The American tourist guide company Fodor’s Travel has compiled a list of 10 travel destinations they advise against on vacation. Among them are the calanques and the cliffs of Etretat.
That’s bad publicity that the Calanques National Park and the cliffs of Etretat could have done without. The two French towns are in the top 10 destinations to avoid, according to the American tourist guide company Fodor’s Travel. Not because these places are not worth visiting, but because mass tourism is endangering their sustainability. For Fodor’s Travel, this ranking is all the more interesting because the year 2022 was marked by a multitude of climate disasters, almost 30 according to the American company, which mentions the Pakistani monsoon, hurricanes in Puerto Rico and Florida or more heat waves and droughts in Europe .
“Tourism contributes significantly to climate change”
“For all the good it can do in supporting local economies and connecting cultures, tourism makes a significant contribution to climate change. […] As climate change worsens, the damage could make popular travel destinations inhospitable to travelers and collapse their economies.”
Fodor’s Travel regrets that tourism numbers have returned to pre-pandemic levels since last spring and regrets a trend of increased travel, which already contributes 8% to global greenhouse gas emissions. The company’s website categorizes these 10 travel destinations into three categories: cultural hotspots that are victims of overcrowding and resource shortages, places directly affected by water crises, and natural attractions that need charging.
Very harmful overcrowding
The cliffs of Etretat and the Calanques National Park belong to this third category, which specifically includes sites that have been “so damaged that tourist boards and elected officials have asked travelers not to visit them while land, air and sea recover”.
Symbolic of the richness of France’s landscapes, these two natural sites are symptomatic of the spectacular erosion of the French coast, “which has more to do with a tourist rush than the weather,” according to Fodor’s Travel.
The company’s website mentions, among other things, two episodes of mass tourism in the Norman town of Etretat, which recently experienced a rush of visitors during the broadcast of the hit series “Lupin” on Netflix. “Last year, the small town’s sewage treatment plant had to be closed for maintenance because it couldn’t accommodate three times the number of visitors its usual population. Of even more concern, landslides are common due to too much foot traffic.”
“We need tourism, but we have to find a balance. The tourists themselves would benefit the most. Many of them leave angry after spending several hours in the car without finding a parking space, a place to eat or similar toilets because the infrastructure is not enough. This mass tourism does not satisfy anyone,” Jean-Baptiste Renié, municipal councilor of Étretat, told France 24 last summer.
On the Calanques side, the national park has been affected by overcrowding for several years and has decided to set up a reservation system limited to 400 people to visit its beaches, which in summer could attract up to 3000 visitors a day.
In this category, the two French locations meet California’s Lake Tahoe, which at the time of the pandemic was the victim of a large wave of migration that caused its share of pollution near the watering hole. We also find Antarctica, whose peninsular region has “experienced the fastest warming of temperatures and the most significant decline in fauna in history”, concentrating the presence of boats and airplanes. These means of transport produce soot, which accelerates the melting of the ice.
damage around the world
Among cultural hotspots, Venice is arguably the most well-known destination, with a pretty telling number: each year, the visitor-per-inhabitant ratio is 370 to 1. This tourist rush is particularly problematic for the Italian city, threatened by sea-level rise and the recent presence of large cruise ships banned in its historic center.
Cornwall, on the south-west tip of England, suffers from a lack of infrastructure to accommodate the tourist rushes that flock there in high season.
Amsterdam welcomes the population of the Netherlands in its midst every year, which has motivated the introduction of several measures to ensure that the capital remains a pleasant place to live.
Finally, Thailand has decided to initiate the transition from mass tourism (40 million visitors in 2019) to “high-end travellers”, in the words of the tourism minister, to continue the conservation of its natural treasures made possible by pandemic-related closures.
Finally, the last category refers to destinations threatened by severe water stress, a situation favored by mass tourism. The island of Maui, which is part of the Hawaiian archipelago, is affected by a situation of profound inequality in the use of fresh water, limited in particular for the local population in favor of tourist facilities.
Last summer, two-thirds of the European continent were victims of a drought, which was characterized by the low level of several rivers, such as the Rhine or the Danube, on which river cruises are organized. The situation is also critical in the American West, where Lake Mead on the Colorado River, a popular tourist area, has just entered a Level 2 shortage and is fast approaching “dead basin” status. More than a million residents of the states of California, Arizona and Nevada will soon be affected by water or even power outages, the lake makes it possible to generate energy through the Hoover Dam.