Nature Tourism Experiences
Finding the Desert’s Rhythm in Oman
Cultural Ecosystem Services (CES) of a vast sand desert promote contemplation and personal well-being.
by Manuela Gutberlet
Cultural Ecosystem Services (CES)
RELAXATION and a spiritual connection have long been associated with being in natural settings. This, however, has especially been pronounced during this time of lockdowns and travel restrictions due to the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic.
Relaxation and spiritual connections are among the many “services” that natural environments provide humankind. Ecologists refer to these types of services as “Cultural Ecosystem Services” or “CES” — one of four types of Ecosystem Services, the other three are more biologically oriented.
Through its Cultural Ecosystem Services, nature helps to enhance our sense of well-being and even self-transformation (Gutberlet, 2019). High quality CES make us feel that we are ‘at home in a natural landscape’. Even before the pandemic, researchers were seeing an increasing demand for CES due to increases in leisure time, especially in the West.
Oman’s Deserts as a Tourist Attraction
THE Sultanate of Oman is located on the Arabian Peninsula and has been an emerging international ‘sunshine tourism destination’ in the Middle East. Around 3.5 million visitors arrived in Oman in 2019, plus an additional 250,000 cruise tourists in a country with a population of around 5 million. In 2020, however, only around half a million international visitors were received due to the pandemic, according to the Ministry of Heritage and Tourism in Oman. The last cruise liner arrived in the capital mid-March 2020.
My research was conducted in Oman’s Sharquiyah Sands Desert, located in the country’s interior around 200 km (125 miles) from the capital, Muscat. There I studied the experiences of German-speaking tourists from: (1) mega-cruise ships — on a one-day only excursion to the desert and oasis destination; and (2) group tours — on a one-week tour of Oman who spent one night in a desert camp.
In my research I explored the “geopolitical imaginaries” that these tourists have for Oman and for the desert. These can be thought of as the fantasies created through various forms of media (movies, television, news) and travel books, as well as the storytelling from local tour guides and onboard cruise guides.
I was then especially interested in how the tourist’s actual on-site experiences of the desert compared with their imagined fantasies. To do this, I gave the tourists a survey questionnaire to complete, and I conducted observations and in-depth interviews with tourist couples, onboard cruise guides and lecturers, and with local tour drivers and guides.
Understanding how people form their experiences of a natural environment is a very important part of knowing the cultural and economic value that an ecosystem represents for tourism activities. This is even more so with the current challenges facing our planet — including the COVID-19 pandemic, possible future health pandemics, climate change, rapid urbanization, and biodiversity loss.
Types & Challenges of CES
LARGE and expansive natural environments, like deserts, forests, and seas, all provide important Cultural Ecosystem Services (CES), including:
- Inspirational Services—local art, music and literature
- Recreational Services — wildlife and plant viewing and photography, enjoyment of the natural environment (e.g. scenery, walking, or hiking)
- Educational Services—environmental or cultural education
- Spiritual Services — meditation and contemplation
Humans benefit both socially and psychologically from the wide range of cultural services that natural environments provide.
However, throughout the world, many forms of CES (like contemplation, meditation, and aesthetic scenery) have been degraded or lost due to infrastructure development, crowding, and noise pollution. In addition, CES have often been managed for tourism development as a business interest with profit, rather than protection of the resource, as a mainstay.
Biological Ecosystem Services can be measured, with their economic value much more easily calculated than Cultural Ecosystem Services — while we know how valuable a wetland is based on its supply of fish and flood control impacts, its cultural value to local residents is not so easily assessed.
Desert Fantasies
BOTH the Quran and the Bible as well as other religious belief systems describe the desert as a spiritual place for meditation.
From a European perspective, desert environments, especially those in the Middle East, have been associated with colonialism — conquering deserts was a symbol of European power over the Orient (in this case, the ‘Near East’).
Perceptions of the harsh desert life are often portrayed as being ‘exotic’, more fulfilling, and spiritually and socially richer than everyday life in cities. For example, the writings of desert explorers like Wilfried Thesinger — the first European to cross the Rub Al Khali desert on the Arabian Peninsula in the last century — were well received in the West.
The Sharquiyah Sands Desert is presented in tourist and cruise guidebooks and videos as a wild, natural and ‘pure environment’, with a large biodiversity and indigenous Bedouin cultures.
In reality most tourists do not encounter animals or Bedouins, although some group and individual tourists sometimes visit a tourist-ready Bedouin tent for a coffee and dates.
What German Tourists Seek in the Desert
GERMAN tourists (and probably most other tourists) who travel to the desert are searching for an authentic place, different from their everyday life. They also want to see ‘the exotic other’ (people from a significantly different culture, who look and behave different).
To accomplish this, they imagine immersing themselves in the desert, where they can interact with the people, the sand, the plants, and the wildlife. Imaginary interactions are often as powerful as real life encounters.
These real interactions can result in emotional responses such as wonder and awe. They can also help develop greater empathy or mindfulness toward a natural environment, its people, and its animals.
Encounters with nature can calm a busy mind or create excitement and anticipation. It can also enhance one’s ego through a sense of accomplishment that can then be shared (or even “bragged about”) with others.
In The Desert Environment
ACCORDING to my survey results, the strongest images that tourists had of their desert experience came from:
- The ever present sand
- Driving through the desert sand with 4x4 vehicles
- The fascinating openness of the landscape
To strengthen their Oriental fantasies of the desert, the 4x4 convoy stopped for a photo in front of domesticated camels. “This is a special time for them…the sand and the camel,” said an Omani tour guide about this tour experience.
The environmental impacts of desert tourism was one of the main topics raised by the German tourists, who tend to be more sensitive than other nationalities to such issues, at least in emerging, sensitive destinations such as Oman.
For 65% of the German-speaking cruise tourists surveyed it was their first trip to a desert, and that excitement or thrill often dominated their experience.
“I think our experience is stronger than our concern for protection of nature,” said a male cruise tourist in his 20s, indicating that his excitement for the visit came first before any possible concerns over the environmental impacts of their visit.
However, some of the older tourists (in their 50s) did raise environmental concerns: “Everybody wishes to experience the place as natural as possible. But if everybody visits the desert, nature will suffer in the long term”.
Some Omani camp owners interviewed also expressed concerns about the number of cars driving through the desert, increased garbage, and noise pollution that disturbs the wildlife, the fauna and the aesthetic scenery.
Camp Complications
OVERALL, 70% of the cruise tourists said that their pre-travel expectations matched their actual on-site experiences in the desert. While this is high, the shortcomings were significant.
Both the group and cruise tourists’ imaginations included a sense of spiritual pilgrimage — in which the Omani desert would almost transform them in deeply meaningful ways.
The group tourists, however, felt that the desert camp, while consisting of large Bedouin style tents, was ‘too modern, too luxurious’ than what they imagined — having a bathroom, electricity (from a noisy generator), luggage trolleys, a small reception building and even a small swimming pool, almost like an urban hotel.
In addition, upon their arrival in the ‘camp’ in the afternoon, they found the tents filled with smoke, noise and the smell of fumigation bombs set off to rid them of pests (small insects but as well scorpions or snakes are a problem).
This did not sit well with the environmentally conscious German tourists and significantly decreased their overall sense of well-being within the camp.
The group tourists also thought a desert camp would be a ‘simple place to sleep and eat’ creating little damage within nature. However, one female tourist in her 60s commented on their rooms/tents that “There is no place to contemplate the sky full of stars. There are ceilings everywhere, only the shower is without a roof-top.”
The Rhythm of the Desert
THE natural desert environment, however, managed to overshadow these ‘development’ issues. All of the tourists felt that their lives were simpler in the desert, and easily fell in line with the rhythm of the desert. All group members went to sleep early (8-9 pm) and got up for the sun rises (around 5.30 am).
The night times, just after sunset or just before sunrise, were seen as the most spiritual moments, in which the tourists communed in a silent encounter with nature. They would take in that experience in solitary contemplation, sitting on top of a sand dune or in small groups, often while taking photos.
In the end, the core of the tourist experience is a spiritual encounter, where the open desert space transforms into a kind of ‘sacred place’.
This spiritual encounter is enhanced through ‘geopolitical fantasies’ that the tourists (especially from Northern Europe) hold about ‘1001 nights’ or camels and the sand, and being within a ‘pure and untouched’ natural landscape.
But pure and untouched implies a lack of modernization, including 4x4 vehicles, buildings and other structures, and electric generator noise or noise created by people as well as crowding. Pure and untouched also includes wildlife, like camels and scorpions, along with a dark sky full of stars.
Indeed, a sense of self-transformation was found to be enhanced for many through 4x4 vehicle adventure rides that rapidly and noisily traversed the sand dunes. Cruise tourists described the rides as a kind of ‘cowboy-like wild west’ experience, they had seen on tv only. It gave them many opportunities to collect visual memories, take photos, and collect sand in a small plastic bottle as a souvenir.
COVID-19 Tourism Rethink
The current global COVID-19 pandemic offers an opportunity to re-think and change past exploitative tourism practices, and to advance well-being, mindful, and slower travel while also embracing less carbon-intensive travel.
To protect the fragile desert environment and the Cultural Ecosystem Services (CES) it offers humankind, tourist numbers will need to be limited in future. There also needs to be more investments so that nature-based tourism protects the special qualities that tourists and locals cherish.
Environmental conservation policies and regulations should not be compromised for a post-COVID-19 recovery.
A better understanding of the true value of CES to our human lives may help to change the focus on how much money and business we can get from the environment. Nature needs to be fully appreciated for the sense of relaxation, well-being, belonging and community it provides us, which is priceless.
This article is based on:
Gutberlet, M. (2019). Geopolitical Imaginaries and Cultural Ecosystem Services (CES) in the desert, Tourism Geographies, DOI: 10.1080/14616688.2018.1545250
See the original article for a full listing of scholarly references.
About the Author
Dr. Manuela Gutberlet is a Research Associate of the University of Johannesburg (S.A.), School of Tourism and Hospitality, an independent tourism researcher in Oman and a tourism lecturer. She received her PhD in Cultural Geography from RWTH Aachen University, Germany. Her research interests focus on sustainability, in particular sociocultural impacts, tourist experiences, human-nature interaction, cultural ecosystem services (CES), ethics in tourism and slow tourism. Manuela initially studied Arabic and International Business and worked as a journalist for various media outlets in Germany, Cairo, & Muscat.
She has also been responsible for public relations at the German University of Technology in Oman (GUtech). In recent years she presented her tourism research at international conferences and her work was published in international, interdisciplinary journals as well as in mass media outlets. She has been communicating her research results to the local community and her results have shaped policy-making. She has been teaching tourism planning and tourism geography at City University of Applied Sciences in Bremen, Germany. Currently she is working on a single-authored book on “Mega-Cruise Tourism on the Arabian Peninsula” to be published by Routledge, UK.
LinkedIn: https://de.linkedin.com/in/dr-manuela-gutberlet-5a643916
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