As communities in Europe rail against over-tourism, we roam the topic with the sustainability lead of one holiday company. Is it really possible to tread lightly when exploring the world?
Getting drenched by a water pistol while on vacation might sound like a typical splash of holiday fun. Less so when the drencher is an angry native shouting: “Tourists go home!”
That less than friendly greeting was among the protests which erupted across several tourist hotspots this summer, as local people in destinations as varied as Spain, Venice and the Canaries gave vent to their frustrations at the impact mass tourism was having on their communities.
Scratch the surface, and it was clear that their beef wasn’t with the tourists themselves – even if the hapless holidaymakers took the brunt. Rather, it was directed at the combination of soaring rents and conversion of housing to holiday homes, along with the replacement of local stores and services with souvenir shops and outlets aimed solely at visitors. Priced out of their apartments and seeing their home neighbourhood become someone else’s playpen, the protestors’ reaction is not so surprising. Tourism, once touted as the saviour of communities, was looking more like a scourge.
But there’s another model of tourism out there. One in which, rather than draining the life out of communities, injects a very welcome shot in their arm.
Take the ancient manor houses of the Minho region, in northern Portugal. Known as solares, these were also being abandoned by families unable to afford their upkeep, until an enterprising group of local owners came together to promote them as very individual (and memorable) homestays. The families themselves – occasionally titled aristocracy – act as hosts. The result? Grand houses which had been part and parcel of the local economy are restored, and jobs and opportunities created in a landscape which was starved of both.
The Minho solares feature among the destinations promoted by Inntravel – a tour company which, as its sustainability lead Ruth Woodall puts it, enables people to “take the track less travelled – it’s the polar opposite of mass tourism”. Rather than a tour group, the typical size of an Inntravel party is two, usually a couple – which lends itself to homestays and small hotels or guest houses. And with many customers opting for self-guided walking holidays, that means there’s plenty of opportunity for them to stay in communities that are, in more ways than one, ‘far from the madding crowd’.
That in turn, says Woodall, helps the company meet one of its three key sustainability goals: engaging and supporting local communities. The other two are tackling the climate crisis – by, for example, promoting rail travel as one of the features of a holiday instead of arriving by air – and restoring nature. And these can often go together. On the Croatian island of Hvar, she explains, Inntravel is supporting a project to clear and renew the ancient network of footpaths linking the villages, also recycling biowaste to use as compost to help boost native plant growth along the routes.
In the Italian Apennines, meanwhile, a group of hoteliers who have been serving Inntravel customers for over 20 years regularly walk the trails themselves, making sure they’re in good condition, and letting Inntravel know of any changes. They also collaborate to plan menus for each evening, so that the walkers have a nice variety of local foods to enjoy.
But there’s another model of tourism out there. One in which, rather than draining the life out of communities, injects a very welcome shot in their arm
Holidays like this are rooted in the landscape. As James Keane, one of Inntravel’s product managers, points out, “by virtue of the fact that many European communities are so old, people always travelled on foot – which means when you’re walking, many are just a day apart. So, we can string these together, like a string of pearls.”
For hosts in more traditional tourist honeypots, accustomed to just a short summer season, such an approach can open up new opportunities, too. He cites one of their longstanding holidays on the Costa Brava, in Spain’s Catalonia region, where the typical stay was for a week during summer. And when, back in the 90s, Inntravel’s founders suggested to hoteliers that someone might “arrive in their walking boots on a Tuesday in April and ask to stay for just one night – well it was just utterly incomprehensible. But they persuaded them to give it a go”, and 30 years on, some of those Catalan hotels play host to one of the company’s most popular such holidays.
It’s a world away from what Keane calls the “fly and flop” tourism, and more evidence that visitors can bring real benefits to communities – and avoid being drenched by a water pistol. Except, perhaps, in fun.
Main image: A group of hoteliers in the Italian Apennines, who have been serving Inntravel customers for two decades, regularly walk the trails to check their condition
