Life.Culture.Discovery.

From Barcelona to New Zealand, how destinations are shaping tourism’s ‘new normal’

The world has gone from overtourism to almost no tourism, offering popular places the opportunity to reset in a more sustainable way

In the Baltic and Caribbean that means digital nomad visas, in Budapest and Prague it’s appealing to a better quality of clientele

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In Greece, agritourism is seen as an alternative to mass package tourism. Photo: AFP

Published: 1:00am, 14 Aug 2020Updated: 1:25am, 14 Aug 2020

It started with clear canals in Venice. Then came stories of thriving turtle populations in Thailand and Greece, and plummeting levels of air pollution in northern India, meaning the Himalayas were visible for the first time in 30 years.

The world has gone from overtourism to nearly no tourism in a matter of months and the crisis is providing an opportunity to rethink, reimagine and reboot in a more sustainable way. There’s renewed talk of intelligent tourism, responsible tourism and slow tourism, forms of travel that inspire visitors to immerse themselves in the destinations they visit and enjoy meaningful experiences, rather than trying to cram 12 countries into seven days.

Not for the first time, there have been calls for a move away from mass tourism towards high-end holidays targeted at small groups of well-heeled visitors. But while a more exclusive model enables wealthy holidaymakers to flaunt their eco-credentials, the inconvenient truth is that mass tourism creates masses of jobs – an estimated 100 million worldwide until recently.

Devising a blueprint that balances economic growth and employment while minimising the environmental impact of travel is a challenge like no other.

Tbilisi, Georgia. The country is offering a digital nomad visa. Photo: Shutterstock

To illustrate the problem, we could, for example, holiday in Costa Rica to reward the Central American country for its enlightened approach to eco-tourism and conservation. But how would we get there? Carbon emissions from air travel have been described as the Achilles’ heel of tourism and proposals for limits on the number of flights individuals are permitted to take annually would require robust (unworkable) international legislation.