But hold on, there are magazines, Sunday supplements, TV shows, an entire cable channel devoted to travel! How can I say tourism isn’t covered? All these stories inspire us to dream of the next place we’ll go.

That they do. But with few exceptions, they all sidestep the biggest story: The travel industry is itself transforming the world, and not always in a good way. Some five years ago journalist Becker stumbled across this elephant in the room and decided to give it a thorough examination. The result is Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism (Simon & Schuster, $28), which goes on sale this week.

Becker is no Sunday supplement travel writer. A former war correspondent with the New York Times, she covered the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and brings the same unflinching approach to what is sometimes called the world’s largest industry.

She looks at a broad swath of destinations, from those that are doing at least some things well—France, Costa Rica—to those that are “getting it wrong,” such as Venice and, yes, Cambodia. She explores the enormous impact that the rise of Chinese tourism is likely to have as a growing percentage of 1.3 billion people venture forth into the same places the rest of the world thought we had to ourselves.

She looks at how cruise companies get away with basing their business model on a modern-day form of indentured servitude, whereby ship staffs from impoverished countries work nonstop hours for weeks on end, paid $50 a month.  Not per day, not per week—per month.  She emphasizes the same exploitation in Dubai, where the imported laborers who built the fantasy skyscrapers did so for $175 a month (still better than cruise ships).

A tour guide in Maui explains high country ecology. Education is often a tourism benefit. Photo: Jonathan Tourtellot/NGS

Without question tourism managed well can do a lot of good—economically, educationally, and as a force for peace, conservation, and preservation. If managed well.

She ends the book on a popular beach in Hawaii, as good a place as any to symbolize the increasing need to balance economic development with rising seas and floods of tourists.

I should mention that I was not entirely disengaged from her project; I had several conversations with Becker while she was working on the book, as well as granting her a couple of interviews myself. I should also note that on her own initiative, (and wallet), she took one of the National Geographic/Lindblad cruises and gave it high marks, saying it was worth its comparatively lofty price.

Becker addresses right up front the media blind-spot on the travel industry and its ramifications. Travel sections and their writers, she says, “seldom write critical reviews; only articles about what to do and what to buy and how to experience a destination.” Other lifestyle media—music, restaurants, movies, plays—“thrive on critical reviews.” But in travel, both editors and advertisers consider even a slightly negative destination piece virtually unthinkable. When an industry is inadvertently changing the world, this is a problem.

Indeed, when a few years ago I argued for more in-depth reporting at a travel writer’s workshop, several writers responded that they had proposed such stories, but editors would turn them down. In Sunday supplements, any investigative stories tend to focus on how to get a better airplane seat, not whether tourism is saving Africa’s lions or corrupting indigenous cultures. In the U.K. the Guardian’s Leo Hickman did precede Becker into this space when he published his critical 2007 book, The Final Call, but it received little press in the U.S., and today the Guardian’s travel stories seem to fit the same lifestyle mold as any other paper.

Vacation condos crowd a beach on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Photo: Jonathan Tourtellot

There’s a flip side to the story, as well. The scope of Becker’s book does not allow her much space to address all the nontourism pressures that degrade the places we love, such as extractive industries, irresponsible development, uglifiation, and cookie-cutter globalization. She cites Bordeaux as a success story—a renewed historic center and thriving chateau/vineyard tourism.  True enough. But when I made a brief visit to Bordeaux for a conference a while ago, we all had to stay in a generic group of corporate hotels next to a beltway. I could have been in Ohio.

What her focus does encompass is the size and workings of the tourism industry, and its ramifications—no small topic. That leads us to the key question that journalists, editors, and web and TV producers should be addressing: Now what?

Tourism trips across borders passed the one billion mark last year. Trips entirely within countries total perhaps four billion. Last week in Abu Dhabi, David Scowsill, head of the World Travel and Tourism Council, pointed out that by 2050 the world will have three billion middle-class citizens, many of them eager to travel.

Where will all these people go? What will be their impact on the places they visit? On cultures, nature, global climate, World Heritage sites? On each other?

It’s time for the world’s media to discover one of the world’s most under-reported stories. For intelligent travelers to demand it. Becker’s book is the primer.

What we had heard last Thursday, February 7, were mostly negative findings and opinions about the effects of large cruise ships on historic ports. The three-day international “Harboring Tourism” symposium was turning out to be a cruise-line roast. That wasn’t the original plan. The World Monuments Fund (WMF) had convened the 150 or so attendees with support from the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Preservation Society of Charleston, host of the conference. WMF didn’t want it to be a roast, but an apparent boycott by most pro-cruise invitees left it that way.

The venue, Charleston, South Carolina, was no coincidence. As I reported last year, the charming, historic city has been locked in an increasingly nasty fight over a proposed cruise ship pier and its continuing role as home port for the Carnival Fantasy. Little has changed, except for a flock of lawsuits. Last week pier opponents attended; pier supporters, including Mayor Joseph Riley, mostly stayed away.

Some of the 150 “Harboring Tourism” attendees learn about the effects of cruise ship exhaust. Photo: Jonathan Tourtellot

One of the few exceptions, Craig Milan, a consultant and Royal Caribbean veteran, presented a keynote Wednesday night, Feb. 6, about cruise ship trends. The industry is big: Some 20 million passenger embarkations annually.  Among his key points was the customary cruise-line claim about economic benefit to port destinations, on the order of $140 per passenger.

“Oasis” juggernauts

His presentation sounded a few tone-deaf notes, as when describing the colossal new Oasis-class ships. High as a 20-story building, a fifth of a mile long, one ship can carry 5200 passengers and 2200 crew. When one of these behemoths casts its mighty shadow across your pier, you are seeing one city about to meet your own. Large though they are, Milan assured us they do not feel crowded on board, because “the passengers are so well segmented.” He moved on, leaving his audience of heritage preservationists likely thinking, “And what happens when 5,000  passengers descend on our historic district? How well segmented are they then?” Yet Oasis, Milan said, represents the industry trend. Ships will continue to get larger.

Milan took no questions and departed, leaving further defense of the cruise lines to the symposium’s only other industry representative, Jamie Sweeting, Royal Caribbean’s environmental man. Sweeting was expecting a tough sail into headwinds of criticism. He was right.

Doubts from Around the World

From what subsequent speakers said over the next two days, the biggest cruise-ship concerns come down to numbers: Too big, too many passengers, too little money left on land, too much air pollution, too much disruption in the home ports.

According to Milan’s figures, every week on average the cruise industry takes about 400,000 vacationers out to sea.  That’s an excellent place for them, as I pointed out in my own remarks. The panel I moderated (disclosure: my expenses were paid) looked at what happens when these megaships come into port, especially into small historic cities like Charleston or Venice.

Dr. Ross Klein of Memorial University, Newfoundland, a renowned industry gadfly, cited Dubrovnik, Croatia and Key West, Florida as two small ports suffering from cruise overkill. The cramped medieval old city of Dubrovnik, he said, now gets a million or so passengers a year, deposited by 469 ship visits. By 2004, Key West was also getting a million passengers a year, up from 132,840 in 1990.  Many Key Westers are pressing for a rollback, but those who benefit from the high traffic resist. (Think taxis and T-shirt shops.) Both cities have economic studies that refute the sunny numbers presented by cruise lines.

According to Klein, local tour operators hired to take passengers around on land get less than half what the passengers actually pay. The discrepancies between industry and shore-side figures may lie in the cruise companies’ mastery of “vertical integration,” meaning that, as a passenger, a big chunk of the money you spend on excursions or at recommended stores on land goes right back to the cruise line.

Kristian Jørgensen of Fjord Norway said communities should do their own research sooner, not later. He showed how soaring cruise traffic has added crowding and air pollution to Norway’s once-pristine fjords. Visits to the historic resort village of Geiranger can multiply its daytime population by a factor of 40, to 10,000—visitors who nevertheless leave little money in their giant ships’ wake, according to research done by universities in Bergen and Stavanger..

In Norway’s scenic Geiranger, cruise ships can boost the population of 250 to 15,000 some days. Photo: Geiranger Heritage Foundation

Jørgensen said one reason for the increase was Norway’s consistent showing at the top of National Geographic’s destination stewardship surveys from 2004 to 2010. “We weren’t ready,” he said. “I don’t think Norway would score as high today.”

A Central American Study Challenges Cruise Claims

An extensive study funded by the Inter-American Development Bank found numbers very different from those presented by Craig Milan the night before. Evaluation of cruise ship costs and benefits to ports in Costa Rica, Honduras, and Belize revealed net on-land income of only $67.40 per passenger, versus $934 to $1260 per average land-based vacationer staying nine days. (Download a copy of the study at the Center for Responsible Travel.)

In Victoria, B.C. economist Brian Scarfe reported that the industry exaggerated its economic benefit claims, that cruise ships contributed less than what it cost the local economy to harbor them—$24 million in, versus $28 million out. New emissions reductions may get it down to a break-even, as health costs and premature deaths decline.

South Carolina economist Harry Miley basically concurred, saying his review of more than a dozen impact studies showed an average overnight visitor to be spending 14 times more in the community than a cruise passenger. (A point to note: Dr. Miley’s work was commissioned by the cruise-skeptical Historic Charleston Foundation.)

In Valetta, Malta, said Italian urban planner Paolo Motta, the European Union spent 17 million euros to improve access from the cruise piers into the historic old town, enough to serve two ships at once. “The return to the local economy was absolutely nothing.” Now traffic has climbed to six ships a day, facilities are again overwhelmed, and Maltese officials are considering ways to pull back the welcome mat.

For me, Venice was the real shocker. I knew the cruise load there was high, but 2.5 million passenger visits annually to a city whose population is dropping past 50,000? “You are arriving Venice, you are getting squeezed like a sardine,” said Motta. “On some summer days, 25,000 people coming by sea.”

Some planners hope to move Venice’s outsize cruise-ship pier (gray area at left) north across the lagoon to the mainland. Passengers would visit by rail (causeway, upper left). Photo: ESA

It changes the city, Motta emphasized. “They are losing all the traditional skills and handicrafts.” Shops sell false Venetian masks, made in Taiwan. Prosecco yields to Coca Cola. This is what’s called loss of “intangible heritage”—the customs and knowledge and traditions that give a place its cultural flavor.

In Charleston, my cabbie had paused to wave a car at a corner in front ahead of him. How much would traffic have to thicken before he would instead have raced to close the gap? How long before local artisans would give up their distinctive basket weaving and turn to selling cheaper wares from Asia? Thus poorly managed tourism fouls its nest.

Only Valparaiso, Chile delivered a favorable report, in part since this hilly, sizable port city hosts only 50 ships a year, according to city heritage manager Paulina Kaplan. She called the arrival of a ship an “urban event,” welcomed by locals and land-based tourists alike who enjoy watch a virtual moving building take its place. Someone observed, “Maybe that’s because Valparaiso’s hills make it one of the few places you can look down on the ships. They don’t tower over everything else.”

Environment: The lone remaining representative from the cruise industry, Royal Caribbean’s environmental consultant, Jamie Sweeting, gamely kept countering and responding throughout the meeting. He got his say in the environmental panel, noting Royal Caribbean’s progress in reducing overall air pollution by 20 percent and his initiative for “Sustainable Shore Excursions”—an important change for an industry that has tolerated irresponsible local tour operators whose behavior damages reefs and other fragile sites.

The panel addressed pollution problems—visual, water, noise—and especially the unhealthy effects of ships’ burning bunker fuel, considered the dirtiest of petrofuels, for power while in port. Sweeting bristled at the “F” grade that Friends of the Earth had assigned Royal Caribbean for in-port air pollution. He said the alternative, a dockside power supply, would not be as effective overall.

Polarized Charleston

The National Trust for Historic Preservation put Charleston on its watch list list last year—one notch below “endangered”—and the World Monuments Fund did likewise. The actions cheered local opponents and infuriated the mayor. Many attendees last week were from the affluent Ansonborough neighborhood, right next to the Carnival pier and its traffic jams. The angry residents have spent extensively to fix up their historic houses—so well that their neighborhood is itself a tourist attraction.

However cruise opponents may have let slip a tone-deaf note of their own; in a town where the pro-cruise rallying cry is “Jobs, Not Snobs,” organizers had to defend the $300 attendance fee for the one-and-a-half day conference. Chastened, they dropped per-session prices, but too late to entice any working-class Charlestonians to join the discussions.

More significant, both sides in the Charleston debate have become so entrenched, slinging verbal bombs and lawsuits at each other, that the opposition refused to attend, save for one lone Port Authority man. (“I’m the only one not being sued.”) So the data presented by the economists did not fall on deaf ears; those ears weren’t even there to hear. The city may have missed a chance to become a world leader in cruise port management.

That’s too bad, because the symposium did reveal some positives.  Cozumel, Mexico is moving to protect its reefs from excessive cruise traffic. Paolo Motta is promoting a scheme to move Venice’s giant cruise piers across the lagoon to the mainland. Houna, Alaska had won an award for good passenger management and a one-ship limit. Aruba is developing a plan for cruise passengers to help revive a neglected historic district. Barcelona, Spain has developed a reputation as a leader in sustainable management of cruise operations.

 What Did We Learn?

While the pollution issue received its due, the symposium made it clear that size matters. Almost every port under discussion involved problems with ship size or high passenger numbers. Notably, few attendees directed any hostility toward the passengers themselves. If anything, the prevailing wish was that they would stay around longer. Just in fewer numbers, please.

Whether you love megaships or hate them, the symposium revealed some important take-away lessons:

• Cruise lines behave like the profit-making enterprises they are. They are tough negotiators, they resist taxes, they take advantage of economic trends, and they use regulatory loopholes until they are closed. Since many regulations stop at the waterline or a few miles from shore, the result is an awesome business model with little accountability to the cities that host its ships.  Lesson: Cities should negotiate with the cruise lines directly. Added one veteran of the Central America study, “Cruise lines don’t need subsidies. They should build their own infrastructure.”

• Many of the world’s port authorities operate almost like independent principalities, driven by the bottom line. Accountable only to independent, usually unelected boards, they negotiate port deals with cruise lines with an eye to profit, not community benefit. Lesson: Same as above.

• Port jurisdictions are taking action, but almost always after damage is done. Even in super-sustainable Norway. Even in super-preservationist Charleston. Lesson: Don’t wait too long. If your community or island is a likely port of call, and you not take charge of cruise policy there, someone else will. Someone with different priorities. (Eight attendees from Savannah, Georgia were listening with that in mind; a cruise pier is under consideration there.)

• A rhetorical cloud of war hangs over inflamed cruise-pier debates, making it hard to choose reasonable policies. Lesson: Industry-sponsored studies are suspect. Do your own. Opposition-funded studies may also be suspect. Seek objective evaluators.

• Volume drives out value. Excessive crowds—“people pollution”—can spoil the feel of an old port town as surely as spray-painting scarlet graffiti over the historic walls. The more beneficial stay-over visitors begin to shun the city. “Too touristy.” Real estate values decline. Lesson: Communities should push for more benefit to local businesses from passengers curious about the city, but also avoid overcrowding. Let less interested passengers remain comfortably inside cruise-related shopping malls and dedicated spaces.

And last, cruise lines may be slowly poisoning their own well. Demand is flattening in North America and Europe. Port towns are becoming increasingly overloaded. Lesson: This can’t go on indefinitely. As has been postulated for “peak oil”—the year after which the world’s oil consumption will decline—will there come a “peak cruise” beyond which the industry and its piers simply cannot grow? As Sweeting hinted to me, if the industry wants to protect its huge investment in giant ships built to last a quarter century, it would be wise to protect the ports they visit and the seas they sail in.

That’s the kind of constructive discussion many would like to see.

On my departure from Charleston, security at the airport was slightly backed up. A cheerful, friendly TSA agent—yes, they exist—explained that Carnival was changing crews. Cruise ships don’t generally hire local, they outsource. That would account for the several gentlemen with accents and foreign passports on either side of me. “Every six months,” one told me. He looked tired but happy, headed for home.

A longer security line? That’s something even the harshest critics hadn’t brought up.

Postscript: Another peril of ship gigantism became apparent this week for the 4,000 overheated souls aboard the stricken Carnival ship Triumph in the Gulf of Mexico. Its size makes it hard to tow, needing four days to reach the closest suitable pier, in Mobile, Alabama. Height of irony: Years ago Mobile taxpayers went into debt to build that pier for Carnival, but the company subsequently abandoned the city, deciding to base its ship elsewhere.

Now you can offer your opinion about protecting such places—to people who are doing something about it.

Destinations around the world these days contend with everything from poverty to mass tourism, from vanishing wildlife to vanishing cultures, from decaying history to billboard eyesores. And in some of those places, local leaders are taking action. They are rallying around the concept of becoming a “sustainable destination.” For travelers seeking authentic experiences in unspoiled places, this is good news.

And “sustainable” means . . . ?

But what, exactly, qualifies whole cities or states or regions to call themselves sustainable? Is it just recycling? Or does it mean respecting local culture, supporting indigenous music, protecting scenery, caring for historic places?

An international group called the Global Sustainable Tourism Council has been striving to lay out criteria that provide the answer. Supported for three years by the United Nations Foundation and aided by Sustainable Travel International, the GSTC and its volunteer Destinations Working Group (of which I am a member) have been soliciting opinions on the matter from around the world. The result is a proposed set of more than 30 criteria for destination leaders to steer by. The criteria address such matters as tourist behavior, local resident rights, protection for wildlife and historic places, fair trade for artisans, truth in travel advertising, and on.

Most of the work in sustainable travel goes on behind the scenes, among professionals. The GSTC wants make sure that  two critical groups have their say: Destination hosts—the people who live there—and destination guests, the travelers who visit the place, or hope to.

Your Chance to Weigh In

If you have read this far, you may just be interested enough to click on the GSTC’s criteria questionnaire and offer your opinion about the criteria.

WARNING! It’s a slog; make a cup of coffee and plan on spending at least half an hour. Be sure to identify things you think are missing, as well as things that perhaps don’t belong. You can suggest revisions, and you don’t have to do it in one sitting. Just finish before the new deadline, March 15, 2013.

The GSTC effort seems as close to an international consensus as we’re likely to get. The criteria are dry and wonky, but they can make a difference. Destinations are already signing up, from Norway’s Fjordland to Wyoming’s Jackson Hole. Before you dive in, you can see more about evaluating the criteria here, as well as a list of the “early adopter” destinations.

This is your chance to be heard. The results may help shape the future of the places you love.

Dale Sheppard-Floyd of the U.K. in Madrid. Photo, UNWTO.

They even picked a symbolic billionth tourist: One Dale Sheppard-Floyd from the United Kingdom, who arrived today in Madrid, conveniently home to UNWTO’s headquarters. The presumably surprised Mrs. Sheppard-Floyd expressed her hope that Spain will emerge from its economic crisis. At least her visit will add a few British pounds to Spanish coffers.

Symbolism aside, the one-billion mark is a classic case of good-news, bad-news. And you have a role to play.

Good news, because tourism is beneficial for economies, for public education, for spiritual renewal, for world peace generally, and often for conservation and preservation.

Bad news, because irresponsible tourism can ruin places, corrupt cultures, scar landscapes, pollute air and water, degrade scenery, siphon revenues away from local people, and overcrowd charming towns and fragile historic sites.

The icon UNWTO chose for the One Billionth is a backpacking traveler with a smart phone. Ironic that a quick glance might mistake hm for an infantryman with a smoking pistol. The invading hordes!

International tourism growth since World War II. Chart courtesy UNWTO.

What’s more, their graphic is not proportional. The 2012 traffic bar should be even taller. It’s 40 times that of 1950. Add to the trans-border total the more frequent domestic trips within countries, and the figure jumps five or six times higher, says UNWTO.

Yet the places that all these people are visiting—the monuments, the beaches, the historic sites, the natural parks—have stayed the same size. That means destinations have crowd-management issues. And when we travel ourselves, we have self-management issues.

Since UNWTO’s primary membership is national tourist bureaus and ministries, it often leans toward boosterism. So it’s to the organization’s credit that it chose to mark this milestone with a campaign to encourage responsible behavior by the traveling multitudes—i.e, us. They call it One Billion Tourists: One Billion Opportunities.

As a public relations device to promote it, UNWTO asked travelers to vote on five responsible travel tips:

• Respect local culture.
• Preserve heritage.
• Buy local.
• Save energy.
• Use public transport.

“Buying local” won as most popular, with “respecting local culture” as a close second. Of course, it’s good to practice all five. To the winner I add my own variation:

• Support the businesses that support the place.

You’ll have a richer trip. The local innkeeper who loves to talk about town history, the restaurant that offers a traditional dish with local ingredients, the unique clothing or craft shop that’s not an international franchise—these are the things travel memories are made of.

They are part of the good-news column. Well-executed tourism helps these businesses exist, and their existence can enrich the local community as well.

So I hope Mrs. Sheppard-Floyd does buy local—and adds a great travel memory by doing so.

But it’s not just up to us visitors. Tourism responsibility also falls to travel companies, to destination governments, and to local citizens. Together we can ensure that this historic milestone in global tourism does not become a historic millstone around our collective necks.

In 2020, UNWTO forecasts 1.6 billion international arrivals. Plan for it.

To help clear things up, the U.N. Foundation sponsored an educational Congressional briefing about World Heritage last week in Washington D.C. On Monday Dec. 3, I joined the panel, led off by Assistant Secretary of State Esther Brimmer. Our goal was to help Congressional staffers spread the word about how World Heritage works, why it benefits the U.S. economy, and what role is really played by UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. Brimmer was there because the Administration is unhappy about the 2011 U.S. funding cutoff to UNESCO—done for reasons having nothing to do with World Heritage. More on that shortly.

In a Capitol conference room, our capacity 80-person audience heard the following points.

As of its 40^th birthday, the World Heritage List names 962 sites—natural, cultural, and mixed—in 157 countries. Sites must be “of outstanding universal value” and protected under local law in order to be considered for “inscription” on the List.

The U.S. has 21 sites, disproportionately low for our size. (France has 38, China 43.) Part of the reason involves four misconceptions that I have addressed in similar presentations around the country this year:

The Four Myths

1. World Heritage was dreamed up by non-Americans. No. While people from many nations contributed to the process that led to the World Heritage Convention, it was two Americans who put forth the concept of an international list to honor and help protect both cultural and natural sites of significance to all humankind. Joseph Fisher, a Democratic congressman, and Russell Train, Republican director of the Environmental Protection Agency under Richard Nixon, propelled it through to adoption in 1972. (Bipartisan efforts worked in those days.)

The first country to sign the Convention? The United States of America.

2. The U.N. runs it. Easy to assume—after all, the common term is “UNESCO World Heritage site.” But no, the World Heritage Convention is a separate treaty, with a separate membership. It designates UNESCO as the agency to administer the World Heritage list, but the World Heritage Committee, selected by Convention signatories, makes the decisions about it. UNESCO’s World Heritage Center and a host of international specialists in nature and culture advise the Committee.

3. UNESCO picks the sites. No. Countries must ask to have a site added to the list. The site must already be protected under local laws in order to be eligible. After extensive evaluation, sometimes including recommendation for additional protection, the World Heritage Committee votes on whether to add it. Each country submits its candidates for inscription on a “Tentative List.”

4. UNESCO controls the sites. No. This is the dangerous one, the sovereignty myth—that a country gives up sovereignty over the inscribed site. During a controversy in the 1990s about environmental threats that put Yellowstone on the World Heritage “In Danger” list, the Park Service reported hearing from alarmed locals who sincerely believed that Wyoming was about to be invaded by U.N. forces in black helicopters and blue helmets.

The reality: The entire staff of the UNESCO World Heritage Center in Paris is about the same as for a well-run lakeside resort. Their job is to monitor almost a thousand sites around the world and evaluate hundreds of new submissions. They are overwhelmed. They have neither the authority nor the means to enforce anything. They can advise, they can complain, and as an absolute last resort, they can ask the Committee to enact its worst possible sanction: Deletion from the list. In 40 years, that has happened only twice, for sites in Oman and Germany. The whole idea is to find a solution, so that deletion doesn’t happen.

The Cost of the Myths

None of this would matter that much, except for America’s politically shrill anti-U.N. fringe, whose disproportionate clout kept the Senate last week from ratifying an innocuous treaty on rights for the disabled, based on U.S. law already in place. (The argument was that under the proposed treaty, the U.N. could maybe somehow prohibit American home schooling. Eh?)

This noisy fragment’s UNESCO paranoia makes a difference. It enabled an amendment to the Preservation Act that makes it virtually impossible for a multi-owner historic district in the U.S. to apply for World Heritage inscription. By contrast, Mexico’s 31 sites—10 more than the U.S.—include many historic districts and towns with thriving tourism economies, such as Guanajuato and San Miguel. The U.N.-haters have had the effect of discouraging promotion of existing U.S. World Heritage sites as well.

Power of a brand: After the town of Albi, France received World Heritage status in 2010 tourism jumped 52 percent. Photo courtesy UNESCO.

For the American economy, it’s a shoot-ourselves-in-the-foot scenario. World Heritage is so successful that its brand attracts tourists from just about everywhere outside the U.S. To these foreign visitors, a World Heritage designation means, “This place has been vetted. It really is of outstanding value. We want to see it.” For the U.S., that’s especially important for less famous sites, such as Chaco Canyon or Taos Pueblo in New Mexico, and for the tourism jobs they support.

At last week’s event, David Huether of the United States Travel Association laid out the statistics on the value of foreign tourism. Basically, foreign tourists on average spend more than domestic tourists, stay longer, and thus create travel-industry jobs for the U.S. His data showed at least a million jobs related to inbound foreign tourism.

U.S. jobs related to inbound international tourism, considered an export because foreign visitors buy a domestic product: a U.S. experience. Chart courtesy USTA.

Stephen Morris of the National Park Service, which oversees the U.S. World Heritage program, rounded out the panel. He explained the intricate process a locale must follow to apply for the U.S. Tentative List, the handful of star finalist candidates to be proposed for inscription.

Moderating the session was veteran World Heritage supporter Frank Hodsoll, who chaired he National Endowment for the Arts under President Ronald Reagan. He called on Assistant Secretary Brimmer to elaborate on the automatic funding cutoff for UNESCO.

What’s Palestine Got To Do With It?

Brimmer had asked to speak at the Monday event in part because the Administration is seeking a waiver on that cutoff. This is where Palestine comes in. Back in the 90’s Congress enacted laws requiring the U.S. to eliminate funding for any U.N. agency that admitted Palestine, and last year—two decades later—UNESCO members voted to do just that. To paraphrase Brimmer, this sort of  automatic ultimatum effectively puts policy decisions in the hands of the other guys, not the U.S.

Before the suspension, U.S. dues had covered about 20 percent of UNESCO’s budget. The unintended effect now has been to shortchange the World Heritage Center—the same office that has been raising the alarm this year about destruction of cultural World Heritage sites by extremist Islamist rebels at Timbuktu in Mali. Thus Congress has in a way put itself on the same side as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Probably not what they had in mind.

Outstanding Universal Value to Humankind

World Heritage has plenty of bumps and blemishes—inconsistent inscriptions,  politics (what doesn’t?), and occasionally sloppy procedures, as with archaeology issues raised earlier this year and inadequate resources for helping sites cope with tourism. But if we ask, what if it had never existed? No question but that the program has helped save and protect great places all over the earth, and kept it a richer place for all of us. Americans can take pride in their leadership role 40 years ago.

To Congress, last week’s  message was simple and politically digestible: World Heritage sites attract foreign tourists. Foreign tourists create U.S. jobs.

As for the red-herring “threat to U.S. sovereignty,” it’s a nonissue, a “nothing muffin” in the words of the Washington Post. All that UNESCO can do about a problem at a World Heritage site, whether Yellowstone or Timbuktu, is throw a light on it and suggest solutions.

That’s exactly what they are supposed to do.

The International Committee on Archaeological Heritage Management, or ICAHM, held its first conference on how to manage the world’s myriad archaeological World Heritage sites. This wildly varied array of places encompasses many of the most celebrated sites of human cultural accomplishment and catastrophe—everything from the pyramids and Roman fortifications to Mongol-era tombs and prehistoric rock art. ICAHM’s key job is to advise the World Heritage Committee about new sites proposed for the famous list. I attended as a guest of the Congress, which paid for my travel.

Right at the outset, ICAHM co-president Dr. Willem J.H. Willems of Leiden, Netherlands, put the core issue on the table. “Archaeology is the study of the past,” he said in his April 9 keynote, but “the past doesn’t exist anymore. Heritage is about the use of the past in the present.” And that’s where it gets interesting. And risky.

Willem J.K. Willems. Photo: Jonathan Tourtellot

Too many countries are rushing to use the past—their heritage sites—for present purposes. Willems sharply criticized the way that sites are proposed and awarded World Heritage inscription. According to the World Heritage Convention, an international treaty, sites should be awarded a place on the list based on solid scientific and academic reasoning. Not happening, said Willems. The World Heritage Committee has been approving too many applications based on economic and “radically political” expediency.

For most countries, World Heritage status is a hotly desired prize. A background note may be necessary for some of the American audience here, where a myth prevails that a World Heritage listing means giving up sovereignty to UNESCO. In fact, World Heritage inscription simply means your country gets the sites that it requests “inscribed” on the World Heritage list. The conditions are that the sites are of “outstanding universal value” and that you take good care of them. If you don’t, the worst UNESCO can do is propose removal from the list.

Most countries, especially impoverished developing nations, are eager to put their greatest natural and cultural places on the list. Why? Prestige in part, national pride in part, yes, but also that modern vein of gold: tourism! An inscription puts you on the travel map.

Tourism Unleashed

When it comes to historic and archaeological sites, though, a blind grab for tourism is playing with fire. Without care, “loved-to-death” syndrome is a real threat. Listen to what ICAHM’s other co-president, Dr. Douglas Comer of Baltimore, Maryland, had to say about one ancient site he knows well: Petra, Jordan.  Once such a site is damaged, he stressed, the physical archaeological record is gone forever.

Douglas Comer. Photo: Jonathan Tourtellot

“Petra had about 45,000 visitors in 1985,” Comer told the meeting. “It’s now close to 800,000.” Tourism-related construction at Petra destroyed Nabataean terra cotta pipes more than 2,000 years old. The sandstone seats in the Theatre have survived two millennia, but in the past two decades so many tourists have sat on them that they have worn away the stonemasons’ marks. History wiped by butts. Overall, abrasion from visitor traffic has removed well over a foot of sandstone from the interior of Petra’s most famous monument, Al-Khazna, seen as the repository of the Holy Grail in an Indiana Jones movie. Development at nearby Wadi Musa created impermeable pavement, which in turn floods sandstone with too much water and erodes it. Donkeys carrying tourists gradually destroyed the ancient Nabataean steps.  The practice has been stopped—too late for the steps. In a common pattern, USAID and others have put over $30 million toward supporting tourism to Jordan, but comparatively little has gone to preservation.

And those are the problems at just one site!

The archaeologists were not calling for an end to tourism—not at all. They want us to share the thrill and knowledge of these places. But like any predictable flood, the torrent of tourists needs careful control and planning. Comer called for a requirement that site applications include a credible “best management practices” plan—tourism impacts included—and that inscriptions be made provisional, becoming permanent after convincingly long-term demonstration of those best practices.

That takes us back to Willems’s complaint with the World Heritage Committee’s performance over the past few years: “In 44 percent of the cases, the Committee proceeded to inscribe sites on the World Heritage List that in the judgment of the advisory bodies had not met the requirements for inscription.” He called it “extreme disregard of expert advice.” In his view, these newly listed sites are ignoring the speed limit and heading for Dead Man’s Curve.

Willems doesn’t say these sites are unworthy of inscription, just that they’re not properly assessed, protected, and ready for the attention inscription could bring.   Some of the problem derives from the legitimate need to rectify a Eurocentric tilt in the initial inscriptions. But that can mean a rush to list places that are not ready. Especially egregious was the case of the Preah Vihear Temple on the disputed Cambodian-Thai border. In 2008 the Committee granted Cambodia’s application over Thai and expert objections, sparking a border conflict. “Now these people are shooting each other!” says Willems.

I asked him for some other examples of not-ready-for-prime-time World Heritage inscriptions. He cited Burkina Faso’s Loropéni, a 1,000-year-old gold-trade site, rushed to approval to help a desperately poor West African country get some tourism revenue, but without satisfactory study. The Kushite ruins in Sudan’s Island of Meroe met “minimum requirements for nothing” except Sudan’s need for prestige. Wadi Rum in Jordan received an inscription despite too many tourists without adequate planning or control.

Not all talks criticized the process. Much of the conference consisted of the specialists reporting to each other. It’s arcane but often fascinating stuff: Laser scanning industrial heritage sites in Wales; community action at El Tajin in Veracruz, Mexico; protecting the hominid footprints at Laetoli, Tanzania; World Heritage candidacy for ancient stone spheres in Costa Rica; the fate of heritage sites in post-conflict Libya; how to protect Peru’s Caral ruins—old as the Egyptian pyramids.

Archaeological Menorca

Archaeologists think the T-shaped taula had religious meaning for Menorca’s Bronze Age Talayotic Culture. Photo: Jonathan Tourtellot

The government of Menorca chose to host this conference in part so as to show off their own cultural heritage, beginning with the conference venue, the impressively restored Theatre Principal in old town Mahon, Menorca’s capital. The oldest opera house in Spain, this red plush, 1829 creation has 5 stories of box-seats—more suited to a production of La Dolores than a quasi-academic conference.

But what really surprised me about the island was the proliferation of megalithic ruins, many of them from the 3,000-year-old Talayotic Culture, unique to Menorca. Their iconic talayots, fat cylindrical stone watchtowers, sit atop numerous knolls and hills all over the island. Even more dramatic are the T-shaped taula stones, looking like detached bits of Stonehenge. Add dolmens, communal tombs, barrows, Roman constructions, and entire neolithic villages, and you’re in antiquity heaven. “There’s hardly a farm on Menorca without a monument,” someone had observed.

Early one morning local archaeologist Margarita Orfila Pons took four of us to a two-level talayot off the tourist trail. As the group climbed it, someone dislodged a stone, which rolled a few feet down the side of the structure and came to rest. No big deal. But it was easy to see what would happen to the tower if 100,000 people a year were climbing it, decade after decade.

Later we joined the other attendees touring the island’s archaeological gems, including an elaborate lunch in the attractive town of Ciutadella. Touring the ruins with two busloads of archaeologists and students can be taxing, though. After hearing hours of on-site technical descriptions of sandstone this and limestone that, even the pros’ attentions were flagging.

Academia, Management, and Money

At the top of this post I called ICAHM significant. That doesn’t necessarily mean effective. Some presentations do have practical value, providing tools and ideas for taking better care of these sites, for involving local people, for engaging tourists. Others lean more toward the academic and theoretical, with titles like “Architecture and Urban Structure in Hierapolis: An Archaeological Perspective,” “Formal Educational Curricula and Cultural Heritage,” and “Insularity [and] Interaction with Foreign and Social Complexity.” Focusing on one of these after a two-hour Spanish lunch would have called for a constant IV flow of espresso. Maybe that’s why I didn’t see enough actionable propositions or recommendations. Rather little emphasis on the “M” in ICAHM.

I believe the pressures afflicting our great cultural sites demand a greater sense of urgency. The 2006 NatGeo survey of World Heritage destination stewardship revealed drastically differing levels of success in supporting cultural sites and the visitor experiences, ranging from the well-managed Alhambra and Granada in Spain to the grossly overtrafficked, underexplained Angkor and its Siem Reap gateway town. The extent to which ICAHM is effective will depend on participants’ ability to focus on action and not just academic theory. One late-session speaker, after he was done lambasting the inscription and management of World Heritage sites in Ethiopia, pointed out that the conference’s earlier “Social Action” set of 15-minute presentations did not live up to their billing. “Social action was mentioned in the last 30 seconds.”

But there’s another, major problem with ICAHM. The scientists are expected to do all this work for free.

This was the third of Comer’s calls to action: Get support. In recent decades we have seen millions of dollars spent to attract tourists, and pennies to protect what they travel to see.

Judging from what I’ve seen this week, ICAHM knows it has a long way to go, as does the World Heritage program, as do we all. Otherwise the tangible story of our species crumbles, one dislodged stone at a time, and with it, the knowledge of who we are.

Mass tourism on the Costa Brava, Spain. Economic success or failure? (Photo by Jonathan Tourtellot)

Third in a series of occasional blogs about the ever-changing quality of travel destinations around the world—about what’s going on behind the scenes and how it affects the character of the places we care about.

Hong Kong has more natural attractions than Ireland. Sweden is culturally richer than all of India.

Eh?

Welcome to the world of economic research—combined in reports that can be used to shape the places we love to visit. The business leaders and economists who gathered at the World Economic Forum recently in Davos, Switzerland can find the data behind these startling comparisons in the Forum’s own 500-page Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report.

To be sure, the report is a massive piece of work—wonky but fascinating stuff if you’ve never looked at how the tourism industry thinks. The report’s star feature is its ratings of national economies, the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index.

“Competitiveness” is money-speak for: “Would your company want to build a hotel there?” Of course, the question behind the question then has to be: “Would we travelers show up and stay in it?”

And the winner is . . .

Presumably, then, the most competitive countries are the ones we would most enjoy visiting. So which is the best? Of the 139 countries rated in 2011, Numero Uno, the winner for the fourth year running is:

Switzerland.

Well, OK. Switzerland is certainly pretty good. It’s a beautiful country that takes excellent care of itself. Coincidentally (sort of), it’s the home of Davos. Is it the most appealing nation on Earth? It’s not without wrinkles. The Swiss franc soared so high into the stratosphere—at least until the Swiss tied it down to the euro—that most people couldn’t afford visiting where an average restaurant meal for two could run $200. Not so competitive, that!

Otherwise, though, Switzerland is a reasonable winner. At the other end of the scale,it’s no surprise either that impoverished, refugee-laden Chad anchors the bottom at No. 139. The U.S., by the way, comes in at a strong number 6, despite bombing out on ease-of-entry. (Just try to get a visa.)

But the Forum’s report contains some bizarre results, too. The scores are a composite of 14 different categories, each with its own sub-scores, and they don’t always add up:

• Ireland, the Emerald Isle, ranks 112 on natural resources, much lower than high-rise Hong Kong, ranked at 68. Really?
• Botswana, home of $400-a-night eco-safaris, nevertheless ranks 8 on price competitiveness, purportedly a much better deal than moderately priced Peru, at rank 81.
• Sweden ranks first in cultural resources—more than France (rank 10) or all of polyglot India (rank 24).

How can this be? The answer lies in the use of metrics—that is, the report relies on things you can count. The ranking system is based partly on CEO interview results but more heavily on a set of quantifiable indicators. Hong Kong, for instance, has a high percentage of its tiny land area under protection, so it comes out looking greener than Ireland. New Zealand’s vulnerable island ecosystem records the world’s highest rate of threatened species—probably because New Zealand actually bothered to record them—but that bad number knocks one of the world’s most conservation-minded nations downward in the ranking.

Why should we care? Because governments and investors make decisions based in part on this report, decisions that might improve a destination, or ruin it.

Stewardship or Ease of Business?

For comparison, look at the National Geographic rankings of destinations, published annually in National Geographic Traveler from 2004 through 2010. We avoided quantifiable measures—how do you quantify scenic beauty or cultural integrity?—and based the surveys solely on hundreds of expert opinions as to each destination’s condition. The results generated an Index of Destination Stewardship.

The 2009 survey of destination stewardship, National Geographc Traveler, November/December.

To be sure, the purpose was different from the Davos research. We were looking at sustainability, Davos at economics. But the two do relate. In the long run, a place can’t succeed at one without the other. The National Geographic surveys polled opinions from experts with a stewardship bias. The Forum polls business executives, presumably with an economic and profit bias. Legitimate perceptions from two different directions.

The trouble begins when they conflict. A higher score in some Forum categories may actually hurt destination quality. Ease of business and competitive pricing, for instance, may mask lax environmental protection and free-fire zones for slapdash developers. Heavy cruise ship traffic and sprawling vacation subdivisions dampen stewardship scores, but economic metrics like infrastructure may encourage that very overdevelopment. Tourism is known for fouling its own nest. The once “unspoiled” destination spoils, growing a rancid crust of asphalt and fast-food franchises.

Quantify vs. Qualify

Then there are the arithmetic issues. The report does assign Switzerland a bottom-hugging 127 in pricing competitiveness, but cost-of-trip, the decision-maker for many tourists, apparently gets no more weight in the Index formula than any of the other 13 categories.

While many numerical measures used by the report are fine, some others are a bit weird.

The Culture category counts history only in terms of a country’s UNESCO-listed World Heritage sites. No other protected historic places or districts—too hard to find and quantify. No museums, theaters, and performance venues, either. The researchers have tried, but the data’s not there.

What is easy to count? Sport stadium seats! No kidding. In Davos economics, one-fifth of the weighting for a nation’s cultural-resource score is based on its stadium capacity. That might make sense in Texas, but not in Italy.

The Human Resources category includes several general-education measures—fine—but no measure of local employment in tourism business, such as tour guides, innkeepers, restaurant staffs. No reasonable way to get the data. But one factor the Index does count is, um, HIV prevalence. Just what sort of tourism are we assessing here?

Those oddities are not necessarily the fault of the researchers, who burned much late-night oil to get the huge report done. Indeed, they welcome suggestions for better measures. It’s more the framing of the task in the first place. For example, quantitative data is usually tabulated by political jurisdictions. Deal with 139 of them, and it’s virtually impossible to get meaningful comparisons against an international stew of varying definitions, methods, and accuracy. If statistically desperate, you’re tempted to grab whatever data is available.

To paraphrase an oft-forgotten observation: The quantifiable is not necessarily meaningful, nor is the meaningful always quantifiable. We don’t want economic and political leaders basing their decisions about our favorite destinations on a foundation of quantified mush.

Probably travel and tourism hasn’t been foremost on the minds of the money-barons who gathered at Davos, though it does constitute, by most measures, one of the world’s top three industries.  And a country that I personally love is foremost on their minds: Greece.

Gorgeous Greece has now become worrisome  to visit. Its debt crisis is a black hole in the economic cosmos, sucking in massive clouds of euros and hope. Are more protests, more strikes to come?

Greece scores a robust 29 out of 139 in tourism competitiveness. Go figure.

Better yet, Davos, don’t figure. Evaluate instead. More insight and fewer numbers, perhaps? We count on you for wisdom that will protect the places we love.

What, you never heard of geotourism? Read on. It’s about the way we travel. Sometimes it’s also about rocks.

Whose “Geo” Goes Into “Geotourism”?

Geographers and geologists usually get along. The two fields are so closely related that universities may put them in the same department. They share the same prefix, geo-, from the Greek, ge, Earth.

And that’s where the confusion started.

For the past 10 years or so, two different meanings for the neologism “geotourism” have both been growing in acceptance—in different parts of the world, for different reasons.

One concept derives from geology. Dr. Thomas Hose, an English geologist, is said to have first proposed that tourism focused on geological features be called “geotourism.”

In tourism-industry parlance, that’s a niche market.

The other concept derives from “geography.” National Geographic has defined geotourism as “tourism that sustains or enhances the geographical character of a place—its environment, culture, aesthetics, heritage, and the well-being of its residents.” (“Environment” includes geology, of course, but it’s not explicit.)

This concept is an approach, rather than a focus on a single topic.

As the person who introduced that sense of the term, I am just a bit biased. The idea was for tourism to help protect places, but I knew some geologists didn’t care for the alternate meaning. So when I accepted an invitation to keynote last week’s international geological conference, I did so with some trepidation. The organizers wanted to “clarify” the meaning of geotourism. Would I be pelted with rock hammers?

A Tale of Two Uses

Geologists in the late 1990s who saw the growing emphasis on ecotourism and protection of wildlife habitats were understandably eager to extend the same interest and protection to their own items of interest—everything from arches, fossils, and outcrops to historic mines and wine-producing terroir. Over the past decade, the UNESCO-affiliated geoparks movement began to highlight geological tourism. A geopark is not a park in the North American sense, but rather a classification of a place with both towns and notable geological features. Most geoparks are in Europe and China, but other countries are beginning to add their own. The municipality of Arouca is one such geopark and also the host of the November 2011 International Congress of Geotourism.

Roofs of free-form slate cap houses in the village of Paradinha, Arouca Geopark. (Jonathan Tourtellot)

By the late 1990s, “geographical character” also needed attention. World tourism had increased 20-fold since the mid 20^th century (and has doubled again today). Done wrong, mass tourism was ruining places, but done right, tourism could help protect a destination from irresponsible development, exploitation, and other pressures. By National Geographic’s broad definition, geotourism is a tool for managing both tourism and destination stewardship holistically, supportive of both the visitor and the place. (If you turn to sources like National Geographic and local websites for your travel ideas, chances are you yourself are a “geotraveler.”) This approach combines responsible economic development with an appreciation for conserving, protecting, and celebrating the things that make a place special, including geological things. Geotourism map-guide programs and other projects are underway from Newfoundland to Guatemala and California to, yes, Portugal— the Alto Douro Valley, near Arouca.

A Need for Clarity

In Arouca, I got a surprise. Several geopark leaders were eager to embrace the broader definition. A major reason was that, along with promoting geology, geoparks are supposed to help local economies, i.e., “the well-being of residents.”

It seemed that in some cases, dedicated geologists—presumably consumed by enthusiasm for their field—were unduly optimistic in that regard: They imagined communities would reap riches from the floods of geotourists coming to admire their arenitic sandstones and mafic dykes. Well, not so many, it would turn out. To make things worse, those tourists who did show up might well be confronted by interpretive signage loaded with technical language suited to a second-year geology class. Such as “arenitic sandstone” and “mafic dyke.”

Another reason: Increasing numbers of higher-education courses and degrees in geotourism also prompted the need for clarification, as students are now committing themselves to dissertations in this new field. Several were in attendance at the Congress.

Three keynote addresses—not just mine—emphasized the value of bringing culture, nature, history and scenery into the tourism equation.

Arouca Geopark itself is a good example of how this works. Its several “geosites” include a slate quarry rich in fossils of giant trilobites and a curious formation seen nowhere else: “Rocks giving birth to rocks”—granite that releases nodules of biotite as it erodes. According to folklore, local  women thought the puck-size nodules promoted fertility.

But Arouca’s other cultural and natural connections are just as interesting: wines dependent on the terroir, flavorful beef from cattle raised in the mountains, lots of scenic hiking trails, a magnificent monastery made from local granite, and striking village roofs of free-form slate. You might not visit Arouca just for trilobites, but you would for the whole experience.

António Carlos Duarte, the Arouca Geopark manager, indicates a "Rock giving birth," the pock marks showing where biotite nodules have popped out of the granite. The cornerstone came from Arouca's "Pedras Parideiras" formation, unique in the world. (Jonathan Tourtellot)

What emerged from the Congress was the Arouca Declaration, written by attending European geopark leaders and delivered November 12, 2011 by Margarida Belém, president of the Arouca Geopark Board of Directors. In part it says, “We recognize that there is a need to clarify the concept of geotourism. We therefore believe that geotourism should be defined as tourism which sustains and enhances the identity of a territory, taking into consideration its geology, environment, culture, aesthetics, heritage and the well-being of its residents. Geological tourism is one of the multiple components of geotourism.”

The dual geotourism concepts, of course, remain, but their relationship is now clearly established. After all, geologists have devoted careers to geological geotourism. One of them, Ross Dowling, of Perth Australia, first suggested to me the “type” versus “approach” distinction between the two concepts. I think he’s right. If I may steal and adapt a page from Einstein’s theories of Special and General Relativity, we could think of “special” and “general” geotourism. Special geotourism is just that: a specialty focused on  geological features. General geotourism is a strategy for protecting, showcasing, and enhancing all the distinctive assets of a destination.

Geotourism Is What You Make of It

Portuguese folk dancers perform at the Arouca monastery. (Jonathan Tourtellot)

So I suggest that anyone with geological attractions and sustainable intentions add “geology” to the National Geographic geotourism definition if they so wish:  “Tourism that sustains or enhances the geographical character of a place—its environment, geology, culture, aesthetics, heritage, and the well-being of its residents.” Geoparks may even want to list geology first, as the Declaration does.

Personally, I happen to be a fan of geology. Better understanding of deep Earth history certainly can help us gain a better perspective of the time it took to develop the planet we have today, and the value of the places on it.

Besides, the granite buildings are striking, the slate villages charm, and the wine tastes fine.

You, your spouse, and your kids can now enjoy “Cliffwalk,” a vertigo-inducing catwalk cantilevered out from a sheer precipice in British Columbia. You can see treetops between your feet. No small matter, given that the treetops themselves are almost 200 feet high. Awesome.

But is there anything more to this than a thrill?

That was the question on my mind as I drove from the airport up to where North Vancouver, B.C., nestles below the rain-grabbing Coast Range. North Vancouver is a verdant suburb cleaved by deep, forested canyons too steep for development. It was largely wilderness in 1889 when George Grant Mackay first threw a wobbly suspension bridge across the Capilano River canyon and discovered that thrill-seekers liked walking to the middle of it and gazing 230 feet down into the tree-lined gorge. In 1953, Rae Mitchell bought the 30-acre site, revitalized it, and sold it to his daughter, Nancy Stibbard, who expanded it into a full nature theme park. Nancy now runs the place as CEO, assisted by her son John and 220 employees. The Capilano Suspension Bridge Park has become one of Vancouver’s iconic attractions.

A quiet moment on the Capilano Suspension Bridge. (Photo: Jonathan Tourtellot)

Rebuilt and reinforced over the years, the bridge remains this nature theme park’s signature feature, but other elements have been added—a tribal traditions section, trails, ponds, a café, a forest-canopy walkway, and the inevitable gift shop. And now, Cliffwalk.

It sounded like a new version of the zip lines and canopy walkways that have been proliferating at ecotourism sites around the world. They can be a lot of fun, and done right, they do little harm. But one purpose of good ecotourism is to, well, learn about nature. So I wanted to see whether eco-thrills like Cliffwalk actually do that.

For a while I had reservations about Capilano. Let’s go back to the day of my visit.

Opening Day

It is June and today is the grand opening of Cliffwalk. The weather is cooperating, thematically speaking: It’s raining. To me, this is totally appropriate for a temperate rain forest. Moss and ferns just don’t look right in bright sunshine.

The heavy drizzle doesn’t faze park staff, who were passing out slickers to the school groups and adults filing through the entry gates.

I first check out the eponymous bridge, whose 450-feet span bounces satisfactorily as families and school groups troop back and forth across it. The Capilano river roars far below. Douglas-fir, hemlock, and cedar reach up toward us, a mix typical of the temperate rainforests native to the Pacific coast from California north to Alaska. The scene feels like virgin wilderness, except for an incongruous clutch of garden apartments perched on a bluff downstream. Across the bridge, nature trails lead to the forest-canopy walkway, 650 feet long and climbing as high as ten stories.

I share the park with plenty of visitors. If this is a light-traffic day, Capilano must be quite a money machine. It costs more than $30 for an adult to enter.  Nancy Stibbard says it can handle an upper limit of 5,000 people at a time on a nice summer weekend.

That many? If I’m interested in communing with nature, that’s about 4,990 more people than I care to share 30 acres of woods with. Apparently, I haven’t yet grasped why this is one of the most highly praised eco-attractions in North America.

The Moment Arrives

The grand opening of Cliffwalk turns out to be a scripted press event, held under plastic tenting on an overlook above the 300-foot precipice. Below, you can see part of the new catwalk. It sweeps out over the abyss in an arc, suspended by cables from a single anchor embedded in the vertical granite.

Promo shot of Cliffwalk on a camera-ready day. (Photo courtesy Capilano Suspension Bridge Park)

School kids get authentic, rain-forest weather on Cliffwalk opening day. (Photo: Jonathan Tourtellot)

The Capilano people certainly know how to handle the media, offering us scheduled interviews, media kits with press releases, leaflets, and thumb-drives.  There’s a ribbon-cutting photo op. This is just short of slick, I think, still skeptical. They’ve even brought in an elementary-school class to tour the catwalk so that reporters can get their reactions.

Too staged for my taste. I’m uncomfortable anyway, because I’ve accepted a paid press trip to be here. B.C. Tourism and Capilano cooperated in flying in some journalists to witness this event, and I’m one of them. Though common in the travel business, press trips create an obvious conflict of interest that I prefer to avoid. I have made an exception for this 36-hour visit to Vancouver, since I already knew of Capilano’s solid ecotourism reputation.

As if to underscore that point, John Stibbard tell us about the elaborate precautions to protect the cliff-face during construction. It was his vertical exploration that inspired Cliffwalk. “The way you see the canyon from the walkway is the way I saw it four years ago, rappelling off the cliff,” he says. “When I got to the bottom I was chest deep in sword ferns.”

The press corps asks him only a few desultory questions about the innovative engineering, which Capilano’s PR team has made much of. Interesting, but is that the point? So I voice my own concern: “How much will people actually learn about rain-forest ecology from this?”

Stibbard perks right up. “We didn’t want to just build a walk. We wanted to overlay a full educational experience.” Enthusiastically, he picks up steam: “We wanted to tell the story of the power of the water—water in its relation to flora and fauna, water in relation to the salmon in the river. We’ve opened another acre above us that goes into those stories in depth.”

Well, okay! And indeed it does.

The Cliffwalk first takes you out over the canyon for the wow factor. After you’ve seen the cliff as if hovering next to it, and looked down between your feet from one of the transparent sections, the route then feeds you back onto solid ground. There you can play with various attractive, interactive displays, read interpretive signs about water and ecosystems, and eye the hokey-looking but accurately sculpted concrete salmon swimming upstream.

Signage helps us learn by enriching the thrills. (Photo: Jonathan Tourtellot)

Yes, you do learn things, in digestible morsels. A lawn can use 2 to 6 times more water than a swimming pool. Trees can get 40% of their moisture from the fog. Such tidbits are scattered all over the park. “Years of trial and error taught us to keep the signs short,” Stibbard says, “so people will take away one thing from each.”

I’m beginning to realize Capilano isn’t about communing with Mother Nature; it’s more like having your first date with her. A speed date, perhaps, but a pretty good one.

Behind the Scenes

“The Cliffwalk is a hook,” Stibbard confides to me later on. “It’s like building a roller-coaster, only with layers of educational material added. So that people leave here with something to think about.”

To me the most mind-boggling factoid was one that sums up interconnectedness:

Scientists have found salmon DNA in Douglas-fir trees.

How can this be? Bears and other predators pull salmon from the river, and the fishes’ remains fertilize the trees. Thus a decline in salmon can affect the forests. Discovering such wondrous, essential relationships is an eco-thrill in its own right.

And more. A sense of wonder is what inspires us to care about special places. The water story that Capilano tells, for instance, may help us better understand what is at stake elsewhere, even here in British Columbia.  One of the latest conservation battles is brewing a few hundred miles to the north, where mining interests seek a foothold in an area dubbed the “Sacred Headwaters” of the Stikine, Skeena, and Nass rivers. A spectacularly photographed book on the topic, with text by National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Wade Davis, is due out this October. Places like Capilano show that the beauty of such places is more than photograph-deep—that flora and fauna are worth more than their weight in newly mined gold. After all, you can eat salmon.

Do people make the connection between learning and action? Capilano may be more smoothly commercialized than suits my own taste, but it can introduce hundreds of people to ecology in a single day. Many of those visitors vote in B.C. Yet so far, no one has done a study of whether visitor perceptions and opinions change after a visit to the park. Perhaps some determined grad student will step up to the plate and research it.

Regardless, I’m impressed by Capilano’s sincerity.

Stibbard points out how many of the trails through the forest are now eco-friendly raised boardwalks. “We used to have gravel paths. Since then, we’ve lifted up the entire walkway, taken out the invasive species, taken up the gravel, and replanted with all natural vegetation.”  He notes that national park managers call him for advice. “They should be doing boardwalks, too. In popular parks, you know, the trails get wider, and people walk here and there and carve their names in trees. You need to contain the crowds. But the parks just don’t have the money.” He does.

So how can a private, for-profit business justify the seemingly exorbitant spending on environmental perfectionism?

Capilano's canopy walkway, engineered not to harm trees. (Photo: Jonathan Tourtellot)

“You have a long-term vision, you make the right decisions. Otherwise, you’re not doing things for the right reasons. You’re doing things for now, for profits.” Stibbard quickly adds. “Not that I’m against profits! I like making profits. But you can’t think short term. It will take all our profits for the next two years to pay for Cliffwalk, but our time line is not two years, it’s not five years. When my grandfather was here, he wasn’t thinking about himself, he was thinking about my mother. And now I’m thinking about my kids. Our time line is 50 years, a hundred years.”

I note the shortage of long-term visions in current affairs. “I think that’s difficult with governments,” he says. “With politics, it’s always the next two years, or four years. You never make the right decisions.”

All this from a successful businessman. For one brief, shining moment I imagine a corporate, economic, and political world with his point of view, measuring success not in terms of the next election or annual report, but the next generation.

I go away with something to think about.

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Practicalities

About the only major complaint people seem to have with Capilano is the entry fee—ranging around $32 Canadian ($10 for kids)—so plan on spending the day. That fee does cover nature guides who will take you around, pointing put the secrets of the forest and answering questions.

But if the fee strains your budget, consider going instead to nearby Lynn Canyon, a public wildlife reserve with its own eco-center and suspension bridge—a bit shorter but still plenty impressive—and a quieter more natural experience. I recommend Capilano for learning, then graduate to Lynn Canyon for communing.

The “best mayor in America” was furious with a lot of people, evidently including me. Mayor Joe Riley’s frustration was spraying in all directions, and some of us sharing the on-stage panel with him were getting bits of flack. He had his reasons.

The occasion on May 9, 2011, was a civic forum in a packed auditorium, latest event in a months-old, increasingly heated debate. At issue is a well-liked urban renewal plan with one colossal sticking point: a new cruise ship pier, right next to old-town Charleston. According to some points of view, the fate of one of the country’s finest historic cities is now at stake.  The Historic Charleston Foundation, sponsor of the event, had asked me to join the seven-person panel to comment on destination stewardship. (Disclosure: They paid an honorarium and covered my travel.) I discovered the furor over the pier had almost eclipsed the reason why the matter came up in the first place.

So walk with me east through the shady streets of Charleston’s historic Ansonborough neighborhood, lined by bright, tastefully painted “single houses” set sideways to the street, all clapboard, shutters, and louvered porches, and it’s easy to see why this city is considered one of the country’s finest historic gems. After we cross East Bay Street, though, it all stops, sudden and ugly, at a blank wall of gray warehouses. It’s an aesthetic insult to everything Charleston represents. We’ve reached Union Pier, a decades-old eyesore with its back turned to the city, blocking the views out over the Cooper River arm of Charleston harbor. The pier and its 74 acres of prime real estate belong to the South Carolina State Ports Authority.

Porches that channel breezes and provide shade define Charleston architecture, a heritage fiercely protected by an alert citizenry. (Photo: Jonathan Tourtellot)

In a way, the architectural rebuff could symbolize the attitude of many port authorities, typically run by appointed, not elected, boards. According to John Norquist, fellow forum panelist and former mayor of Milwaukee, port authorities have a tendency to arrogance when dealing with the cities they occupy.

So Mayor Riley was justifiably proud when he and Port Authority director James Newsome agreed on a “concept plan” that would reincorporate the southern portion of Union Pier into the fabric of the city. Streets would open up all the way to views of the water. New, architecturally suitable buildings would fill reclaimed blocks. A public landing for small craft would connect at the foot of Market Street much as things were a hundred years ago. That part sounded great!

Riley’s successes in helping Charleston balance its tourism popularity with livability and economic growth has earned him frequent local accolades as “the best mayor in America.” Perhaps so: He’s running for his tenth term. Fixing Union Pier would one more brick in his tower of achievement.

But now there’s the cruise-ship issue. Based at the south end of Union Pier, the 2,056-passenger Carnival Fantasy has already been using Charleston as a home port since 2009, annoying nearby locals with traffic tie-ups on embarkation days. Other cruise ships stop at Charleston, too, usually sending passengers ashore for a few hours before sailing on. The trend is up. Under the redevelopment plan, the cruise ship pier would move to the north end, which most folks concede would be an improvement on the current situation.

Cruise ship docked at the existing Union Pier terminal, Charleston, SC, ready to load 2,000 passengers. (Photo: Jonathan Tourtellot)

But many think it would be even more of an improvement to if the towering ships and their accompanying crowds and traffic moved away from the historic district entirely, farther up the peninsula to another port facility at Columbus Street. That portion of passengers actually interested in Charleston could ride a shuttle into town. “Not on the table,” insists Newsome. The Port Authority wants that entire terminal reserved for cargo.

At the forum I reported how Charleston ranked on two National Geographic surveys on destination stewardship, scoring very well, with a 71 in 2004 and 77 in 2009. The surveys, published in National Geographic Traveler, have been polls of expert opinions whereby 200-400 survey panelists consider several factors—environment, culture and social integrity, historic preservation, aesthetics, tourism management—and rate places accordingly. Both times, Charleston came in among the very best in the United States. On the 2004 survey, by contrast, Key West came in with a bottom-hugging 43, largely due to the unbridled increase in cruise ship visitation. In such towns, floods of passengers create a mini-tsunami of humanity that pleases some shopkeepers but can annoy local residents and stay-over visitors who have come to enjoy the place for its own sake. Some Charlestonians have raised the specter of Key West as a reason to go slow on cruise ships.

A rule of thumb in tourism is that an overnight visitor contributes at least four times more to the economy than a day-tripper, sometimes much more. A Port-sponsored study touting the benefits of cruise ships found that many cruise passengers claimed they would return to see Charleston, but it didn’t determine how many actually do so.

City visitors listen to tales of old Charleston from a costumed interpreter and his feathered aide.

Although the historic Charleston peninsula and historic Key West are comparable in size, Riley dismissed the Key West comparison as “ridiculous,” noting that cruise passengers were a small fraction of Charleston’s yearly tourism flow. Riley also rejected a study showing the enhanced value of converting the entire 74 acres to housing and shops. “This is a city!” he exclaimed “not a boutique.” Charleston, he said, needs a lively working waterfront. Many agree with him there, including me. But does the waterfront handle cargo and seafood, or floating cities of vacationers?

Currently, the Port Authority gets only 7 percent of its revenue from cruise ships. Newsome has proposed voluntary limits: no ship bigger than 3500 passengers, no more than 104 ships per year, no more than one ship at a time. Not too bad. But he refuses to lock it in formally, saying to do so would hurt the port’s credibility with its customers and lenders.

The proposed cruise ship pier seems long enough, 1,800 feet, to handle two ships. Even the voluntary limit allows ships 75 percent bigger than the 10-deck Fantasy.

Shortly before the night of our forum, someone contacted the National Trust for Historic Preservation, proposing that the Trust put Charleston on its annual “11 Most Endangered” list. The Trust is considering doing so. For Riley, whose career was built in part on protecting Charleston’s historic sense of place, the threat was infuriating, like putting Giorgio Armani on the “Worst Dressed” list. The Trust will release its 2011 list June 15.

The issue revolves around numbers. If hundreds of tourists flood iconic city blocks, they change the character of those blocks, and in some eyes, the character of the city. The world’s population of tourists keeps growing. Cruise ships keep growing in both size and numbers. The money involved keeps growing, an irresistible temptation. The number of passengers keeps growing. But the port communities they visit remain the same size. Without constraints, Charleston could find itself an example of that oxymoron attributed to Yogi Berra:

“Nobody goes there any more. It’s too crowded.”