scenario of “responsible tourism”, characterised by “A rethinking of the relationship of tourism with the ecosystem; a sustainable and balanced future; a conscious, well-informed and responsible holiday behaviour; rethinking capitalism” ( Yeoman et al. , 2022, p. 186 ).

4. Conclusion

Tourist mobilities are one of the greatest expressions of the fluidity of the contemporary world system that SARS-CoV-2 took advantage of to quickly reach large distances and spread into a pandemic. Increasingly associated with a broad global structure of air mobility, international tourism has become an influential socio-technical vector in the process of the sudden spread of the virus on a planetary scale ( Iaquinto, 2020 ). This was due to the fact that it provided contexts of epidemiological risk resulting from the formation of large transnational clusters of people who, in a matter of days, covered distances of thousands of kilometres and came into close contact with hundreds of other people between the contexts of origin, transit and tourist destination. The case of the Ischgl ski resort presented here – as an example of the coronavirus super-spreading – is paradigmatic of tourism's ability to mobilize and concentrate large numbers of people from multiple origins in rotation in the same destination, providing social configurations and complex more-than-human assemblages with obvious implications in terms of biosecurity, among many others.

Mass tourism is undoubtedly a relevant phenomenon in the multiplicity of causes of the initial spread of the virus, despite it being portrayed in various discourses as (singularly) one of the main socio-economic “victims” of COVID-19. Prior to suffering the profound and serious impacts of the pandemic, it contributed decisively to this same pandemic. For the future, it is essential to avoid head-in-the-sand behaviour and keep this perspective in mind. If we limit ourselves to looking at COVID-19 as an exogenous manifestation, lingering on the outer limits of the tourist economy with its values and practices, we run a serious risk of perpetuating situations that lead to new epidemiological emergency scenarios and postponing impingent changes ( Sigala, 2020 ). Therefore, an effective (self)criticism of tourist activities is required to assess their social, environmental and biosafety impacts, while seeking to build tourism models that generate economy(ies) at the service of the common good, in which poverty, climate change, biosecurity and health and well-being constitute factors to be considered unconditionally as a priority. Only in this way will it truly be possible the alignment with the SDGs goals and, inherently, the sustainability of tourism itself. If it persists in clinging to the old obsessive spiral of unrelenting growth, tourism will hardly have a future.

unsustainable tourism case study

A “totem” pole celebrating Ischgl as a multi-national space

unsustainable tourism case study

Thousands of people at one of the usual concerts organised in the resort of Ischgl before the pandemic

The estimate of the number of people infected in Ischgl is based on data from the Consumer Protection Association (VSV), which is coordinating a class action lawsuit against the Austrian government for negligence in terms of public health responses to the COVID-19 outbreak. The signatures of more than 6,000 tourists from 47 countries who believe they have been infected with the virus in Ischgl have already been gathered ( The Guardian, 2020 ).

Dissemination of pathogens, disease vectors and animal and plant alien species.

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Further reading

Ischgl.com® ( 2018 ), “ Multitalented Artist Lenny Kravitz to rock out season finale in Ischgl ”, October 10, available at: https://www.ischgl.com/en/More/Service-area/Press/Press-releases/Multitalented-Artist-Lenny-Kravitz-to-rock-out-season-finale-in-Ischgl_ pt_281867

Spiegel International ( 2020 ), “ Chronicle of failure. A corona hotspot in the Alps spread virus across Europe ”, March 31, available at: https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/ischgl-austria-a-corona-hotspot-in-the-alps-spread-virus-across-europe-a-32b17b7 6-14df-4f37-bfcf-39d2ceee92ec (by Jürgen Dahlkamp et al. ) .

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements: to the Centre for Transdisciplinary Development Studies (CETRAD-UTAD), an entity financed by Portuguese national funds through FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., within the scope of the UIDB/04011/2020 project; and to the Centre for Research in Anthropology (CRIA-IUL), an interuniversity R&D unit funded by Portuguese national funds through FCT, under the UIDB/04038/2020 project.

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Sustainable Tourism Case Studies

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The Sustainable Tourism Case Studies Clearinghouse aims to provide examples of how the tourism industry is addressing a variety of challenges – from workforce housing to coastal degradation. NC State University students have designed these case studies to highlight solutions from tourism destinations across the United States and around the world, so community leaders and tourism stakeholders can adapt solutions to fit the unique challenges of their destination.

NC State students want to know what sustainable tourism challenges you are facing. Solutions to these challenges will be shared in the NC State Extension Sustainable Tourism Case Study Clearinghouse. Share the challenges you’d like solutions for  HERE with a brief survey .

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Case Studies

  • Voluntary Visitor Fee Programs (2024)
  • Policies and Planning Strategies for Tourism Workforce Housing (2023)
  • Use of Oyster Reefs to Reduce Coastal Degradation in Tourism Destination Communities (2023)

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The development of these case studies are supported with the NC State College of Natural Resource’s Lighthouse Fund for Sustainable Tourism. 

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