The Travel Foundation has recently published a report “The Invisible Burden: Integrating Tourism Impacts into Civic Planning & Management”. In a workshop at the GSTC 2019 Global Conference speakers Griet Geudens (Quality & Sustainability Consultant at VISITFLANDERS) and Dr. Mihee Kang (GSTC Director – Asia Pacific) presented the report, together with a number of destinations.
The report describes how destinations must uncover and account for tourism’s hidden costs, referred to as the “invisible burden”, to protect and manage vital destination assets worldwide. Failing to do so puts ecosystems, cultural wonders, and community life at increasing risk, and places the tourism industry on a weak foundation that could crack under its own weight. It concludes that destination managers will need to sit at the new nexus between data on tourism demand the supply of resources to support the tourism economy. The report suggests that the risks tourism destinations and businesses face must be openly and transparently reviewed with more science-based, data-driven analysis.
Read the full report: Destinations at Risk: The Invisible Burden of Tourism.