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Walkabout: Mass Impact
Tourism numbers for 2020 are scary to say the least
By DAFFYD RODERICK
September
15, 2000
Web posted at 2:30 p.m. Hong Kong time, 2:30 a.m. EDT
Packing for a trip to Hong Kong in the year 2020 will be an interesting experience. Credit cards? Check! Digital camera? Check! Hipwaders? Check!
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Yesterday, the World Tourism Organization (the other WTO) released its forecast for tourism numbers in the year 2020. The numbers, in short, terrify me. Where in 1999 Hong Kong played host to a little more than 11 million houseguests, in the year 2020, 56 million will drop in for a visit. In the place of one pasty, blubbery tourist, imagine five. It isn't a pretty picture. Perhaps the Star Ferry will still plot its course across Victoria Harbour, but it will be a 30-second voyage that will require passengers to wade through hip-deep human waste to board the green and white boats.
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The forecasts will clearly make tourism boards, businesses and governments drool in their sleep. But when do the numbers stop making sense? When does it stop being a good idea to bring another guest in through the customs door?
The island of Boracay in the Philippines, renowned for its gorgeous white sand beaches and gin-blue seas, is already fringed with a mossy-green shag-rug of algae growth that some say is due to a combination of high visitor numbers and a lack of sewage treatment. The moss felt nice and warm on my feet, but it also made me a bit nervous about the state of the water I was swimming in.
Tourism authorities around the world have to take into account the long-term impact of a high volume of humans. Just look at the proliferation of sea-kayaking outfits around Thailand's Krabi, eagerly jamming a Titanic-load of passengers into the sea caves. Where a small number of paddlers could visit and have an otherworldly sensation, a huge swarm of kayakers degrades both the environment and the experience.
While growth is exciting, I'm not excited by growth alone. The WTO's Deputy Secretary-General Dawid de Villiers, warned that tremendous growth can't take place without intelligent stewardship of the environment and cultural heritage, but there was no concrete suggestion as to how to do that.
With some of Asia's more popular destinations looking a little threadbare now in the year 2000 -- with 110 million visitors -- what are things going to look like in 2020, when the WTO tells us to expect close to 400 million? Unless the environment moves up on the agendas of Asia's governments, don't forget to pack your hipwaders.
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