What causes overtourism? It’s not the people, it’s the government’s mismanagement

Crowded beaches. Expensive rent. Tourist attractions with countless people.

When it comes to overtourism, don’t blame the travelers, said Randy Durband, CEO of the Global Sustainable Tourism Council.

It’s more due to a “lack of management,” he told Squawk Box Asia on Monday.

“I have been in the travel and tourism industry for 40 years, serving on boards and trade associations in Europe, North America and Asia,” he said. “Governments around the world traditionally simply didn’t believe they had a role in governance.”

Destination marketing organizations “need to change the ‘M’ in DMO from marketing to management,” Durband told CNBC before the interview.

He added that this change has begun but is still in its infancy.

“This is the great awakening that needs to happen and the government needs to understand that tourism is a sector that needs to be managed,” he said. “There are ways to manipulate, to control, to add capacity … to address the problem.”

He pointed to several examples of places where this is already being implemented well.

“We We see good management of protected areas and national parks,” he said. “But so much still needs to be done to create awareness of what needs to be done at the government level.”

But that doesn’t apply to China, he said.

“The Chinese are masters at expanding capacity and managing flows,” Durban said. He cited the Great Buddha of Leshan as an example.

“Everyone comes for the Buddha, but the city government has built an enormous attraction next to it… which is dispersing visitors,” he said of the area, which now includes developed parkland and a cave full of giant carved figures.

He said Chinese officials had also set up a control center with video screens to track visitors at various locations. Of the narrow stairs leading to the Buddha’s entrance: “You know before the stairs get dangerously crowded,” he told CNBC Travel after the interview.

“I think that many iconic heritage sites around the world where overcrowding is a problem would benefit from additional and ideally temporary viewing sites that prepare the visitor so that they do not feel forced to linger at the main attraction,” he said.

However, he said that all popular websites need technology to “monitor visitor flows”.

He said the small French village of Saint Guilhem le Désert changed the “flow” of travelers after someone in the town died of a heart attack and traffic prevented an ambulance from providing assistance.

Residents can drive to the village by car, Durband said. However, visitors are instructed to park in a designated area outside the village on weekends and summer and then cycle, walk or take an electric shuttle bus to the village.

The strategy could even work in a city like Barcelona, ​​which receives around 17 million visitors a year, he said. On July 6, demonstrators marched through Barcelona demanding that the city reduce the number of tourists visiting.

But the city is focused on “flow,” a spokesperson told CNBC Travel last week.

“The measure of the success of tourism in Barcelona cannot focus on the number of visitors, but rather on managing the flow of people so that a social and environmental limit is not crossed,” said the spokesman for the Barcelona City Council.

Durband said it would be particularly difficult to manage visitor flows in Barcelona. Unlike other major cities, visitors tend to congregate in the same areas that residents prefer, increasing tensions between the two groups, he said.

“Everyone wants to go to the same small area of ​​Old Town, so dispersal would require a fairly comprehensive strategy to achieve that,” he said.

Still, he said it was “absolutely” possible.

“Demand will not go down,” he said, pointing to the 8 billion people now on the planet and a growing middle class in the Asia-Pacific region. “Therefore, capacity needs to be increased and management approaches to distributing visitors need to be significantly improved.”