 Hi there! Welcome to Tourism Matters, a program that explores issues about tourism and why tourism is an important part of our lives. This is brought to you by UPAIT and TVUP. Tourism Matters tackle broad topics and are divided into three series. Number one, tourism policy and governance with a specific focus on issue on over-tourism. Number two, tourism education and human resource capacity. And number three, tourism industry, market and enterprise. We hope you find the series interesting, educational and fun. In this series, leading experts in tourism share their thoughts on over-tourism, a term that first appeared on social media in 2012 to denote the negative impacts of tourism and the social movements associated with host antagonism to too many guests. In episode one, UPA visiting professors explain over-tourism, its definition, causes and dimensions. Professors Brent Ritchie from the University of Queensland, Australia and Kumikato of Wakayama University, Japan lend their voices to explain over-tourism in various contexts. The visiting professors were keynote speakers during the recently organized Second Philippine Research Conference on Tourism and Hospitality in Magusiti in 2018. The theme of that conference organized by the University of the Philippines was Facing the Challenges of Over-Tourism. Hello, my name is Kumikato from Wakayama University Centre for Tourism Research and also Faculty of Tourism. I specialize in sustainable tourism and then I work with local communities in Japan as well as overseas. I've been in tourism for the last ten years since I moved from Australia to Japan and I spend nearly 25 years in Australia. So my English is very Australian. So I'm very happy to be talking about tourism today. I guess over-tourism is a very uncontrolled, probably an explosion of tourism. I guess a lot of people think about just like a mass number of people visiting one site but I think it's really, the problem is more complex than that. I think it's really the lack of strategic planning and policy and a long-term vision for sustainability. I guess a lot of people are aware of what's happening in major destinations such as Barcelona and Venice and what's happening, what's called anti-tourism movement from that kind of more hostility from that local residents. Similar things started to happen in Japan. Japan's really experiencing a really rapid growth of international tourism. 2015 we had over 20 million visitors and now this year 2018 we're expecting probably 30 million visitors, international visitors. And as you know next year we will have Rugby World Cup in Japan and then 2020 we have Tokyo Olympics and then 2021 we have World Masters Games. So the Japanese government projecting 2020 we will have 40 million visitors and 2030 we will have 60 million. So that's a very big number. But what's happening is we started to see that impact on the local community and destinations. So particularly the very famous destination like Kyoto, there is a very mass crowd. Now the local residents started to feel a little bit probably uneasy about what's happening. Like there's a big congestion on the road, like public transport like a bus. A lot of local residents say they cannot actually get on the bus. Local shops are filled with tourists or even the supermarkets that normally you don't see visitors, you started to see that guests. So that's happening in Japan and then now there is this word kanko kogai which is actually called tourism pollution. And that's probably the over tourism equivalent in Japanese. So that's happening, started to happen in the major cities like Kyoto and Osaka and then I think some of you may have visited places like Dotonbori in Osaka and that's now the local communities they don't want to go there because they're just filled with international visitors. But at the same time we have to be very careful that doesn't become anti-international visitors because it's very difficult to isolate the program because the mass number of international tourists but they're not always, that's not, they're not the only one who's causing the program. It's a lack of infrastructure, lack of proper planning, policy. So we have to be very careful not to blame the obvious because international visitors particularly in the mass number it's very easy to say well because of them we now have too many crowds but that's not always the case. I think as I said, I think it's a really lack of long vision sustainability, long planning, long term planning for sustainability and then I guess what we really need to do is to really understand the caring capacity. Not just the physical capacity but also there is emotional capacity, cultural capacity, social capacity. There's all kinds of capacity that we really need to look at and then I think it's really important to involve the local community and what kind of vision they have and then what kind of priorities they have and then what the tourism can play within that vision. I'm actually working with the local community in my prefecture called Wakayama and then that's actually a quite famous pilgrimage destination so now we started to see a lot of international tourists coming to actually walk the pilgrimage. Because of that type of destination it's very unlikely that we will have flood of tourists there but then at the same time we can go develop kind of wrong kind of tourism but what I really value is that communities along those destination, those pilgrimage destination lot of them actually moved from urban areas because they wanted a particular kind of lifestyle. I find those people's vision quite important because they choose to live in those places because of their priority in a sustainable lifestyle so I think it's very important to use those people's vision to avoid actually destroying that destination itself. As I said again, I think it's very important we don't blame the tourists but then at the same time there are people who I think local people's life is really fundamental in tourism development so now the Japanese government actually last year they did the survey of that local community view about tourism what they are happy about what they are not happy about so it's really important that those people's view are really valued so I think that the government really need to set the priority that community happiness and well-being is the priority and if they really put that forward then they will feel that their view is their life and view is valued not secondary to tourism development so I think that priority is really important and that need to come through in the policy development I think it's really difficult to say here there is a solution but I think all these active well, one is those policy development and then planning based on the proper capacity caring capacity assessment I think that's very important and as I said that's including the physical caring capacity as well as more kind of intangible caring capacity which could involve how the community feel about the tourism of course that the tourist satisfaction is of course it's very important because we don't want to ruin their experience but then I think we really need to to come up with proper caring capacity assessment I think that's really the beginning but that's again we need to involve the local community in those assessment as well at the same time I think we really need to project sustainability vision often like in Japan like environmental impact it's taken care of by other department like natural resource management but of course we can separate like tourism development and then those environmental planning so they really need to communicate and work together that kind of partnership within at the sector or government it's very important as well so now I think a lot of people becoming aware about the sustainability issue because of the SDGs and I think in Japan also there is like a SDGs future cities that was selected I think 29 cities selected in Japan and then some industry also started to become more aware about sustainability issues through because of that SDG platform so I think tourism really need to work within, you can use that platform as a guideline and then the sustainability issues really need to come to be really I guess there's a more public education in industry as well as a community and then also visitors but I think the destination the host destination they really need to have a stronger vision in the sustainability issue Hi everyone, my name is Professor Brent Ritchie I'm with the University of Queensland in Australia I'm really pleased to be here at UP in the Philippines to talk about over tourism what in my view is over tourism well over tourism very simply is too much tourism tourist arrivals are growing very very rapidly and unfortunately tourists are travelling to the same place generally at the same time creating a lot of congestion crowding and negative impacts we're all familiar with the positive impacts of tourism but unfortunately with over tourism we're seeing more of the negative impacts in terms of carrying capacity this is being reached in the communities where tourists are visiting in the natural areas which they're also visiting carrying capacity is quite important in terms of understanding over tourism because the negative impacts of tourism will impact the community and its ability to absorb the impacts and recover quickly the same can be seen in the natural environment the more negative impacts tourism can have on coral or beach environments makes it very difficult to actually absorb the impacts and recover quickly over time in terms of residents' perceptions and attitudes towards over tourism this is quite important to understand all residents are different some residents may interact with tourists they may see the positive benefits of tourism and therefore their carrying capacity the impacts that tourism will have will be less they might be more supportive towards tourism because they're employed or because their family members are employed through tourism so not all residents are the same and understanding their attitudes and perceptions around tourism is very very important we're seeing some local residents in some cities actually responding negatively to tourism and this is because they're affected most negatively by the impacts of tourists in terms of its manifestations what we're seeing with over tourism is a large number of people coming to these key places at the same time tourism is very seasonal so what we're seeing is a huge influx at key periods of time which is having a major impact on the community now tourists are often travelling too to the same places and so this is also an issue we need to be able to disperse tourists beyond the key cities beyond the key beaches beyond the key resorts in terms of where we can see over tourism especially in Europe we can see this in many many cities in Europe which are being overrun by tourists examples include Venice Amsterdam and also Barcelona what we're seeing is the influx of tourists during key times at key locations and it's causing a lot of congestion it's creating price rises it's having negative economic impacts it's also having traffic congestion and all these impacts on the local community so it's affecting their quality of life and this is leading to some negative sentiment towards tourists in some cases we're actually seeing local people attacking tourists we're seeing graffiti we're seeing protests against tourism because of the nature of it in terms of the underlying conditions I think some of the conditions that are influencing over tourism obviously to do with the number of people coming at the key points in time at a key locations what we need to think about is spreading the flow of visitors beyond the key cities in terms of the role of social movement civil society groups and government all have a role to play obviously government has the ability to manage tourism to perhaps put in place policies to restrict where tourists go and what they do but also I think NGOs also have a role to play I think recently when we've seen closures of island resorts because of over tourism inacted but we may not have seen NGOs and civil society come in and say how do we actually make this work so that people don't lose jobs and we don't end up with poverty issues so I think government has a key role to play and dealing with the over tourism issue but so too does the tourism industry it has to take some responsibility for the impacts of tourism perhaps it has to look at how it actually operates has to think about waste management has to see look at how it can actually reduce its impact on the community tourists also have to take a responsibility unfortunately some tourists don't behave as well as we should expect them to do and they also have to take some responsibility and that might mean communicating with them about what they can do to reduce their impact on the community we might need to communicate to them about how to travel to the destination at a different time of the year and that will encourage them to actually have a better experience as well when it's less congested I think the discussions on over tourism need to also take place outside of the academic and research community I think the academic community can help develop research programs to better understand over tourism its consequences its impacts, its causes and then perhaps look at formulating policies and strategies to deal with the issue I think academic research can also be used to help evaluate and monitor strategies and policies that are implemented perhaps to deal with over tourism but the academic community can't just do this research in a silo it needs to actually communicate the findings, work with government, work with the not-for-profit sector to make sure the policies are implemented and that they're actually evaluated at the end of the day we need to make sure that we learn lessons we are able to develop strategies that actually work and don't negatively impact the local community so in terms of the issues we've got a large number of people travelling to the same destinations at the same time so a key measure to deal with over tourism is actually to spread the flow of people, is to actually encourage them to travel to other places or other parts of the city or the destination so perhaps we can think about developing events or other activities outside of the main tourist season to make sure they travel at that point in time we could also look at spreading tourists to other parts of the destination where perhaps they're not going to have as much of a large impact however that can have drawbacks because some neighbourhoods might not be ready to accept tourists away from the tourist zones we can also think about policies and strategies to plan and manage tourism better at the moment a lot of the issues around over tourism is to do with the lack of planning, lack of dealing with the problems, spreading the flow and dealing with traffic congestion also in terms of the short term rental accommodation we're seeing some places in Europe really negatively affected by air B&B and short term rental accommodation we're seeing some responses to that by actually regulating against air B&B and actually reducing the number of days that short term rentals can be leased to tourists so these are measures that the government can put in place we can also see other mechanisms by actually communicating to tourists to change their behaviour some of the problems are actually about the tourists and their behaviour when they're in the destination so obviously there are ways that we can do that through communicating, through the travel industry to explain to tourists what is right or wrong in terms of what their behaviour is and hopefully we can actually change that behaviour so that they don't litter, they don't pollute the environment and they act and treat people with respect and dignity when they're visiting these destinations another option I guess is closing places is actually shutting them down to tourists and tourism and obviously we're seeing this in Burukai and also in Mahabeech and Thailand however closing down the tourism destinations might not necessarily be a good plan it may be in the short term and may help the environment although it may cause problems in terms of employment and lead to issues around poverty we might be seeing some of this in the case of Burukai with people actually being displaced workers being displaced from the island I'm not sure if six month closure is enough to actually rehabilitate the coral reefs and deal with some of the underlying issues but it is a good start I think we might see more closures of destinations as we see a reaction towards over tourism but my concern is this might be a bit reactive and perhaps not thinking about the flow and implications to the economy and to society I think what we need to think about and deal with is actually the seasonality aspects and the numbers of people coming if we can showcase other destinations we might be able to spread the burden but also spread the positive impacts at tourism can bring to communities look we're seeing some negative reactions from local residents against tourism we're seeing some graffiti and anti tourism sentiment because local people feel alienated in their own communities we're also seeing some people actually questioning travel and consumption associated with travel particularly in European markets like Germany where they're actually thinking about slow forms of travel such as cycling and walking they're also thinking about not traveling to a destination for business if they can do that through Skype or technology things like that so we're seeing that so people are starting to question their consumption patterns and travel and tourism obviously has a big impact on the environment and they're questioning that reducing their travel too much of a good thing could be bad that is true of over tourism given that tourism could impact a destination adversely it is important that we understand such impacts and how we could respond to that in the next episode we analyze the government and the private sector's response to over tourism