business Essential news, comment and analysis Enormous pressure is being put on local


infrastructure by tourist developments such as Cancun, says Professor Megan Epler Wood


‘We need to look at the cost of managing tourism’


INDUSTRY ATTITUDES TO RESEARCH AND TO FUNDING SUSTAINABILITY NEED TOCHANGE, SAYS A LEADING ACADEMIC. IAN TAYLOR REPORTS


The travel industry should embrace tourism taxes to fund research on sustainability and development, and demand government support for studies.


That is the view of Professor


Megan Epler Wood, director of the International Sustainable Tourism Initiative at Harvard University’s Centre for Health and the Global


Environment. She told Travel Weekly: “There is very little study of tourism taxes and where they go, but the system is broken.”


64 travelweekly.co.uk 11 August 2016 Epler Wood said: “Most studies


look at the effects of getting more travellers, almost never at the impact on destinations. We need research, [but] we lack resources on an enormous scale.” Tourism is out of kilter with


other sectors, she said. “There has been an effort by other industries, such as textiles and cocoa, to look at the costs of social externalities [impacts]. There is a lack of a similar approach in travel. We need destination-based studies.”


For example, she said: “Cancun


now has 100 miles of development all the way to the border with Belize and this sprawl is happening worldwide. We see increasing demands on water, so we need to track water levels in tourism. On the coast, where you have white sand beaches you want to know the condition of the coral reef.” She cited Belize, where a Cornell


University study in 2010 found tourism tax revenues did not cover the cost of water treatment, and a privatised sewage company was charging hotels and wealthier residents, while other sewage went untreated. Epler Wood said:


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