The report describes how destinations must uncover and account for tourism’s hidden costs, referred to as the “invisible burden”, to protect and manage vital destination assets worldwide. Failing to do so puts ecosystems, cultural wonders, and community life at increasing risk, and places the tourism industry on a weak foundation that could crack under its own weight.
Amid increasing concern about “overtourism” and calls from within the travel industry for improved destination management, the report uncovers root causes for the problem and offers logical and integrated analysis of why it is transpiring. It concludes that destination managers will need to sit at the new nexus between data on tourism demand the supply of resources to support the tourism economy.