Tourism transformation after COVID-19
Can COVID-19 Save Heritage Tourism? — Challenges & Opportunities for an Old Sector
COVID-19 needs to be seen as both a world-wide calamity and as an opportunity for rebalancing and renewal.
by David Prince & Daniel Laven
Around 5,000 years ago a young woman, probably a farmer, was laid to rest on the shores of a lake in southern Sweden close to modern-day Frälsegården. She was around twenty years old and with no apparent injuries.
Excavated in 2018, her remains showed she had died of plague, the earliest example known in Europe. She was an early victim of a pandemic that was to lead to a significant decline of Middle Neolithic culture right across Europe.
Several thousand years later, the Plague of Justinian was probably responsible for the deaths of around 75 million people over two centuries of recurrence. Evidence suggests that this plague (Yersinia pestis) was the same that killed the Swedish farmer. Much later, it re-emerged with catastrophic effect in Europe as the Black Death.
Pandemics emerging from Asia or Africa are not new. In the last twenty years coronaviruses have caused three major outbreaks: SARS (2003), MERS (2012) and COVID-19 (2019). They have grown in frequency, morbidity and economic impact.
On 20 January 2020, UN World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) Secretary-General Zurab Pololikashvili wrote, “in these times of uncertainty and volatility, tourism remains a reliable economic sector”. Global economic uncertainty, international trade tensions, social unrest, and geopolitical uncertainty were all on the rise. But optimistically, he said that “our sector keeps outpacing the world economy and calling upon us to not only grow but to grow better”.
Six weeks after those remarks, the World Health Organization brought international tourism to a standstill when it declared a global pandemic on March 11, 2020.
Strategies, Plans, and Responses
As with previous plagues, there has been no unified global response to COVID-19. And projecting how each country will continue to respond over the coming months and years is unclear. It is also unclear how countries will respond to one another as each seeks to protect and recover its economy as best it can.
To date, there have been five waves of COVID-19 hitting most countries. For the first wave, most countries adopted highly restrictive measures. They closed borders, grounded airlines, restricted in-country travel, and imposed quarantines, with curfews in some places.
For the first time in its history, the world’s economy was put into a state of government-engineered recession. And they have reimposed versions of these measures with each successive outbreak.
Indications suggest that recovery from the pandemic will be patchy. Countries are likely to continue restricting travel, hospitality, and other activities on short notice.
This trend will have a profound and long-lasting impact on heritage and cultural sites, alongside much of the leisure economy.
A Hard Hit for Heritage
In 2019, heritage-tourism generated around 50% of the world’s US$3 trillion international tourism economy, which itself was over 10% of global trade.
Heritage and cultural organisations have been some of the worst hit by pandemic restrictions. That is because they usually depend on large numbers of visitors to sustain their business. The challenges of social distancing in many heritage settings made that impossible.
Even when international travel restrictions are lifted, it is unclear whether people will be:
- Able to fly in the same numbers — unlikely if social distancing and quarantine orders remain or are re-adopted on short notice.
- Willing to fly for fear of being forced into quarantine — particularly with emerging new variants.
- Able to afford to fly because of increased prices and reduced purchasing power.
For all these reasons, heritage tourism is facing an unprecedented set of circumstances that challenge its very future.
Like many other activities, its future rests on how governments weigh in on two questions:
- What will it take to keep the vast majority of people safe from COVID-19?
- What will it take to ensure people have a viable economic future after COVID-19?
Governments worldwide want to get back to where they were in March 2020. And the businesses want this as well. Every lockdown and every new variant slows that return.
And the growing effects of climate change are making this even more challenging.
But one benefit of the pandemic is that it offers us a chance to reconsider how we deliver heritage tourism. How can we make heritage tourism sustainable economically and environmentally with endemic COVID-19?
These are the most significant challenges facing heritage tourism. They are perhaps the greatest they have ever faced.
The Great Divide: Heritage vs Tourism
Before the pandemic, many of the world’s most cherished places had diminished under the strains of overtourism. At its best, tourism is both engaging and emancipating but, at its worst, it is destructive because of its sheer scale.
All over the world, tourists were destroying the heritage sites and monuments they visited, as well as the places they stayed in. They required new roads, hotels, and resorts, all of which destabilised traditional land ownerships and livelihoods.
The UNWTO promoted heritage tourism as a ‘good thing’. It was a commodity that brought in overseas dollars and provided work for local people. And it was ‘a reliable economic sector’.
“Tourism was a leading and resilient economic sector… [with] 1.5 billion international tourist arrivals in 2019, globally; a 4% increase on the previous year…”
— UNWTO, January 2020
All that triumphal news was good in the eyes of the UNWTO. But at what cost?
In 2019, effectively everybody that could be a tourist was a tourist. This was great news for airlines, international hotel chains, bucket holiday providers, cruise companies and the rest whose business models relied on huge throughput numbers to offset cheap prices.
It was less good for those who lived in the places where the 1.5 billion arrived.
Sadly, along with tourism’s growth, the views and involvement of local people were overlooked or played down. But it is they who care for heritage landscapes and engage with them every day.
Lives were transformed, leading to significant cultural and social changes. Why fish for a few dollars a day when you can earn ten times as much by taking anglers out for marlin and sailfish? Why struggle to save the family olive grove when you can sell it for a lifetime’s earnings as land for a new hotel?
Bucket holiday companies sold all-inclusive heritage packages. Brochures touted poolside villas with nearby Roman, Greek, or Egyptian sites for occasional mornings out — plenty of opportunity for posting a lifestyle update on social media.
Heritage sites could not refuse this because they needed the money to keep going. But the flow of funds to heritage sites and communities was a fraction of that generated by the international holiday holding companies.
Revenge Travel
The post-pandemic COVID world could take one of two paths. But the most likely scenario will be a confused, unorganised, and profit-inspired mix of each:
- Rapid, unconstrained return to ‘normal’. Cruises ships, airlines, hotels, resorts, bars, restaurants race to resurrect their businesses. They are backed by governments desperately needing their tax dollars. They will are supported by people desperate to get out of lockdown and looking for a holiday.
- Nuanced adoption of the unplanned benefits from the pandemic. Archaeological and wildlife/wilderness places, in particular, try to maintain the benefits they have accrued from a lack of visitors. A form of regenerative tourism emerges to continue to enhance heritage sites.
Is there any chance of the second option happening?
Possibly, but doubtful. The need for quick financial returns will certainly dominate. Millions of lockdown-frustrated people are booking holidays as restrictions lift and travel confidence slowly returns in some areas. We are already calling this trend “revenge travel.”
Revenge travel means all the pressures on precious resources will re-emerge. It may even be worse for a few years with the release of pent-up demand.
Butrint National Park, Albania
Before they are overwhelmed, heritage sites need to stake a claim for long-term funding for preservation. Otherwise, any short-term conservation gains from the pandemic will be swept away.
COVID-19 is a chance to shift away from seeing such places as short-term commodities. Perhaps we can now appreciate and support their long-term value as places and as landscapes.
An example is the World Heritage Site of Butrint in southern Albania. The adult entry ticket is currently about 6 Euro (700 LEK) to see its Greek and Roman ruins. Most foreign visitors arrive at Butrint on an escorted day-trip as part of a cruise from Corfu.
A typical 10-day Mediterranean cruise can cost upwards of 3,000 Euro per person. So, 6 Euro represents a 0.2% facility fee. Is that acceptable?
Many say it is not. Increasing it to 0.4% or 0.6% would be almost imperceptible to most visitors. But it would contribute significantly to the financial stability and sustainability of the site.
A recently completed Integrated Management Plan has given Butrint a new management structure. It can now negotiate site-preserving and site-developing initiatives, such as modest fee increases.
Time will tell whether the new management at Butrint will do this.
Heritages sites, like Butrint, could also try to reestablish themselves as the primary reason for people to visit. This was the role for many of them in the past.
‘Modern’ tourism in Europe began with the 18th century Grand Tour in the UK. Later it expanded to mass tourism with the rise of middle class travel, thanks to Thomas Cook. The primary destinations in those days were places known through classical European history. And the Mediterranean was the primary focus.
The Future of Heritage
As noted above, as soon as travel restrictions disappear, there will be a clamour to get back to where we once were. Governments, tourism boards, international agencies, foundations, charities and NGOs will all reemerge as if nothing has happened — it is, after all, in their self-interest.
But this cannot continue. We need a new normal.
For example, the recent trend has been to privatise the management of heritage places. Private not-for-profit organisations increasingly managed UNESCO World Heritage Sites, with host countries keeping ownership of the primary assets.
For most countries, and for many sites, this approach appears to be working well. The management was good, but only as far as the not-for-profit element was sustainable. With world tourism at a virtual standstill and travel’s resurgence many months or years away, that business model has effectively collapsed.
Corporate profits and non-profit incomes in the tourism sector are likely to remain very low for a long time. Under that scenario, what can countries do to protect their heritage assets?
One obvious answer is for the state to fund all necessary works and other essential site operations to protect and conserve their cultural landscapes. That would effectively re-nationalise operations, at least in the short term.
But is that realistic when state budgets are also threatened?
In addition, organisations like UNESCO, ICCROM, and other supranational NGOs are becoming less relevant. They lack both the legal authority and money to support heritage destinations.
In this context, countries need to make hard choices. One approach could involve the ranking of affordable interventions for heritage sites and other cultural assets. This would be like a triage system:
- Iconic sites need to be maintained at 100% capacity both for conservation and visitor services. They can help stimulate a cultural tourism resurgence as travel returns. These might be 10–15% of all heritage and cultural sites in a country.
- Other internationally important sites should be maintained at 100% in terms of conservation, but not necessarily for visitor services. When travel improves, services can be added on an as-needed basis. These might be 25–30% of sites in a country.
- Less strategic sites can remain in their current pandemic state. They must be monitored to document and plan for future improvements and interventions when those are fundable. These might be 65–70% of sites in a country.
The allocation of resources in this way is a political decision-making process. But it must be highly informed and science-driven to provide scant resources where they are most needed. Whether every country can do this is doubtful.
When the first total lockdowns occurred in the spring of 2020, social media worldwide commented with enthusiasm on the lack of vapour trails, the heightened bird song, the sense of quiet, the sight of previously obscured mountains.
That enthusiasm for a sense of place needs to be maintained.
While funding is a challenge, COVID-19 has given cultural and natural heritage sites a chance to rebalance and re-set their efforts towards long-term conservation. It has presented opportunities to create new relationships, new business models, and a new consensus.
COVID-19 needs to be seen as both a world-wide calamity and as an opportunity. The opportunity is not for further exploitation, but for rebalancing and renewal.
That is the up-side to COVID-19. Maybe, just maybe, we can achieve it. We owe it both to the memory of the Swedish farmer girl from 5000 years ago and, more importantly, to ourselves.
About the Authors
Dr David Prince is a director of UK consulting firm Prince+Pearce and a visiting professor at University College London. He is a cultural project strategist with nearly forty years’ experience of working in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors on a range of protected and interpreted places. He has worked extensively in Gulf States, the wider Middle East and the Balkans.
Dr Daniel Laven is an associate professor of human geography at Mid Sweden University where he currently serves as the head of the Dept. of Economics, Geography, Law and Tourism. Daniel’s work focuses on issues of heritage management and his research is conducted under the auspices of the university’s European Tourism Research Institute (ETOUR).
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