"Benidorm is a good example of tourism management - four million people visit
the resort every year, and stay in a small 10km radius in high rise hotels,"
says Leo Hickman, author of "The Final Call: In Search of the True Cost of
Our Holidays".
"Tourism clusters or hubs like this are the model for more responsible travel.
By staying in tourist hotspots like Benidorm or Cancun, holidaymakers are
lessening their environmental impact through improved economies of scale,"
he told a travel industry conference in Portugal at the weekend.
But not everyone agrees. Jono Vernon-Powell, managing director of Nomadic
Thoughts, a company that organises mostly long-haul bespoke holidays, argues
that large-scale tourism destinations are frequently mismanaged.
He told Times Online: "There is a diseconomy of scale if it is managed wrongly
and doesn't benefit the local area. Getting more people using the same
resources, like one swimming pool, may be efficient but there are other
questions you need to ask, such as whether staff are being treated properly,
not just water useage."
Hickman argues that in resource terms many high-end tourists to Spain are
doing more damage. "The golf courses and the villas with their kidney shaped
pools in the Costas are the greatest threat in Spain," he told the Association
of Independent Tour Operators conference.
"Only the top 15 per cent of UK travellers are the real 'binge flyers'; people
who take perhaps ten flights a year. Those who go to Spain for their annual
two-week holiday are not having anywhere near the same environmental impact."
Borneo or Benidorm?
Hickman also criticises globetrotters who seek out far-flung destinations to
get away from the crowds. "People who go to the far corners of the world,
like Borneo, are dragging these problems with them," he says.
Opposing this, Wanderlust editor Dan Linstead used the example of Borneo as a
tourism destination that is being managed responsibly, and where the
interest in orang-utans from tourists isencouraging the government to
preserve the species.
"Borneo has infrastructure in its infancy," he told Times Online, "a
relatively small number of tourists go and impact far less on the local
environment and culture than in Benidorm where all Spanish culture has been
squashed by the fish and chips brigade"
Linstead added: "The type of tourism in emerging destinations like Borneo will
tend to give more money back to local businesses and individuals rather than
feather the nest of some international hotel or travel company.
"Benidorm is the protoype for tourism development that has been mismanaged, it
is not a beacon for the rest of the world to follow," said Linstead.
Limit long-haul travel
Hickman accepts that many developing world countries depend on tourism for a
large part of their GDP, but said British tourists should still limit trips
to these destinations.
"I advocate the 'Goldilocks' approach to travel," he told Times Online, "by
which we alternate our holidays, taking a long haul trip one year, mid haul
another year, perhaps somewhere accessible by rail, and holidaying locally
the next year."
Hickman put the onus on travel companies to remove the most
environmentally-damaging holidays from their brochures and websites. He said
travel companies should look into "choice editing", a practice adopted in
the supermarket sector, whereby some companies, such as M&S, select only
environmentally and socially responsible products to sell, rather than the
Tesco approach of offering the full range of products.
"We have to get away from this idea that choice is good and stop batting
responsibility to the consumers to make the informed choice," he told Times
Online.
His comments were made during the annual conference of the Association of
Independent Tour Operators, whose theme this year is whether the travel
industry can be a force for positive environmental and social development.
