The focus on overtourism in travel and tourism management often overlooks a critical point: overtourism is not the root cause of all challenges destinations are facing nowadays, but a symptom of deeper imbalances in managing local resources, environment and resources, and communities.
That is why it is important to set the record straight when we address overtourism, defining it with precision. Overtourism refers to the overflow of visitors beyond a destination’s carrying capacity, in a given territory and time frame, leading to negative impacts on both locals and visitors. The key to addressing this phenomenon lies in a data-driven, holistic approach to balance tourism growth, environmental sustainability, and community welfare.
Mabrian’s sustainability management model supports this vision, first of all, advocating for measurement and benchmarking, to then set up seven indicators that guide effective tourism policies, covering diverse aspects that we shared in a white paper, “A Roadmap to Move Destinations Away from Overtourism”, developed in collaboration with Phocuswright.
By measuring and managing these magnitudes (Distribution of Tourist Spend, Carbon Footprint, Concentration of Tourism Offer, Sustainability Perception, Seasonality, Motivational Diversification, and Dependency on Origins), destinations can identify and mitigate areas prone to overtourism, ensuring balanced economic growth and environmental preservation.
Examples of how to interpret and activate these indicators were addressed during our keynote in Tourism 365 – 8th International Conference on Trends and Future of Tourism, citing Croatia’s performance in some indexes, and real-life examples of other destinations, showing this holistic, data-driven model to sustainable destination management in action.
In a nutshell, this was an opportunity to demonstrate how this data-driven approach is being implemented in different scenarios, as we collaborate with world’s destinations in building their own frameworks for long-lasting, profitable sustainable management models that truly resonate with their particular realities and vision of their present and future.