Destination Scorecard

[Pages:4]Destination 115 Places

Scorecard

Rated Development, pollution, globalization, mass tourism--are the world's great places still . . . great? TRAVELER introduces a new way to see how well your destination is coping with the 21st century. By Jonathan B. Tourtellot

PETER GUTTMAN/CORBIS

Authenticity 21st century style: An outboard outrigger ferries tourists across a Tahitian lagoon. Despite a name once synonymous with paradise, Tahiti made a poor score on the stewardship index due to overdevelopment.

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NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELER

Norway's fjords, Tasmania, Vermont, and Tuscany look to be in relatively good shape. Not so for the Costa del Sol, Phuket, and Key West. In cases like Cape Cod, opinion is divided. That's all according to an unusual new survey, whose results yield what TRAVELER believes to be the world's first Index of Destination Stewardship. Ever since travel began booming after World War II, development pressures, environmental problems, civil strife, cultural erosion, and, yes, mass tourism have increasingly challenged the integrity of destinations worldwide. "Unspoiled" is a description you hear less and less. Which great places have remained great by protecting themselves against these trends? Which have failed?

To find out, TRAVELER worked with the National Geographic's Sustainable Tourism Initiative and a graduate team from Leeds Metropolitan University in England to conduct a

complex global survey of over 200 specialists in sustainable tourism and destination quality. We asked these experts to evaluate 115 of the world's best known places based on six criteria that pertain to cultural, environmental, and aesthetic integrity ("About the Survey," page 67).

The scores that follow, based on a 1-to-100 scale, reflect their opinions. For each destination, symbols show which factors most influenced their judgments. No destination rated 90 or above ("unspoiled and likely to remain so"), but none fell into the "catastrophic" under-20 range either. Destinations in the best shape face relatively few threats or, significantly, have learned how to handle them. Those at the low end have lost much, but could perhaps recover.

We expect that this index will generate a lot of discussion, even a few arguments. That's fine, if it gets everyone, especially policymakers, to think more about wise stewardship of the place6s1 we love. The future of travel depends on it.

Destination Scorecard

Tight land-use codes protect Tuscan landscapes that seem to come from an artist's brush. "A genuine, cultured atmosphere," adds one panelist, Prof. A.P. Grima, University of Toronto.

THE GOOD

Remote geography helps some high-scoring destinations stay unspoiled. Other places have learned how to cope with popularity.

It's no surprise that Norway's fjords, rated at 82, lead the top-scoring destinations, thanks to a combination of luck and wise stewardship. Geography dealt the Norwegian coastline a good hand when it comes to remaining unspoiled. Rugged terrain, cool, wet climate, difficult access, and a short tourist season keep development pressures comparatively low. (Note how other "cool-fjord coasts" in Chile and New Zealand also scored well.) It helps, too, to be in a sparsely populated country with one of the world's best environmental track records (although even here some experts took points off for excessive cruise-ship traffic and threats to native salmon).

More instructive perhaps is ever popular Tuscany, which managed a respectable 71 ("minor difficulties") despite its attractive climate, fabulous cultural attractions, and easy access--often a formula for dismaying overdevelopment. What's Tuscany's secret?

History helped: The Industrial Revolution chanced to skip over this Italian region, leaving intact its trademark landscape of handtended fields, vineyards, and olive groves, all draped over a softly

muscled topography. Even so, subdivisions might have long ago ruined the painterly scenery had Tuscans not adopted some of the world's toughest land-use and building codes: In scenic zones, local regulations limit buildings to two stories, inhibit subdivision, and govern aesthetics, including which colors you can paint your house. Locals chafe under the rules, but let them stand. Shouldn't people be allowed to build what they want on their own property, even if it's ugly? Answers Alessandro Marangoni, in the region's economic development office, "Then it hurts the value of my house."

Sensitivity to preserving sense of place extends even to such unobtrusive forms of tourism as farm stays. The government encourages agriturismo to help small farms stay in business, but wants authenticity: The farmer's tax breaks and low-interest loans disappear if the family lets its tourism business exceed its farm revenue. The current minister of tourism, Susanna Cenni, even frets about Chianti villages that have become too cutesy. She's seeking ways to revive authentic rural businesses in the area.

If only other destinations had such problems . . . .

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NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELER

SANDRO SANTIOLI; DALLAS AND JOHN HEATON/CORBIS (OPPOSITE, UPPER), KATHLEEN BROWN/CORBIS (LOWER)

Stewardship Index

TWOIPL DS C O R E S Norwegian fjords Cape Breton Island, Canada South Island, New Zealand Torres del Paine, Chile Tasmania, Australia Rocky Mountain parks, Canada Scottish Highlands, United Kingdom Kruger National Park, South Africa Kyoto historic district, Japan Quebec City historic center, Canada Vermont, USA Bay of Islands, New Zealand Heidelberg, Germany Laurentian Highlands, Quebec-Canada Salzburg historic center, Austria Alpine regions, Switzerland Charleston, SC, historic center, USA Colorado Rockies, USA Dubrovnik, Croatia Easter Island, Chile Fez historic center, Morocco Inside Passage, Alaska/Canada Maine coast, USA Northern California coast (Marin-Eureka) Ring of Kerry, Ireland Tuscany, Italy Uluru (Ayer's Rock) area, Australia Yellowstone, USA Baden Baden, Germany Bavarian Alps, Germany Bonaire, Netherlands Antilles Krakow historic center, Poland MIDDLE SCORES Brittany, France Four Corners (Colorado Plateau), USA Loire Valley, France St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands Guanajuato, Gto., Mexico Cotswolds, United Kingdom

score rank

key factors

82 1 78 2

;; ?

78 2

78 2

77 3

?

76 4

?

75 5

74 6

;;

74 6

?

74 6 ;; ?

74 6

?

73 7

73 7

73 7

;;

72 8 ;;

71 9

71 9

?

71 9

?

71 9

71 9 ;; 71 9 ;;

71 9

71 9

?

71 9

71 9 ;;

71 9

71 9 ;; ?

71 9

?

70 10

70 10

70 10

;;

70 10 ;;

69 11

;;

69 11

?

69 11 ;;

69 11

?

68 12

67 13

Key for symbols

environmental conditions

;; social/cultural integrity

condition of historic structures aesthetics tourism management

? outlook

GREEN = good rating YELLOW = warning RED = bad rating

Norwegian Fjords

"This place is wonderful: living traditional culture, wonderful landscape, not crowded. I am very happy with how this destination is managed. Excellent environmental quality, local people involved in a very smooth way." --Panelist Eduardo

Nycander, Rainforest Expeditions

Vermont

"One of the few places where a large percentage of the populace is committed to conservation/ preservation over injudicious development." --Panelist Tom Clynes,

travel author

Destination Scorecard

Mont-St.-Michel, France, rates well for historic preservation, poorly for overcrowding and environmental neglect that filled its bay with silt, and moderately well for outlook, as plans move ahead to restore the bay.

NOT SO BAD

Mid-scoring destinations remain attractive, but with worrisome degradation. Some places are doing something about it. Some aren't.

The many destinations receiving mid-range scores, 55 to 69, fall into two camps: those with strong positives canceled out by equally strong negatives, and those with lots of notable, but not yet disastrous, negatives. Some of those in the first group are destinations with two faces. At Yosemite, for instance, experts noted the park's divided personality: Its gorgeous scenery and backcountry versus traffic and crowding in Yosemite Valley. The park's new methods for coping with high visitation there, such as expanded shuttle service and fewer parking lots, did receive cautious praise.

On Cape Cod, similarly, a national seashore protects the outer beaches and much of the peninsula's forearm, but development, including hundreds of vacation homes, has ballooned to occupy virtually every unprotected stretch of shoreline and much of an interior that was semiwilderness just 50 years ago.

For France's Mont-St.-Michel, raves for historic preservation contrasted with numerous complaints about high-season hordes, tacky souvenir shops, and the like. Many experts noted that environmental

problems in the surrounding bay are finally being addressed. If that effort succeeds, this score should go up in years to come.

The Maya ruin of Tikal and its associated tourist town of Flores in Guatemala also present two faces, but the area as a whole received many comments in the not-yet-disastrous vein. While acknowledging the beauty of Tikal, experts zeroed in on numerous problems: underappreciated ecological wonders, poor information for visitors, growing danger from deliberate forest burn-off, lack of tourism benefit for locals, pollution in Flores, inadequate destination management, and hotels without environmental controls. "It's not too late to save," summed up one travel writer.

Some destinations were judged against their reputations. Costa Rica's surprisingly mediocre score, for instance, reflected a widely held feeling that poor tourism management and widespread deforestation does not match the image of an ecotourism leader that the country likes to project.

"Not too late to save." It's a good summary for all these middlezone destinations.

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NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELER

PHILIP GOULD/CORBIS, SERGIO PESSOLANO (OPPOSITE UPPER), GERALD FRENCH/CORBIS (LOWER)

Stewardship Index

MWIIDLDDL E S C O R E S ( C O N T I N U E D ) Gal?pagos, Ecuador San Juan Islands, WA, USA Great Barrier Reef, Australia Machu Picchu, Peru Rhine Valley, Germany Yosemite Valley, USA. Amsterdam historic center, Netherlands British Virgin Islands Cuzco historic center, Peru Grand Canyon, USA Isle of Wight, United Kingdom Salvador (Bahia) historic center, Brazil Costa Rica Lake District, United Kingdom Petra, Jordan Prague historic center, Czech Republic Bahamian Out Islands California wine country, USA Cape Cod, U.S.A. Igua?u Falls, Argentina/Brazil Mid-coast CA (Santa Barbara?Monterey) Serengeti National Park, Tanzania Capri, Italy Fiji Hawaii Pompeii, Italy Amalfi Coast, Italy Borobudur, Indonesia Mont-St.-Michel, France Porto historic center, Portugal St. Lucia Sea of Cortez and its coast, Mexico Tikal/Flores, Guatemala Dead Sea, Israel/Jordan Lake Tahoe, USA Great Wall, China Lake Titicaca, Bolivia/Peru Azure Coast, Turkey Bali, Indonesia

score rank

key factors

67 13

?

67 13

66 14

?

66 14

66 14

?

66 14

?

65 15

;;

65 15

?

65 15 ;; ?

65 15

65 15

?

65 15 ;;

64 16

?

64 16

?

64 16

?

64 16 ;;

63 17

63 17

63 17

?

63 17 63 17 63 17

? ;; ?

62 18

62 18

?

62 18 ;; ?

62 18

61 19

61 19

?

61 19

?

61 19

61 19

?

61 19

?

61 19

60 20

?

60 20

59 21

59 21 ;;

58 22

58 22

;;

Key for symbols

environmental conditions

;; social/cultural integrity

condition of historic structures aesthetics tourism management

? outlook

GREEN = good rating YELLOW = warning RED = bad rating

Cuzco, Peru

"Great Inca and colonial town, but in serious trouble . . . . Without real protection and lack of local involvement. Numbers of tourists seem more highly valued than delivery of quality experiences."--Panelist Lieve Coppin, consultant

Yosemite Valley, California

"Fantastic natural area, plagued by overuse and crowding during summer season."--Panelist Kelly Bricker, University

of West Virginia and former tour operator

Destination Scorecard

Benidorm exemplifies the heavy footprint of package tourism on Spanish islands and coasts. Cheap hotel sprawl prompted low scores for the Canaries, Balearics, Costa Brava, and Costa del Sol.

GETTING UGLY

Loved to death? Or exploited to death? Both could apply to low-scoring victims of crowding, poor planning, and greed. Still, there's hope.

Look at the bottom 11 entries on the index: Every one of these low-scorers are sun-and-sand shorelines and islands. Behind that lurks an arithmetic reality: The population of beach-lovers is ever growing, and there's only so much seacoast to go around. A rising demand for a finite resource calls for wise stewardship. Unfortunately, bulldozers often come before brains when quick profits beckon.

One textbook example is Spain's Costa del Sol--the overbuilt "Costa del Concrete," which caters to package tours from northern Europe, and where you can hear more English or German than Spanish. As with many uncontrolled seashores, a nonstop line of characterless hotels blocks off the coastline. Proving such a tide can be turned, one Majorcan town has now razed a few hotels.

On any attractive shore, if no policies exist to cluster masstourism hotels, or preserve traditional towns and open space, resort sprawl tends to take over. Community leaders in a few such destinations have begun to recognize the problem, asking how best to handle hordes of tourists who are more interested in sun, rum,

and each other than in the country they happen to be visiting. Different threats place other low-scoring destinations at risk:

excess popularity (the Acropolis and the Great Smokies), political or civil strife (Bethlehem), poorly planned mass sightseeing (Angkor), encroaching urban development (the Pyramids), inappropriate tourism development (Great Smokies again--i.e., Gatlinburg), even sea-level rise from global warming (Venice).

This Stewardship Index is intended to be a wake-up call. Low scoring places can learn from high-scorers, and many of the destinations on the facing page have begun to take countermeasures. Often, though, it's very, very late in the game. Jamaica's resort town of Negril, for instance, has a vigorous reef-restoration program--now that as much as 90 percent of its reef has died, due to both local and global factors.

Negril may be working on reform, but in many travel paradises greed and shortsightedness still rule. Unless that attitude changes, countless destinations remain golden-egg-laying geese, filing down the path to the chopping block.

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NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELER

GLENN CAMPBELL/GETTY IMAGES, JOEL W. ROGERS/CORBIS (OPPOSITE)

Stewardship Index

MWIIDLDDL E S C O R E S ( C O N T I N U E D ) Reef and islands of Belize Corfu (Kerkira), Greece Valley of the Kings, Luxor, Egypt Annapurna Circuit, Nepal Masai Mara, Kenya Rajasthan, India St. Petersburg historic center, Russia Barbados Crete, Greece Havana historic center, Cuba Ngorongoro crater, Tanzania LOWER SCORES Amboseli, Kenya Aruba Everglades, USA Hue, Vietnam Tahiti Angkor, Cambodia Canary Islands Outer Banks, NC, USA Victoria Falls, Zambia/Zimbabwe Acropolis, Greece Chang Mai, Thailand Pyramids, Giza, Egypt Balearic Islands, Spain Great Smoky Mountains, USA Venice, Italy Bethlehem, Israel/Palestine French Riviera Algarve, Portugal Caribbean Coast, Q.R., Mexico Costa Brava, Spain Negril, Jamaica North coast, Dominican Republic St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands Key West, FL, USA Phuket area, Thailand North coast, Jamaica Costa del Sol, Spain

score rank

key factors

58 22

?

57 23

57 23

56 24 ;; ?

56 24

;; ?

56 24

;;

56 24

?

55 25

55 25

?

55 25

55 25 ;;

54 26 54 26 54 26

? ;; ?

53 27

53 27

52 28

52 28

;;

52 28

52 28 ;;

51 29

51 29

;;

51 29

50 30 ;; ?

49 31

49 31

;;

48 32 ;; ?

48 32

46 33

46 33

;;

46 33

?

46 33

46 33 45 34 43 35 43 35 42 36 41 37

? ? ;;

? ?

Key for symbols

environmental conditions

;; social/cultural integrity

condition of historic structures aesthetics tourism management

? outlook

GREEN = good rating YELLOW = warning RED = bad rating

St. Thomas, U.S.V.I.

"Massive overvisitation by massive cruise ships." --Andrew Drumm, The

Nature Conservancy

"Hard to differentiate St. Thomas from an overcrowded Florida shopping mall." --Cary Wolinsky, photographer

About the Survey

Evaluating an entire destination requires weighing such subtle issues as aesthetic

research tool called the Delphi technique, whereby panelists anonymously exchange further

appeal and cultural integrity, as comments about the place and

well as balancing good points

then re-score accordingly.

against bad. No simplistic

The index, then, is a compila-

numerical measures could do jus- tion of informed judgments and

tice to the task. The best solu-

perceptions about places that

tion was to turn to informed

may themselves have many

human judgment. We convened a faces. It should be taken as such.

global panel of over 200 experts In low-scoring Key West, for

in a variety of fields--ecology,

example, you can still find an

sustainable tourism, geography, eco-friendly conch farm and

urban and regional planning,

plenty of back-street charm;

travel writing and photography, high-scoring Tuscany still must

historic preservation, cultural

cope with a badly polluted Arno

anthropology, archaeology--all River and summer overcrowding

well traveled enough to have a

in Florence and Siena.

good basis for comparing desti-

Like the cards that Olympic

nations against each other.

judges hold up, our experts'

We asked experts to evaluate scores take into account both

only those places with which

measurable accomplishment and

they were familiar, using six cri- the intangibles of style, aesthet-

teria weighed as appropriate to ics, and culture. And like

each destination: environmental Olympic athletes, each destina-

and ecological quality; social and tion has a chance to improve its

cultural integrity; condition of

performance.

any historic buildings and archae-

ological sites; aesthetic appeal; Daniel Chang, Elizabeth Parisian,

quality of tourism management; Leeds Metropolitan University,

and the outlook for the future.

and many others helped with this

For places where experts dis- study. For a list of panelists and

agreed widely, a second round of more of their observations, see

67

scoring used a version of a

traveler.

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