As I indicated last week, this week I am going back to the destination center’s website regarding sustainable tourism, or geotourism. Again, this website is here: Destination Center.

One thing they have announced is the list of finalists in the Tourism for Tomorrow Finalists. One such finalist is here in the United States – Yellowstone, our first National Park. Their website is here: Jackson Hole. Under Information Resources, accessed from a tab on the top of that website, one will find a series of subtopics, including a source called Community Conversations. HERE, one will find a relatively short report – 16 page pdf document – outlining the goals, the methods, and the results of this project submitted on October 24, 2017. This seems like a good place to start our conversation, and one which might provide a model for us to follow – a model which is a global finalist in destination stewardship or sustainable tourism.

The Executive Summary’s opening paragraph could have been written about Big Sur.

”Jackson Hole is experiencing unprecedented tourism visitation. While our community and destination benefit from the increased revenue, we suffer from the negative impacts associated with this increased visitation upon our environment and natural resources, infrastructure and services, community character and quality of life, and visitor experience. These phenomena are occurring elsewhere as travel and tourism numbers increase worldwide. Destinations have the ability to proactively address these impacts and challenges through the development of destination management plans. Critical to destination management planning is engaging local stakeholders in a conversation about the impacts of increasing visitation, issues and challenges with managing a significantly increasing number of visitors from diverse cultures, and identifying and prioritizing short- and long- term solutions that prevent, mitigate, and manage these impacts, issues, and challenges.”

Sound like a good place to start? At the next BSMAAC meeting, let’s ask to form a committee to formulate a destination management plan. I won’t be able to attend, due to a seminar in SF I must attend on the same date, but I would love to be a part of that conversation.

It is time. We have a Land Management Plan and now we need a Destination Management Plan if we and this place are to survive the increase in tourism. Let’s continue this discussion between now and the next BSMAAC meeting.

The National Geographic site I pointed everyone to the last two weeks (found here: http://destinationcenter.org/home-page/) suggests that the place to start working toward a tourism which works, might be to define the “character of place” so that sustainable tourism that protects resources – both natural and cultural – and one that enhances the tourist experience while protecting the local one, can be achieved. This is one such study undertaken by a MS candidate in Montana. Interesting to see that much of what the visitors enjoyed about their experience was the rural nature of the area and the interactions with residents. This could serve as a guide for how we might accomplish the same thing here. The University of Montana has provided that anyone can download this scholarly study for free.

https://scholarworks.umt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=12089&context=etd

At first, it seems intimidating, as it is long, but the author made it interesting by sharing the experiences of the residents and the tourists he spoke with. One observation will definitely resonate with all of us here in Big Sur.

One of the residents had this to say about work-force housing:

”I think that there is a strong sense within our community that we always like it the way it was, and the way it was 20 years ago is much different than the way it was 5 years ago, but that’s the way it was. So we’ll always be seeing those changes and transitions. But one of the big issues is going to be how do people afford to live in this community. The average price of a home is $307,000 currently. That’s not affordable. That’s not workforce housing. So we’ve got to find ways to increase the availability of workforce housing. Not necessarily affordable housing but what is called workforce housing. Unlike Aspen and similar places in Colorado, the one advantage that Whitefish has is that we do have a safety valve in terms of affordability in Kalispell and Columbia Falls. It would be best to have our police and fire and nurses and administrative help, all of the people that are fully and gainfully employed, it would be best to have them here in town, because that’s how we keep that grit. That’s how we keep that hometown flavor.”

And from another resident, a look at the impact of STRs:

“… outspoken residents of Whitefish protested the rising tide of local workers displaced by home prices inflating over the heads of ordinary people. Residents agreed that keeping longtime locals in town is vital to preserving the character of Whitefish. Residents told stories of close friends forced to move out of town to make ends meet, while landlords replace them with summer-only renters solicited on VRBO or Airbnb, “That’s not creating character in town if you don’t actually live in that house,” Roy testified.” (Both quotes can be found on page 38 of the paper.)

There is so much we can learn and apply to our situation by studying the way other tourist destination places have faced or are facing  similar problems. Together, through a collaborative effort of sharing what works and what does not, we can all find ways to maintain a sense of community under the pressure of overtourism.

(Next week: The Galapagos.)

https://bigsurkate.blog

From the Destination Stewardship Center:

Our four-part strategy”

Highlight the issues. Tourism is changing the world more than people realize. Our Destination Watch section lists ratings and destination-stewardship news for places around the globe. Please get involved.
Provide Stewardship Resources—information and links to services—to help destinations to improve in terms of authenticity, sustainability, and responsible tourism economy.
To those ends, help places adopt the Geotourism approach, defined as: Tourism that sustains or enhances the geographical character of a place—its environment, culture, geology, aesthetics, heritage, and the well-being of its residents.
Help mindful, educated and discerning Geotravelers find access to enjoyable, rewarding, responsible, and enriching trips.
We offer participants a blogging and news aggregation platform with content keyed to these topics.

We invite dedicated people to make this site their own and help save the places we love.

Our invitation: Join us. If we succeed in our mission, it will be because you, the participants, grow the website and its resources (including yourselves) into a self-sustaining entity. Make it your own. We want to build a nonprofit network serving everyone who works where tourism intersects with destination quality.

We invite mission-compatible proposals for partnering, sponsorship, or cooperative ventures. We invite participation by interested individuals—practitioners, civic leaders, sponsors, students, residents, and travelers. Join in and play a role—with blogging, news aggregation, business development, sponsorships, social media and WordPress techniques, content development, online tools, and networking.

Next week I discuss the Character of Place

For the next couple of weeks, i would like to introduce us to a concept and organization with which we might want to work. We have complained, become exacerbated, and tried to find piece-meal solutions to our Overtourism. We need to change the paradigm lens through which we view our visitors to one which is sustainable for the visitor, the residents, and the land itself. I suggest we investigate and perhaps join in with the Destination Stewardship Center. This is at the top of its website:

“Our Mission, Our Goal, Our Invitation
Our mission: To help protect the world’s distinctive places by supporting wisely managed tourism and enlightened destination stewardship.

Our goal: Help people find the resources they need to achieve that mission.

WELCOME to the Destination Stewardship Center,
extending the work of National Geographic’s former CENTER FOR SUSTAINABLE DESTINATIONS.

This website is all about the intersection between stewardship of places and one of the world’s very largest industries: tourism. We gather and provide information on the ways tourism can help—or hurt—distinctive destinations around the world. We seek people who want to join us in building a global community and knowledge network for change.

If you care about great places, if you care about managing tourism so as to enhance places and not spoil them, then this website and collaborative blogging platform is for you. The website is constantly growing and evolving, and you are welcome to join in the process. Help us tell—and improve—the destination-stewardship story.”

Destination Stewardship Center

Tourists fill a pathway in Hongcun village, China. Photo: Jonathan Tourtellot

Tourism has a numbers problem

The world’s population explosion has finally arrived. It has manifested itself not in global waves of famine as was feared half a century ago, but in waves of Airbuses, tour buses, and minibuses. Tourists by the millions.

This population explosion overwhelms St Mark’s Square in Venice. It pushes through the streets of Barcelona, angering residents. It forms hours-long queues in China for the cable cars up Mount Huangshan and fills all the lanes in the World Heritage Village of Hongcun (above). It paves the beaches of the Mediterranean in simmering northern European flesh. In the Louvre it blocks your view of the Mona Lisa with forests of smartphones held high in selfie mode. It pushes through the ruins of Tulum in Mexico with busloads of Spaniards, Americans, Chinese. It even creates traffic jams on the climbing routes up Mount Everest.

It has spawned a new word: Overtourism. Too many tourists.

(To be continued in the following weeks, including possible solutions)

“Mass tourism has tipped into overtourism — a word the travel industry has coined to describe too many people in too few places — and backlash in popular destinations is building. In Amsterdam, the mayor has blocked any new souvenir stores or fast-food outlets in the central city. In Barcelona — now the third most popular destination in Europe after London and Paris — there is a ban on new vacation homes. In Venice, protesters blocked a cruise ship from entering the lagoon to dock. Even the pilgrimage Way of St. James has become so overrun that local residents accost hikers with very un-Christian remarks.” …

“Hotels are raising prices and some municipalities are raising tourist taxes to curb the influx, but the home-sharing alternatives undermine that effort. Would restricting budget airlines stem the tide by making access more expensive? Could travel agents do a better job of convincing visitors to come in off-peak seasons? While tourism agencies are excellent at promoting their regions to outsiders, what if they had more responsibility for the management of all those travelers? There’s no easy answer for the question of how to deal with the crush of people in a planet growing ever smaller.”

For the rest of this article see: https://global.handelsblatt.com/companies-markets/tourists-go-away-847236

A nude group therapy session in 1968 at Esalen, which was once a storied hippie hotel where nudity was the norm.
RALPH CRANE / THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION, VIA GETTY IMAGES

From the Nwew York Times:

”And so Silicon Valley has come to the Esalen Institute, a storied hippie hotel here on the Pacific coast south of Carmel, Calif. After storm damage in the spring and a skeleton crew in the summer, the institute was fully reopened in October with a new director and a new mission: It will be a home for technologists to reckon with what they have built.”

…

 

With the focus on the emotional life of executives, Esalen plans to close Gazebo, its preschool of 40 years.

“It was the soul of the institution of Esalen — all those little babies and what they’re going to be,” said Zoe Garcia, a guest and nearby resident, who has been going to Esalen for 30 years.

The closing is partly a sign of the region’s changing demographics. As more of Big Sur’s homes are bought by tech executives as second homes, there are not as many young children, so the class of 30 had dwindled to 15 before the floods shut it down.

“It’s incredibly sad,” said Cortlan Robertson, whose daughter attended Gazebo and who said the Big Sur community had offered to pay for the preschool to continue. “Ben is always saying it’s just child care. But it was so much more.”

Closing Gazebo was also a sign of a shifting culture and new rules.

For the rest of the article, see https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/04/technology/silicon-valley-esalen-institute.html

I will refrain from making editorial comments, other than to say this is a travesty. It isn’t just STRs that are changing our community, but 2nd homes, and institutional changes like this. I have heard about Ventana, but haven’t seen the changes, yet. Please feel free to share and comment.