Often times, travel and tourism are the number one sources of income revenue and job opportunities in private as well as government and not-for-profit agencies. Nations such as Seychelles, The Bahamas, Barbados, and Jamaica quickly come to mind where tourism tops the list as the main economic driver for the country.
Is This a Negative or a Positive?
When a country is so fiercely reliant upon tourism to fulfill economic demands, does that dependence make them vulnerable to potential global situations? Think of how COVID-19 nearly shut down the travel and tourism industry. The fall of economies can affect whether or not people even travel in the first place. Natural disasters can cause travelers to cancel plans to that destination affecting industries from airlines to hotels to restaurants.
Beyond money, overtourism can lead to the degradation of the environment. With large numbers of tourists often comes abuse of natural resources, excessive pollution, and damage to fragile ecosystems which result in not only long-term natural effects but once again circles back to additional economic resources being funneled into fixing the damage that has been done. Case in point: the movie The Beach had so many people traveling to Maya Bay in Thailand that the coral reef and other marine life were damaged causing the Thai government to close the bay to all visitors in 2018. It remained closed for restoration for 4 years until January 2022.
On the Positive Flip Side
The more tourists there are, the more money that governments have to spend on things like infrastructure. This benefits not only future visitors but residents as well with better roads, transportation options, and airports, as well as better public facilities including such things are cultural programs.
Tourism is often times the proponent of a revitalizing of cultural venues to promote traditions and heritage from within the destination. Hinging upon culture customs, crafts often are the catalyst for community income as tourists especially enjoy purchasing cultural handmade items to bring home as souvenirs from their travel adventures.
Along with all these increases in venues, transportation, and events, comes staffing needed to run the restaurant, or the museum, or the craft fair, or drive the city tour bus, or man the additional airport security check ins. You get the picture. Expansion of any sort normally involves some sort of human power, even areas not normally thought of, such as farm workers that need to keep up with food demand by more restaurants opening up, construction workers building that new hotel, and the like.
Just Remember to Make it Sustainable
As with everything else in life, we are only as good as our last deed. So this should be so with tourism as well, in that it’s great to have a growing industry, as long as we make sure we can keep up with the demand. In a word – as long it is sustainable.
A booming tourism economy requires a commitment that is just as big to the careful management of tourism’s impact on the destination. Conservation is key to protecting tourism as an economic asset and may be achieved through tourism that is community based so that local input is taken into account when planning a project and development of entities that will gain from tourism activities. This is where not putting one’s eggs into one basket will help, as diversifying tourist activities will help to ensure not one particular activity will erode away at what is essentially a shared treasure. Options might include not just sand and sea, but cultural tours, adventure jaunts, restaurant tastings, musical events, and so on.

Learners Take Heed
As economies shift industry impacts, nations new to the travel and tourism industry should take heed as the economics of this industry are a recipe that should be respectfully followed. On the other hand, the sharing of information and stories by industry newcomers is also important.
The WEF has its sites set on this topic as it invited the Minister of Tourism for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, His Excellency Ahmed Al-Khateeb, to enlighten a conversation about global tourism at the forum. Saudi Arabia only opened its borders to tourism just a little over 5 years ago and is breaking its own tourism goals. The country has become one of the world’s fastest-growing tourism destinations, surpassing its own 2030 goal of 100 million tourist arrivals by achieving just that last year in 2023. They should be listened to with great enthusiasm as it always benefits to have a fresh set of eyes on any situation.
A new briefing paper on “The Future of Travel and Tourism: Embracing Sustainable and Inclusive Growth” was released at WEF in collaboration with the Saudi Arabia Ministry of Tourism that describes how a destination makes itself ready for tourists as well as cross-sector collaboration and transformative trends in the sector.