EDITORIAL: The places we love

We all know that success comes at a price, but one would hope that  the price would not be such as to cause our very demise. The increasing popularity of tourism has become a challenge for destinations like the British Virgin Islands where the influx of mass tourism, development pressures, and some laxity in protecting the environment of “nature’s little secret” is beginning to erode the quality tourism for which we have become so famous during the past thirty years.

We are known as an exclusive destination but let’s face it — with four cruise ships a day, despicable odour in the heart of our capital, traffic anarchy and an imbalance between level of prices and quality and service offered it is only natural that tourists may begin to ask if they are getting value for money.

“Development, pollution,  globalisation, mass–tourism — are the world’s great places still great?” This is the question posed by the National Geographic “Traveler”, and to give an answer  200 specialists in sustainable tourism and destination quality were asked to evaluate 115 of the world’s best known tourist attractions. The scores, based on a 1-to-100 scale reflected the overall situation for each destination and it is sobering to learn that no destination rated 90 or above which applies to places that are “unspoiled and likely to remain so”.

The British Virgin Islands scored 65, and when you think that Bonaire scored 70, the Scottish Highlands 75 and St. John 69 there must be some problem on this side of paradise. The panelists exchanged comments which were kept anonymous to maintain survey neutrality during the rating process. This is what two panelists commented about the BVI: “Tortola is the big problem because of improper road building and subsequent sedimentation in coral reefs. The rest of the BVI are beautiful.” And “BV Islanders are beginning to recognize the importance of the surrounding waters and reefs to their primary industry  -  tourism.”

Key factors in giving a  score of 65 points to the BVI were a warning for environmental conditions (a yellow light), similar misgivings were expressed for tourism management (again, a yellow light), and luckily enough a green light for the outlook of tourism in the BVI.  Destinations  scoring 65 points ranked 15th and include: Amsterdam historic center, the Grand Canyon, Isle of Wight and Cuzco historic center.  At the bottom of the list is St. Thomas with a score of 45 points, Key West 43, North coast Jamaica, 42 and at the very bottom Costa del Sol, Spain. In commenting about St. Thomas’s score, Andrew Drumm (The Nature Conservancy) said, “Massive over visitation by massive cruise ships.” And photographer Cary Wolinsky commented, “Hard to differentiate St. Thomas from an overcrowded Florida shopping mall.”

One of the sections of the “Traveler” expose headlined “Getting Ugly” was captioned: “Loved to death? Or exploited to death? Both could apply to low-scoring victims of crowding, poor planning, and greed. Still, there is hope.”  Senior editor of the “Traveler”, Jonathan Tourtellot expects that the survey will generate a lot of discussion and he comments — that’s fine “if it gets everyone, especially the policymakers, to think more about wise stewardship of the places we love.”