On a global scale, neighbors pay the price for success in tourism

Perth. The success of some cities in attracting tourists entails the suffering of their inhabitants. They are expelled from their neighborhoods, while the businesses that have been there all their lives are ultimately forced to lower the curtain, driven out by the high price of renting homes and premises. It is an increasingly widespread discussion around the world in which representatives of the sector ask that governments get more actively involved.

Some destinations suffer from being too popularrecognized Julia Simpson, president of the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), which has among its members the largest companies in the sector on a global scale.

The phenomenon has been identified as gentrification. It gained more attention last summer. Inhabitants of cities such as Barcelona or Venice protested the massive arrival of visitors and, in the first of these cities, friction occurred between neighbors and passers-by.

Not to that extreme, but the wave of tourists that changes the living conditions of the neighborhoods is happening right now in Mexico: in identified points of the country’s capital, or the center of the city of Oaxaca or the southeast, not to mention points where people have lived for years, such as in areas of the Bajío. In Mexico City, to cite one case, the price of housing quadrupled in a period of 20 years, without considering inflation. But per capita labor income, in the same period, grew below inflation, according to a study this year (https://bit.ly/3U1GqVU).

Simpson put the issue on the table within the framework of the 24th WTTC summit, which is taking place in this city, capital of the Western Australia region located on the coasts of the Indian Ocean.

Tourism, Simpson pointed out, is responsible for one in every 10 jobs created in the world. The activity will contribute 11 trillion dollars to the global economy this year, a tenth of the world’s gross domestic product. A quarter of that value will be represented by business trips. The rest are leisure walkers.

It is essential that the local population feels comfortable with tourism, that they feel the economic benefits of the activity and the jobs that are generated with it.he explained.

the english word gentrification derives from the noun gentry (upper bourgeoisie, petty aristocracy) and has been adapted to Spanish as gentrification, defines the Royal Spanish Academy. The term describes a process of renewal of an urban area, generally popular or deteriorated, which involves the displacement of its original population by another with greater purchasing power.

And that is what is happening more frequently in recent times, hand in hand with the rise of remote work after the pandemic. And everything indicates that the issue will continue for a while, given the forecasts that the industry itself has regarding the growth of leisure travel in the future.

Popular destinations need good managementSimpson said. For the president of the WTTC, companies and local governments must collaborate with communities and listen to your concerns. The board stated that there is no single solutionbut there are examples of management.

In Simpson’s opinion, tourism provides benefits that must be put into perspective. Last year, he assured, tourism companies contributed taxes in the different countries where they pay taxes for the equivalent of 3.3 billion dollars, a figure that, comparatively, is equivalent to around one and a half times the value of the Mexican economy. The tax contribution from tourism is used to build schools and hospitals, so governments must invest in improving the management of destinations, he noted.

Virgina Messina, Mexican and vice president of the WTTC, believes that the use of technology must become a tool to manage tourism flows, to analyze and plan in order to avoid saturation. Tourism, he said, leaves money that is used to improve the quality of life and infrastructure of cities.

The relevance of the issue will increase, given the expectation of growth in activity, which has practically recovered from the shock of the covid 19 pandemic.