Regions among the most beautiful in the world are sick. They are suffering from a disease that gradually weakens and the ugly in devastating the environment and crushing people. Its symptoms are the ecological and cultural pollution, dispossession of people from their territories, exploitation thereof and the excessive use of natural resources. The diagnosis? Mass tourism!
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Anyone who knows more or less define what tourism ... and the public is certainly overwhelmingly positive about it. But if tourism can have positive aspects in certain places or for some communities, mass tourism is another area which is, unfortunately, unknown in itself and its consequences.
Lloret (Spain)
What is this? Mass tourism, said simply, these are massive displacement of populations to travel one place (a city, a country or geographical region) for a short time. A priori, nothing wrong, but it is necessary to consider more closely what are the implications. One could imagine that a massive influx of tourists induces a massive influx of revenue, so the growth of the tourism industry and logically more work. Now, if all this is true, the greatest benefits are very expensive and are rarely received by the destination country or its people.
Cargo of tourists at Angkor, Cambodia
What he was wrong in mass tourism? Those who go on contaminated sites by mass tourism fun for sure: everything is done so that the tourist can find products and services ensure a stay to his taste, not away from its excessively European consumer habits. Because, even in underdeveloped or developing countries, tourist parks should guarantee a high quality of service. The income from the tourism industry depends. And it is also well why most tourists have no chance - no time for that matter - to realize the negative impact of his trip to the places of their stay. They do not perceive these effects because, being only passage in areas most often isolated from surrounding populations (hotel areas, Club Med, cruise ships ...), they will do or suffer, which in contrast is the case for local and their environment, which can only suffer.
Fez, Morocco
An ecological disaster
Not surprisingly, a massive amount of tourists requires a more massive amount of products and services, and thus natural resources and labor. The need for natural resources involves immoderate consumption, whether water or electricity. All this is bound to grab the land itself by capitalist enterprises are more concerned clients than local people and the natural environment.
One of the most serious environmental problems related to the water issue. While in the world, a billion humans have no access to drinking water, a tourist uses on average the same amount of water in 24 hours that uses a villager in a poor country over a period of 100 days of rice. For if the culture of extended shower and bath is commonplace in rich countries, often provided with effective wastewater treatment systems, this is not the case in most of the world. In Morocco, the tourism industry uses twice as much water as the activity that is a priori the most dependent, namely agriculture ... Not to mention the pools and fountains hotels and golf courses ... worse, one luxury hotel can use about 300 000 liters of water for one day.
Regardless of whether freshwater is scarce in Denia (Spain) and its use is limited to the population because we can design a hotel without a pool?
A significant amount of tourists consuming a large amount of products, inevitably generates a significant amount of waste. This article about Cancun (Mexico), first read in a guide Echoway and resumed this site says here that "every day awash in Cancún 750 tonnes of waste from half of the 700 000 inhabitants, the other half its 26,000 hotel rooms ... ".
Pollution in Manila Bay, Philippines
In Barbados, wastewater sent Hotels in the sea, even if treated, still remains rich in nitrogen, which destroys the essential food fish and corals to build marine plants. The latter, moreover, are directly affected by the activities of diving because divers trample ... by mistake or deliberately sell corals to keep them as souvenirs. These are also the consequences of mass tourism.
Destroyed corals in Florida, United States
Tourism benefits ... especially exploiters
Needs labor often involves ruthless exploitation of disposable employees and / or underpaid, which have no social protection and / or association. The same article reports on Cancun "chains, illegally, using cans 28 day contracts, no social benefit, renewed after three days rest, as evidenced by Alejandro masseur in a hotel:" The day you sign your contract you sign at the same time your resignation letter in 28 days. They all do it, and if you say something, you find yourself on a 'black list'. Unable to find work while on the Riviera Maya. "
In the Dominican Republic, the maids at hotels working nine hours a day, do not receive paid vacations and holidays can not get in exchange for overtime. In such circumstances, it is obviously impossible to form a union. And without challenge or adversity, capitalists are free to impose their rules.
One can always argue that even if there are negative effects, economic development and rising tourism revenues worth. Yet the reality is stubborn. Because the majority of revenue generated by the industry does not benefit the country visited many tourist centers are designed as enclaves, free zones, such as closed on themselves and separated by sealing the wall of money, surrounding areas.
Many local Cancun never see the profits generated by tourism
In addition, an international tourist package purchased in Belgium, Germany or the UK, on average, 20% remains in the country of origin (the agency, tour operator, first of all) and 37% back to the airline. Only 43% reach the destination country, a figure that is far, far from benefiting fully premises. Because, essentially, it is the large companies that are benefiting from the hotel chains to chain restaurants (McDonald's, Starbucks, Hard Rock Cafe, Pizza Hut, Domino's Pizza, to cite the example the abject Cancún), industrial products imported (from chips, Coca-Cola or beer until trinkets made in China) or locally manufactured by large capitalist enterprises (food products, cigarettes, etc. ). In total, the crumbs that collect local, who are already lucky when receiving the minimum wage (read about this story of Echoway among workers in Cancún).
The privatization of the soil
Another problem affecting the population is the impossibility of enjoying the area where he lives. In Bacalar, we found that the privatization of the bank of the lagoon, in favor of hotels, access is prevented except by unique two pontoons. Riviera Maya, Mexico, is an example of a massive privatization of coastal territory, where it may no longer enjoy the sea, because the hotels bar access and invade the beach. Same in El Salvador, with the Coatepeque lake, inaccessible without paying a "duty" (drink at the bar, hotel night) ...
This is also the case in Jamaica where, although the law provides that the beaches are public spaces, the finest in the country have been privatized and hotels, with their punitive tariffs for local, de facto ban them enjoy. These are also mostly fishermen who find themselves most affected, missing spaces to unload their boats.
This beautiful Jamaican beach is no longer accessible to local
Is it therefore a cure for this disease? It is certainly vital to be aware of the consequences that can produce travel, and more, to try to do a practice alternative tourism, responsible, having in mind the effects on people and their ecological environment prefer independent guides and / or local (left to follow, where possible, a visit in their own language where they do not speak a foreign language), eat in restaurants rather than in franchises restaurant chains, priority ecological and family hotels accommodation, buy local crafts in specialty shops or on the place of manufacture, prefer market products to those of large surfaces (all more expensive way) ...
Above all, it should choose his destination ... and avoid traps cons widely infected cancer mass tourism as Cancun, Bali, Cozumel, Mont-Saint-Michel and Venice and many others ... or visit them differently: by staying out of season or homestay in ecotourism accommodation or guest houses, which helps to support the micro-economy of tourism and not to fertilize capitalist tourism; travel without going through major tour operators indifferent to the environment and society (but not profits), but rather focusing associations and alternative travel agencies.
Cargo of tourists in Venice
Promote alternative tourism for the benefit of the environment and people. Disease of mass tourism is certainly advanced and serious but maybe it can still be treated with appropriate approaches and efforts. The next time you travel, do not be one of the global cancer cells, but a medication that is to say a part of the solution that helps to eradicate the disease. Be exemplary: it will not cost you more (it can even be truly be an economic and travel more rewarding) and you will responsible action.
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