Critical Debates in Tourism

By Tej Vir Singh

Multilingual Matters

Copyright © 2012 Tej Vir Singh and the authors of individual chapters
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84541-342-2

Contents

Contributors,
Foreword – Jafar Jafari,
Preface,
Introduction – Tej Vir Singh,
Chapters,
1 Mass Tourism and Sustainability: Can the Two Meet?,
2 Consumerism and Tourism: Are They Cousins?,
3 Is Small Tourism Beautiful?,
4 Does Community Participation Empower Local People?,
5 Does Tourism Reduce Poverty?,
6 Volunteer Tourism: Is it Benign?,
7 Tourism and Welfare: Seeking Symbiosis,
8 Tourism Education: Quo Vadis?,
9 Post-Colonialism: Academic Responsibility?,
10 The Dilemma of Authenticity and Inauthenticity,
11 Heritage Tourism: Heritage Tourists,
12 Nature-Based Tourism: There’s a Lot in a Name,
13 Tourism and Climate Change: A Need for Critical Analysis,
14 Slow Tourism: Back to Bullock Cart Days!,
Conclusion – Tej Vir Singh,
Index,

CHAPTER 1

Mass Tourism and Sustainability: Can the Two Meet?

David Weaver, Ralf Buckley, Brian Wheeller and Bill Bramwell

Context

Weaver initiates this probe by arguing that the mass tourism industry is moving toward sustainability, but more as ‘paradigm nudge’ (i.e. the opportunistic adjustment of capitalism) than ‘paradigm shift’ (i.e. a fundamental change of worldview). Largely, this occurs as a response to normative consumerism, which at best displays superficial environmentalism that claims concern about the environment but an unwillingness to adopt inconvenient behaviours. Finally, he argues that academics are not actively leading any effort to move beyond superficial environmentalism. Buckley responds by corroborating and elaborating the paradigm nudge argument through his overview of codes, guidelines, certification schemes, awards and other practices. He adds that there are innovative businesses that should be emulated, and enabling environmental legislative structures that should be implemented. Wheeller responds by rejecting the idea of sustainable mass tourism, due to the inherently unsustainable nature of transportation. He laments the continuation of some scholars to give credibility to this ‘charade’. Bramwell concludes by reminding us of the inherent complexity of ‘sustainable tourism’ as both a theoretical and practical construct, which engenders both confusion and conflict. Critical assessments and normative responses are both warranted to effect positive change.

1.1Towards Sustainable Mass Tourism: Paradigm Shift or Paradigm Nudge?

David Weaver

From The Margins to the Mainstream

There is perhaps no conceptual theme so dominant in the contemporary tourism literature as ‘sustainability’. Yet, almost none of this literature existed prior to 1990, as a quick search of the search engine leisuretourism.com will attest. Equally remarkable is the extent to which the vocabulary of sustainability has been formally adopted by conventional tourism-related corporations and organizations over the same time period. High profile examples illustrative of this institutionalization include the establishment of the Sustainable Development of Tourism Department at the United Nations World Tourism Organization, the Blueprint for New Tourism manifesto of the World Travel and Tourism Council, and the explicit sustainability focus of the UNEP Tourism Programme. Formal sustainability entities have also been established within major corporations such as Marriott, British Airways and TUI, while initiatives such as the International Hotels Environment Initiative (IHEI), the Ocean Conservation and Tourism Alliance (involving the ICCL), and the Tour Operators Initiative for Sustainable Tourism Development all indicate official sector-specific engagements with the concept since the early 1990s.

But what substance underlies this rhetorical flourish? To the degree that this issue has been empirically investigated, it appears that the tourism sector’s engagement with sustainability is neither broad nor deep. A lack of breadth is apparent in the prominence of just a few corporations such as those mentioned above, and by the fact that segments of the tourism industry such as the travel agency sector still have almost no involvement (Weaver, 2006). The absence of depth is evident in the dominance of selective practices such as recycling, energy use reduction and some types of community outreach that expend few resources but often yield substantial cost savings and/or positive publicity (Enz & Siguaw, 2003). The increasingly ubiquitous hotel bathroom signs (made of course from recycled plastic or paper) that exhort guests to re-use bath towels and face cloths in order to ‘Save Mother Earth’ are frequently the extent of a company’s efforts in this regard. While it can be argued that such practices, unless they support corporate green-washing activity, are not without some ecological and social benefit, they are still essentially cosmetic and reflect no fundamental change in the underlying assumptions that inform the actions of the typical tourism corporation. Thus, one often hears of a corporation’s commitment to ‘smart growth‘ or ‘sustainable development‘, but almost never of any decision to actually curtail growth or cancel a development in favour of ecological or social considerations.

This pessimistic assessment is reinforced by the current state of play with regard to the primary mechanisms that demonstrate the degree to which particular companies or products adhere to the criteria of sustainability. Codes of conduct are abundant, but these are regarded by some as inadequate by themselves due to their vague, voluntary and self-regulated character (Mason, 2007). Awards address some of these problems by relying on third party adjudication, but are still hindered by the sometimes questionable protocols through which certain products or businesses are nominated, assessed and rewarded (Weaver, 2006). Their emphasis on high profile annual awarding ceremonies and the common practice of including the sponsor name in the title (e.g. the British Airways Tourism for Tomorrow Awards), moreover, imply a central publicity motive that affiliates awards with superficial practices such as recycling and energy reduction (Font & Tribe, 2001). Finally, certification-based ecolabels in principle represent the gold standard of quality assurance, based as they are on the formal recognition of products that adhere to rigorous standards of practice as assessed by qualified third-party verifiers (Black & Crabtree, 2007). The limited duration of such recognition (usually one year) better ensures that product quality is maintained so that certification status can be renewed. According to Buckley (2002), effective ecolabels require sufficient ‘guts’, or substantive criteria, and ‘teeth’ – that is, effective enforcement to ensure the exclusion of non-qualifying products.

If the widespread adoption of effective ecolabels is the litmus test of sustainable tourism, then contemporary tourism does not receive a passing grade. Aside from relatively effective but regionally- and sector-specific ecolabels such as Australia’s EcoCertification Programme (focused on ecotourism and nature-based tourism) (Thwaites, 2007) and the Blue Flag Programme (focused on European beaches) (Gössling, 2006), there are no ecolabels that have made a substantial penetration into the global tourism industry as a whole. Green Globe, which is the best known aspirant to such a universal ecolabel (Parsons & Grant, 2007), reported on its website as of mid-February 2007 just 88 Certified Members (the highest level of certification offered by the ecolabel) and 108 that were Benchmarked (an intermediate status promoted as a preparatory stage towards Certified status). The distribution of this miniscule membership, moreover, is geographically skewed, with North America accounting for just one member at either of these two levels and all of Europe just seven (three Certified, four Benchmarked). Other problems associated with Green Globe have been discussed by Honey and Rome (2001).

Mirroring the Mainstream

Kuhn’s (1970) idea of paradigm shift offers a useful framework for contextualizing the above synopsis of the tourism status quo with regard to sustainability. In this perspective, the contradictions and anomalies inherent in laissez-faire conventional mass tourism, encapsulated in the self-defeating dynamics of the destination life-cycle model (Butler, 1980), led to recognition in the early 1990s of the need for, and possibility of, sustainability across the entire spectrum of tourism activities, and not just within the parameters of the small-scale ‘alternative tourism’ that was initially proffered as the best solution to resolving those contradictions. Rather than evidence of tourism’s failure to engage sustainability in a meaningful way, the status quo accordingly can be seen as evidence that tourism is in the early stages of a slow but inevitable transformation indicative of a paradigm shift. The level of current involvement, though shallow and modest in an absolute sense, would have been unimaginable just two decades ago and represents tangible progress. The genius of sustainable tourism as a vehicle for paradigm shift is its adaptability, embodied in Hunter’s (1997) suggestion of ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ paths of sustainable development, the former being appropriate for ecologically and/or socio-culturally sensitive destinations and the latter appropriate for destinations already heavily urbanized or otherwise modified.

However, there is another, much less deterministic, way of interpreting this clash of paradigms, based on the observation that confrontation between competing models is usually characterized by mutual appropriation; that is, supporters of each model consciously or unconsciously incorporate those complementary elements of the competing paradigm that make their own paradigm stronger and, therefore, more competitive; whichever prevails is a synthesis of the two combatants. Thus, advocates of the green paradigm embrace scientific method and are not completely hostile to free markets, thereby gaining support from those who might otherwise be hostile to its basic assumptions about the relationships between humans and the natural environment. Similarly, advocates of the existing paradigm qualify support for free markets, growth and development with green adjectives such as ‘smart’ and ‘sustainable’ to win support from moderate environmentalists and support strategies of ‘strategic self-regulation’ that serve to pre-empt further government intervention (Maxwell et al., 2000). In this scenario, an actual shift from one paradigm to another is not inevitable and it is conceivable that the old paradigm will prevail – synthesised into a softer and greener adaptive entity, but basically the same old paradigm nonetheless. This is the scenario of ‘paradigm nudge’ described in the title of this paper.

Whether the current confrontation is ultimately assessed as part of a paradigm shift or a paradigm nudge will, in this commentator’s opinion, depend on the actions of the general public. In very broad terms, consumer surveys reveal that societies in the more developed countries resemble a bell curve wherein about one-quarter of adults (these ratios vary from country to country) are ‘non-environmentalists’, including some who are hostile towards environmentalism but most for whom the environment does not register as a serious personal or social concern (PollingReport.com, 2007). In contrast, approximately one-fourth of society at the opposite pole has ‘environmentalist’ tendencies in the sense that they are concerned about the environment and are more or less willing to modify their lifestyle and sacrifice accordingly. ‘Activists’ generally account for just a small minority even within this group and are the leading edge in inducing increased sales of products such as organic food and fuel-efficient vehicles. In the centre, about one-half of society is a mainstream consisting of ‘veneer environmentalists’ who express concern about the environment but are unwilling to make substantive personal concessions for the sake of the latter. It can be argued that the veneer sustainability of the corporate world – and government – is simply a reflection of and response to the veneer environmentalism of society more generally (and not just pervasive greenwashing, as some aver). The lack of corporate interest in expensive certification-based ecolabels, by this logic, is because these quality assurance mechanisms currently have almost no resonance among tourists, and thus provide certified products with no significant competitive advantage over their non-certified competitors. Change will, therefore, have to be driven by consumers rather than the industry.

For contemporary mass tourism, the situation may even be worse than in other sectors in terms of actual consumer agitation for ‘green’ corporate behaviour and products, even though concerns about the environment and preferences for environment-friendly tourism experiences are consistently elicited from consumer surveys (Chafe, 2007). In part, this is because contemporary alternative tourism activities such as ‘voluntourism’, farm vacations and homestays already siphon away many of the relatively hard-core environmentalist travellers who would otherwise serve as vehicles of this agitation. In addition, it is very difficult to obtain credible information on the web and through other media about sustainable mass tourism products, which are essentially invisible to the consumer. The relative infrequency of leisure travel also impedes the establishment of environmental purchasing habits (Hjalager, 1999), while the vast majority of potential mass tourists have no awareness at all of the underlying issues and theories associated with unsustainable tourism, and have been exposed to no tourism-specific cause célèbre equivalent to climate change that would stimulate consumers to significantly modify their travel behaviour. Finally, tourism-dedicated organizations such as the UK-based Tourism Concern and the Ecumenical Coalition on Third World Tourism lack critical mass to function as effective lobbying and publicity entities, and are largely unknown among consumers (Turner et al., 2001).

Beyond the Status Quo

How, then, can the consumer mainstream be induced to move beyond veneer environmentalism with regard to its mass tourism expectations and behaviour? Greater public awareness and activism is required, and in this regard conventional mass tourism needs its Rachel Carson (1962) – a charismatic (and media-savvy) representative who can attract and sustain the public’s attention, raise awareness and induce widespread change in expectations and behaviour. To ignite the latent environmentalism of veneer environmentalists, this outreach should coalesce around an issue such as climate change (probably including natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina) that is already capturing the public imagination and implicates tourism-related activity such as aircraft greenhouse gas emissions. Residents of major tourist regions and resorts might constitute a particularly receptive target audience because of their vested interest in the well-being of the tourism industry. A more radical idea that could complement the public relations effort and represent a tangible outcome of the latter is the introduction of a certification protocol for tourists to work in tandem with those being introduced to tourism products. While such an idea would require a great deal of thought as to criteria, implementation and expectations, the basic idea involves a reciprocal arrangement based on the principle of enlightened self-interest whereby certified tourists agree to patronize qualifying certified products and behave in certain ways in exchange for discounts and other privileges.

As stated earlier, the environmentalism bell curve in society is a phenomenon primarily of the more developed countries, and this is notable to the extent that residents of those regions continue to account for the large majority of international and domestic tourists (UNWTO, 2006b). Attention must be paid, however, to the growing proportion of tourist arrivals originating in less developed countries in which environmental awareness and activism – much less recognition of the negative impacts of tourism – is more incipient. China is illustrative, with over 1.2 billion domestic tourist trips reported for 2005, a 100 million increase over the previous year (China National Tourist Office, 2006). In addition, it is anticipated that China will produce 100 million outbound tourists by 2020, compared with 31 million in 2005 (including visits to Hong Kong and Macau) (UNWTO, 2006a). Chan (2001) reports that strong environmentalist sentiments solicited from residents of Beijing and Guangzhou – that is, those in the urban vanguard of modernization – did not correspond with a pattern of strong green agitation or purchasing. Prospects for attaining sustainable mass tourism in China and other rapidly evolving less developed countries, therefore, appear grim in the foreseeable future, although exposure to industry best practice in ADS (Approved Destination Status) countries such as Australia may stimulate interest domestically. Government in China is also better positioned to force changes in industry, although the priority currently is more on sustained economic growth than a clean environment. Ironically, some of the most tangible evidence of substantive if inadvertent change in the more developed countries is industry-led, manifested in the decision by many major property insurers in the USA to cancel policies and/or raise premiums in hurricane-prone regions along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts (Insurance Information Institute, 2007). However, the same free market forces that are inducing such self-correction could just as easily induce accelerated development in other areas or in the same areas under different circumstances (i.e. more rigorous building standards), and thus appear to be an unstable mechanism for sustained attention to sustainable mass tourism in either more or less developed regions.

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