THE NEED FOR A CARING CAPACITY - NOT CARRYING CAPACITY

On 5th March 2022, The Guardian newspaper’s Saturday supplement carried ab article titled, “Is tourism bad for us?”. In it the author took a rather tired, limited, and quite pretentious swipe at the issue of overtourism referencing three books (The Meaning of Travel by Emily Thomas, Hyperculture by Byung-Chul Han and Overtourism by Martha Honey & Kelsey Frenkiel (both of the Center for Responsible Travel).

Sadly, the article (under the title of ‘The Big Idea’) failed to bring any new perspective to the challenges facing global tourism - challenges that the industry has been addressing since before the pandemic. Stuart Jeffries article failed to recognise the good work being undertaken to re-imaging, re-design, and shift the focus of tourism in so many destinations.

To be fair, Honey and Frenkiel’s book does highlight lessons for a better future but more could be done to celebrate the work of so many DMOs in tackling the big issues in tourism. Slovenia is a leader in this space and I love their idea of a caring capacity as opposed to the concept of ‘carrying capacity’. Follow www.slovenia.info