At GSTC’s annual meeting, this year in Chile, hot topics included overtourism and the need for destination stewardship councils. Here, a set of recent news and comment on these topics.
UPDATE: “Philanthropic investing” helped transform an endangered Ecuadorean mansion into an award-winning hotel. Via the DSC, plans are now afoot for a new project in Cuenca. The invitation is out: We want to match more investors with local entrepreneurs.
Supporting local businesses is the key to successful culinary tourism—better for the tourist, and better for the communities. A Madrid food tour shows why.
An American tourist explains how her choice of independent travel in KwaZulu-Natal equipped her with inspiring stories that no group tour could match—good for her, good for the destination, and good for motivating new visitors.
ANNOUNCEMENT: The Destination Stewardship Center is launching a new video tool for helping you show and distribute your stewardship success stories across multimedia platforms for travelers, practitioners, and the general public. What’s more, we’ll help line up the funding to do it. Video is increasingly essential.
A restaurant owner in southwestern Missouri demonstrates why the key to a successful geotourism project in the countryside is a local champion willing to be the catalyst for change. A university geotourism class helps, too.
Melania Trump’s homeland is seen as being an authentic, green, and charming destination. What if Trump himself should show up on a state visit? His tourism-development style defies all that has made Slovenia successful.
A 2016 travel fling to 41 World Heritage sites inspires admiration and respect for the renowned UNESCO-administered program, but also disappointment and frustration with a bureaucratic, underfunded system. Remedies exist, says Swen Lorenz, himself a World-Heritage-site veteran.
Salli Felton, CEO of The Travel Foundation in the U.K., shows how mass tourism can get out of hand. There’s a solution, she says: Measure success in terms of impacts, not arrivals. The tools for doing so already exist. But does the will to use them?
The winners of the 2016 Sustainable Destinations Top 100 contest were announced in Ljubljana, Slovenia on 27-28 September. You can see the complete list here, along with an explanation of what the Top 100 list is, and what it is not.
Future of Tourism Is Storytelling, Not Discounts | Forbes
Slovenia’s Quiet Tourism Strategy | Eturbo News
Hawaii Climate Tax on Cruise Ships Blocked | Skift
CLIA and Trump administration win court ruling.
French Golf Course Showcases Ecosensitity | Golf Course Industry News
It can be done.
Kiribati Tourism Fights Plastic, Rising Sea | ETurbo News
Berlin to Follow Danish Model | The Berliner
Rewarding tourists for making sustainable choices.
Bali Ditches Inappropriate Sightseeing Elevator | TTW
Iceland Rethinks Mass Tourism | NY Times
Airbnb Crackdown in New York Didn’t Free up Housing | WSJ
The 2023 rules muted tourist partying but not soaring rents.
Morocco’s Gnaoua Music Festival Said to Lose Authenticity | TTW
As tourism rises, founding African diaspora communities fade
Greenland Town Divided Over Cruise Ships | Guardian
Ilulissat locals say they’re frozen out of cruise bounty
Too Much Success on Scotland’s 500 Drive | NY Times
Tourism on Peru’s Rainbow Mountain Sparked a Visionary’s Murder | Bloomburg