The Future of Eco-Friendly Tourism – How to Offset the Growth in Tourism With More Eco-Friendly Solutions

As one of the largest industries on the planet, tourism continues to grow each year that globalization improves. The mere fact that people can now seamlessly organize trips across the globe is a great testament to the improvement in efficiency. Unfortunately, as with every other sector, tourism is by no means a perfect market. Out of all the issues that it constantly has to overcome, the rapidly increasing ecological footprint is easily the most important and dangerous one. This includes everything from issues with preservation in the short-run to sustainability concerns in the long-run.

The Remarkable Growth

According to the SelectUSA, which is the U.S. government’s main website for prospective visitors, the U.S. travel and tourism amounted to more than $1.6 trillion in 2017. This translated to a whopping total of almost eight million jobs for the Americans who supported a third of all exports in the nation. What is even more shocking, however, is the fact that the industry is only expected to go up in value and overall contributions to the economy.

Given the boost in economic gains and low unemployment levels, a lot of experts are forecasting a spike in domestic travels. Moreover, the growing popularity of globalization is going to make business and personal travel a lot easier for people who want to visit foreign countries or come to the U.S. from overseas.

The True Cost

While one could quantify the cost of growing tourism with dollar figures, it is crucial to glance at some of the economic impacts first. The primary one that is of concern here is environment preservation that becomes borderline impossible when there is a high tourism demand. To understand the concept further, consider the following example. As per the World Counts, which is an eco-friendly website that tracks tourism-related impacts on the community, there are around one billion tourist arrivals every year. This breaks down to around 30 people arriving somewhere every single second. Sadly, such a high volume of visitors has an extremely negative impact on the local area.

For instance, just think about the massive overuse of water that has been reported over the past years. A single golf course built in a tropical country, as per the World Counts, will utilize north of 1,500 kilograms of chemical fertilizers while also consuming about the same amount of water as 60,000 people who live in rural areas. When analyzed from a long-term perspective, it is virtually impossible to excuse such massive spendings and overuse of valuable resources that may already be scarce in poor areas across the globe.

Introducing Eco-Friendly Solutions

Although environment-related concerns are still in the spotlight of some fierce political debates, they have yet to receive the attention that they truly deserve. If they did, overcoming sustainability and preservation concerns would be possible. Courtesy of resorts such as the one in Vail, Colorado, which is on track to become the first certified sustainable resort in the nation, there seems to be a push to put an end to the worrisome issues.

Sustainable Resorts

To truly comprehend how this will occur, it is important to grasp how sustainable resorts operate. First, one must unite the entire community if they want to have a chance of building a resort that will qualify to be deemed sustainable. This includes everything from residents and visitors to non-profit entities and businesses. Attempting to create a sustainable community where commercial operators are neglecting the idea would be futile, after all. In Vail, which is located in the base of Vail Mountain in Colorado, ensuring that everyone was on the same page took a lot of time and effort.

Another outstanding example of this concept are communities such as Jackson Hole in Wyoming or Yellowstone National Park in Montana. Albeit a few months or years behind Vail, both of these areas have pledged to build a sustainable, eco-friendly community that would be characterized by forward-thinking approaches. Given their size and local presence, however, reaching the end-goal will require a lot more work. Just consider, for instance, the fact that Yellowstone has more than 4.8 million visitors who come each year. Trying to build an operating model that would mandate all those people to comply with their eco-friendly solutions will understandably require a lot of resources.

The Future Is Bright and Eco-Friendly

While it is impossible to foresee when exactly the rest of the national parks in the U.S. will get on-board, that trend seems inevitable. This is further supported by the growing fear of global warming and climate change that has given rise to massive protests all over the world. So, the pressure to start creating eco-friendly solutions that will help offset some of the many downsides of the enormous traveling industry seems very fitting. Once again, however, the sheer size and volume that exists in the market will make it very hard to predict the exact timeline. Instead, simply focusing on one solution or community at a time and letting the evolution take its place gradually is the best course of action.

You Can Help

Finally, you should realize that, as a consumer, you have the power to perpetuate some of the change as well. Even though it may seem that your ability to facilitate an evolution is non-existent, this is far from the truth. Simply raising awareness about renewable energy or even statistics such as the aforementioned one about the massive overuse of resources by golf courses, per se, could be a great start.

From there, you can begin planning your trips by only considering eco-friendly resorts and destinations. That means that you would stop giving your money to locations that have yet to get up to speed with the changes and start preserving the environment, and, instead, your funds would help those locations that have made the right changes. After a while, your actions could easily snowball into a lifestyle that slowly transforms you into a powerful activist that the world needs.