The Higashiyama district in Kyoto is hugely popular with tourists, who often crowd the place especially during cherry blossom season. — AFP
From the island of Bali in Indonesia, to Kyoto and Tokyo in Japan, and Oaxaca in Mexico, an American travel guide has drawn up a list of destinations travellers should avoid visiting next year in order to help preserve them.
Whether it’s with natural building materials, recycling policies, rainwater recovery, raising customer awareness of daily cleaning practices in hotel rooms, or respecting the traditions of local communities, there is now an arsenal of tools used by the hotel industry and local communities to make their destinations more responsible in the face of the climate crisis.
These are just some of the new measures that can appeal to travellers keen on reducing the carbon footprint of their getaways.
At a time when visitor quotas, tourist taxes and entry fees are increasingly used to limit tourist numbers, an alternative solution could be to encourage travellers to “simply” stop choosing certain destinations, especially those that are suffering the most from overtourism.
Without calling for a boycott, this is what the Fodor’s Travel Guide suggests with its “No List” of places on Earth not to visit in 2025 due to tourism exerting too much pressure on local communities. Recalling the spirit of the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) ranking of extinct, critically endangered and vulnerable animal species, the US publication divides these destinations into two categories.
Firstly, there are those perennial “No List” destinations that have long suffered from the degradation of their landscapes, traditions and quality of life. Such is the case of Bali.
There are also places where tourists face growing backlash from locals, as in Barcelona and Mallorca (Spain), Venice (Italy), Koh Samui (Thailand) and Mount Everest (Nepal).
Fodor’s also placed destinations that are beginning to suffer the effects of tourism in another list. The Sicilian city of Agrigento is one such destination on its “No List”, as it will be the Italian Capital of Culture in 2025. It is listed alongside Kerala (India), Kyoto and Tokyo, Oaxaca, and the North Coast 500 in Scotland.
More surprisingly, the British Virgin Islands (BVI) are also featured on the list.
“In the first half of 2024, the BVI saw a record number of visitors, driven largely by a post-pandemic surge in cruise ship passengers. The first six months of 2024 set a new tourism record, with over 683,000 visitors, a 17% increase from the same period in 2023.
“Cruise ship passengers now account for about 72% of total tourist arrivals. In contrast, overnight visitor numbers remain nearly 24% below their 2017 peak of 243,000,” explains Fodor’s, which points to cruise tourism as a potential threat. – AFP Relaxnews
The houseboat tour in Kerala, India is one of the must-try experiences for tourists. — Pixabay
