The Propaganda Of Sustainable Tourism

In June 1992 world leaders and representatives of non-governmental organisations gathered in Rio de Janeiro for what was officially called the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development but which unofficially became known as the Earth Summit. There had never been a gathering like it, there had never been an agenda like it. The results of the deliberations were summed up in the Rio Declaration. Its 27 principles ranged from "the role of man" through environmental legislation and impact assessments, the roles of women and youth to co-operation between the state and its people.

At that time, my interest in the Earth Summit was that of business and management applications. Together with two leading business journalists, I tried to make sense of the volume of papers and documents that the summit produced and to publish in a cogent and greatly summarised form what they meant or might mean for business. And from all the thousands upon thousands of words that Rio spawned, two words came out. The world had truly discovered the notion of "sustainable development".

With this term firmly embedded into the business lexicon, industries within industries were formed. The genuine and the charlatan leapt aboard the sustainable bandwagon. Consultants, advisors, Harvard scholars were offering business solutions to save the planet and local communities. Some meant it; others didn't. This post-Rio feverishness found no greater expression in and no better business activity than tourism. The Rio principles could have been written with tourism in mind.

Thus, sustainable development - simplified to sustainability - became specific. The leitmotif of sustainable tourism emerged, championed by those with environmental and social-consciousness integrity but also bastardised as platitudinous propaganda by elements of the tourism industry forever on the lookout for a marketing and competitive edge.

Sustainable tourism morphed into responsible tourism, the latter a more comprehensible term; comprehensible, that is, to a consumer base for whom "sustainable" was too abstract a word. The two terms are interchangeable, but whichever is used they mean the same thing or they can mean very little or nothing. It all depends on how genuine those who promote them are. A consequence is that today's tourism industry - not all of it certainly - is characterised not by sustainable development but by what I would call sustainable dissonance: an inconsistency between what is claimed and what is practised. Dissonance demands that individuals find a way of reconciling competing notions or beliefs. Thus, the tourism industry is inhabited by sustainability propagandists who, were they to be truthful, know that it is little more than propaganda.

Two years after the Rio summit, a Swedish hotel chain, Scandic, embraced sustainability in a way that no other chain had done. This commitment has been carried on, and every aspect of its business is guided by environmental and social consciousness. I was reminded of Scandic by an article for the "Hosteltur" magazine community in which the author, Arturo Cuenllas Soler, questioned how well rooted this responsibility is in the Spanish tourism industry and how committed the industry actually is to it. He recognised, as do I, that there are hotel chains and tour operators that have done a great deal in terms of environmental programmes and energy management, but the point he makes is my own: sustainability, responsibility go way beyond environmental factors and they embrace all sorts of stakeholders - employees, local people, local governments, customers, suppliers. Everyone.

If you go back to 1992, this was a time of economic recession. For the tourism industry, recession gave rise to what in the Mediterranean was then a rarely offered tourism package - the all-inclusive. Subsequent downturns have reinforced this offer, but coincidental with the rise of AI (and now also a quasi-AI) was that of sustainability. Here was something which, in public relations terms, could be used to offset the negativity of AI. Hotels and tour operators have pinned their colours to an environmental agenda mast but not to the full sustainability package. They might claim to - sourcing local produce, generating employment etc. - but all types of hotel can do this. For local communities, such as Mallorca's resorts, this has been specious propaganda, but it is propaganda that has been developed because the tourism industry and government know only too well that AI does not adhere to principles of sustainability. Sustainable dissonance, therefore.

The point about AIs and sustainability is that once upon a time in Mallorca, although the environment was treated with disrespect, certain sustainability conditions did exist. Local resort economies could flourish because of a symbiotic, mutually beneficial relationship. Now, however, there is tourism - and a great deal of it - which is parasitic. It leeches off resources such as sun and water and gives too little back in return. How, therefore, does this square with messages from hotels and tour operators regarding responsible or sustainable tourism?

Whether you call it sustainable or responsible, if this brand of tourism is to be genuinely meaningful it has to be far more open to the needs not just of the environment but also to those of local people and local communities. But it has to go further still. As Arturo Cuenllas notes, there are the customers as well. The tourists. Their attitudes have to change, as do those of tour operators. Corralling people into AI or quasi-AI is the antithesis of sustainability, and they know it.

Will such a change come about? It is highly unlikely, and so while it remains improbable, claims made for sustainability and responsibility are empty ones.