From Boracay to Maya Bay, how to fix overtourism: travellers’ tips and advice for authorities
- From the Philippines to Thailand, overtourism and beach closures have been making the news of late
- While many governments drag their feet trying to find a solution, what can travellers do to help resolve the problem?
News headlines have been sounding alarm bells over the past year about the relatively new phenomenon of “overtourism”.
Cities such as Venice, Madrid and Dubrovnik – the Croatian town where some of HBO’s Game of Thrones was shot – are feeling the strain. From Antarctica to the redwood forests of California, even the world’s wilderness areas have been impacted.
But it is small islands with fragile ecologies that bear the brunt, as tourist numbers swell beyond their capacity to support them.
The once pristine Philippine island of Boracay shut up shop to tourists for six months last year after President Rodrigo Duterte described it as a “cesspool”, with its overburdened sewage system and unchecked development. Some 6.6 million people visited the island in 2017.
Maya Bay, off Thailand’s Phi Phi Island, was also closed. A national park official said last month that the bay – made famous by the 2000 Hollywood film The Beach – would remain closed for up to five years to allow for coral and beach restoration.
These islands are just the tip of the iceberg. Malaysia’s Langkawi and the Galápagos Islands are also struggling to stay afloat as a global tourism deluge threatens to ruin the very things that attracted visitors in the first place.
