5 tourism destination stewardship tips for post-crisis reconciliation and recovery

The COVID-19 pandemic and the global protests against racial injustice have demonstrated once again how vulnerable the tourism industry is to crises.  The public’s desire to reduce exposure to the virus by staying home and avoiding crowds compounded by fears of violence and curfews have caused a dramatic halt to leisure travel.  Mandated closings of tourism-related businesses compounded in some cases with damage to storefronts and looting have crippled the restaurant and lodging private sector. And reductions in occupancy and prepared food taxes have defunded the public organizations responsible for marketing and managing destinations.

While this situation is extremely worrisome for tourism businesses, their employees and entrepreneurs, as well as the destination communities…  several factors also spell an opportunity for communities to reinvent how they engage with the tourism system to ensure that they emerge from this crisis more competitive and with greater influence over its development.

Namely, I draw on technical and scholarly literature and on my experience as a tourism entrepreneur in Portugal and in North Carolina to propose these 5 emerging trends and corresponding destination stewardship tips:

1. The market has become more altruistic and seeks life meaning => destinations must unleash the integrity of local microentrepreneurs

Societies generally emerge from deep crises with a renewed sense of purpose.  Some have suggested that the current crisis made many humans wake up from the enslaving claws of unbridled consumerism and realize the importance of caring for one another and for our own well-being (e.g., The Great Realization).  Accordingly, while people will always enjoy a dose of hedonism, pampering and convenience, my recent observations of tourist behavior suggest that this trend is already manifesting itself in tourism.  Namely, travelers are markedly more motivated to seek experiences that enable them and theirs to be healthier, they manifest a more evident desire to experience/enjoy/appreciate the local ways, and they are more overtly concerned with leaving positive impacts in the communities they visit.

So... destinations lulled by the irresistible temptation to anchor their competitiveness in the building of more tourist amenities, will now tend to fall ever more precipitously towards their demise as a stagnated destination with faltering visitation of price-conscious organized mass tourists (to borrow from a classic: Butler 1980).  Conversely, communities interested in reacting to emerging market trends must be active stewards of their destination brand, injecting themselves, their knowledge and their passions into their visitors’ experience of THEIR destination.  For this to be accomplished, the community must help recruit and nurture local small businesses that provide genuine experiences to visitors.  These hyper local tourism microentrepreneurs will bring integrity to claims of authenticity, they will demonstrate that locals welcome visitors in their community, and they will prove that a fair share of the tourist dollar stays in the community.

2. Tourism industry needs financial relief and communities are increasingly engaged in local governance => destinations must work on a reconciliation with locals

Before the current crisis, industry leaders already indicated that destination management organizations have transcended their previous focus on getting more heads in beds, and instead they “are increasingly building coalitions among the public and private sectors around a shared vision for the future of the destination, which prioritizes inclusivity, diversity, advanced mobility and connectivity, workforce development and higher quality of life” (Destinations International 2019). The current crisis eliminated the tax revenues that funded destination management organizations, they are now asking the government for relief, and are therefore confronted with the need to justify the role of tourism in enabling equitable local prosperity and wellbeing.  Destinations that had already been making concerted efforts to include community involvement in their management and oversight will likely experience more empathy from local residents and their representative governments.  In contrast, aggravated by a heightened attention of the recent mismanagement of public relief funds (e.g., Paycheck Protection Program), destinations that have been managed under the disproportionate influence of externally-owned self-serving hospitality and attractions industry will likely face resistance to any requests for the use of public funds to alleviate hardships caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.  Therefore, destinations should implement efforts of reconciliation with their community to delineate a shared vision for the destination and to identify and pursue a “convergence of tourism, community, urban and economic development for the benefit of residents” (Destinations International 2019).

3. Concentrations of people in events and attractions foster infections and will be avoided by many tourists => destinations must foster visitor dispersion

Before COVID-19, experts were already expressing concern over the excessive agglomeration of tourists in extremely popular attractions; the term coined to describe such situations is Overtourism.  Since tourists didn’t mind the crowds too much and only the locals complained, very few destinations experimented with anti-Overtourism strategies. Now, however, the most savvy destinations are already implementing carefully thought-out measures to reduce visitor agglomeration. For example, in Spain some beaches have opened with designated spaces that can be booked for part of the day and that will be sanitized between visitors.  Portugal is using a smart phone application www.posso-ir.com (meaning “can I come?”) to indicate which attractions, beaches and parks are at capacity or with enough space for more visitors. Therefore, destinations interested in a rapid recovery of visitation should identify bottleneck areas in visitor flows in their most popular attractions and explore innovative strategies to dissipate visitors over time and space.

[illustration of beach sectioning method used in Spain.]

4. Tourists are visiting sparsely populated areas => small towns, rural communities and coastal destinations must plan to harness increased demand

Recent travel data reveals that during their first forays out of quarantine, tourists are selecting destinations with low levels of infection and with low probability of exposure to crowds.  Furthermore, rural destinations and small destinations satellite to larger destinations are going to benefit from this market trend, and should be prepared for a rapid rise in visitation.  Indeed, there are many accounts of antagonistic reactions to visitors from rural residents (e.g., in the UK countryside, and in the North Carolina coast). Therefore, destinations in small rural areas should plan for increased visitation by working with local businesses on best practices to minimise infections among tourism workers and visitors (e.g., food safety practices in Vacationer Supported Agriculture) as well as communicating with local residents about ways to be welcoming visitors while keeping themselves healthy.

5. Tourists are only traveling within their home range => destinations must cater to discerning domestic and in-state tourists

The benefits of domestic/in-state tourism are described in many tourism management textbooks.  For one, the flow of tourists from affluent economic growth centers (like NC’s urban crescent) to pleasure peripheries (like NC’s rural areas, small towns and coastal communities) fuels trickle-down economics alleviating persistent geographic economic disparities.  Additionally, domestic/in-state tourists tend to alleviate the valleys of visitation and cash-flow because they tend to visit during low and shoulder season and to be the first visitors to return to destinations after crises.  From a marketing standpoint domestic/in-state visitors usually are more familiar with local culture and history, so heritage tourism attractions need to have better trained guides and more authentic and meaningful experiences.  These tourists also tend to be better able to identify fake touristified souvenirs and prefer locally-made genuine arts and crafts. And they usually are more familiar with local gastronomy and will therefore be more discerning of the quality of food and its connection with local culture.  In essence, domestic/in-state visitors are in average more discerning than others and they will make businesses and destinations work harder to earn their satisfaction.  However, this hard work can help businesses and destinations improve themselves to become more genuine and less MacDisneyfied (i.e., MacDonalized + Disneyfied = standardized and cheap + fake and fantastic).  Therefore, destinations should celebrate the current influx of visitors from neighboring homelands and should strive to meet their preferences as a way to realign themselves with a more genuine offer so as to emerge from this pandemic more competitive.

PS: P1tLab strives to provide actionable intelligence to a select number of destinations with whom we have developed long-term triadic engagement (i.e., academic, local government, private sector). These partnerships allow us to access richer data to develop our scholarship on tourism microentrepreneurship, and in turn we strive to generate more actionable intelligence for our destination and private sector partners.  Destinations interested in discussing ways to collaborate with P1tLab or with similar engaged academic labs in their region should send inquiries to dbmorais@ncsu.edu.

By: Duarte B. Morais, Associate Professor of Equitable and Sustainable Tourism

                                    Lead in(ve)stigator of P1tLab

                                    NC State University