With sustainability the cornerstone of tourism strategies, we are investigating the best approaches to build transparent models that fully account for the impact on society and the environment.
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Overtourism has become a perennial challenge facing destinations. Despite a desire among tourists to explore and immerse themselves within destinations, tourists tend to congregate in the same locations. This creates significant challenges for destination management to avoid carrying capacity being exceeded.
Destinations are responding to this challenge in innovative ways, utilising technology, data and/or strategic marketing activities to shape tourist behaviour and help them locate undiscovered hidden gems. This Workstream aims to discover the most effective approaches to spreading the benefits of tourism across the entire destination.
This section outlines the key challenges the Workstream seeks to understand better and the impactful results it aims to achieve in addressing them.
While peak seasons bring substantial economic benefits, this also makes it difficult to implement measures that might reduce visitor numbers during these periods given the large number of businesses that are reliant on this income. This creates a delicate balancing act between maximising economic gains and ensuring a sustainable and enjoyable visitor experience.
Monitoring visitor flows necessitates a robust data foundation, encompassing a range of relevant sources. However, acquiring these datasets can be costly and they often provide insights into past behaviour rather than real-time information. Yet, to truly get a complete and up-to-date understanding of visitor patterns, datasets must be combined to create comprehensive indexes that enable more granular analysis.
The implementation of effective visitor flow management strategies can often be hindered by resistance from stakeholders. When stakeholders have differing priorities or are reluctant to embrace change, it can create friction and hinder progress. A lack of awareness about the full extent of the challenge and the complexities of managing visitor flows also makes it difficult to gain buy-in and support for necessary measures. This can lead to arduous negotiations and difficulties in balancing diverse expectations.
Technological limitations can hinder the ability of DMOs to adopt the latest tools, often due to high costs and a lack of internal expertise. This can result in a reliance on outdated technologies that may not provide the necessary insights or capabilities for effective visitor flow management.
Social media has become a powerful tool for inspiring travel, with tourists increasingly relying on word-of-mouth recommendations and trending destinations. Such communications are often beyond the control of DMOs, potentially counteracting their marketing messaging of connecting with local cultures and showcasing hidden gems.
The traditional remit of DMOs centres on increasing visitor numbers through marketing campaigns. Typically being publicly funded organisations, political willpower from governments strongly influences DMO strategies meaning there is limited scope to adjust priorities in the short-term and react to changing visitor behaviour.
The outputs are defined and later refined by members of the Workstream and serve as the guiding objectives defining the group's scope of work and priorities.
A detailed overview of the visitor management approaches currently being undertaken by destinations and the key learning outcomes from their implementation. This will include an overview of the data sources and technological solutions that help destination management.
To develop a standardised framework for assessing destination carrying capacity, which will provide a consistent and comparable approach for informing decision-making. This framework will enable international benchmarking and a granular understanding of the different factors that influence carrying capacity.
To ensure that visitor management approaches align with the needs and preferences of different visitor segments, their acceptance levels to management solutions will be mapped to inform communication strategies and help DMOs tailor messaging to achieve a stronger impact.
To effectively manage visitor flows and minimise their impact on natural resources, a robust AI tool will be identified for analysing complex datasets, modelling environmental impacts and providing accurate predictions.
To gain practical insights into the complex interplay between visitor flows, destination management strategies and climate change, a digital twin tool will be developed to simulate scenarios.
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