still far away from saying sustainable certification has found its place in the industry,” adding, “at the moment it is just an add on.” Stober’s concern was shared by John


Proctor, CEO of the UK-based certification scheme Green Tourism, who estimated that If you added up all the certified tourism businesses in the world, it would still probably only be around 10,000 properties.


He insisted certification was essential


to provide a roadmap for the industry to move in the right direction, “otherwise we are doomed,” he commented, adding “It’s only one corner of one room where we talk about carbon – the industry should be absolutely ashamed.” In a crowded session exploring: ‘Coping with success, managing overtourism’, Jonathan Keates, Chair, of Venice in Peril, said that cruise ship numbers are a major and growing problem, with the pollution from their engines being even more dangerous to the historic buildings of the city than even the backwash from their engines. Nonetheless, he said that “the real challenge to the continuity of the city as a viable urban entity is tourist saturation”. In particular, he highlighted the “intolerable concentration of human numbers of tourists”, especially around St Marks and the Rialto. He said that it


wouldn’t be long before it might be necessary to have some sort of ticketed system to regulate the numbers into these most popular places. In the same session, Carlos Vogeler, UNWTO Executive Director for Member Relations, said that as we look at how to address overtourism, we need to remember that the number of tourists grows by almost 4% a year, meaning that while we are at around 1.2 billion international tourists today, in a decade that number will have grown by 50% and be at 1.8 billion. Furthermore, he added, we have to multiply that number of tourists by a factor of five to account for all of the domestic tourists as well, who, he pointed out, impact upon overtourism in crowded areas they visit as much as international tourists. Towards the end of the day, in a session on Tourism and Place Management, the sustainable tourism consultant Cillian Murphy spoke of the importance of preserving the places people love to visit, in order to have a long term sustainable tourism industry. He finished with a quote from the writer George Monbiot, which read: “It is not enough to challenge the old narrative, however outdated and discredited it may be. Change only happens when you replace one story with another."


WTM London Review 2017


37


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