- On the occasion of World Tourism Day, the Observatory of Sustainable Tourism of the Aegean addresses the following open letter to the visitors of the islands: What would you like to see when visiting a Greek island?
The letter is signed by emeritus professor Yiannis Spilanis…
Here is the letter:
When we plan our holidays, our motive for the trip is connected with what we would like to do. We create an image and we search to find the destination that fits this image. Other times we have some long-held wish. The visit to Greece and especially to some of its islands is often a predetermined destination.
But what are the elements of the image that we have created for the destination and what do we want to experience? Does the slogan “live like the locals” touch us or do the advertisements of the luxury hotels and residences with the pools that connect with the sea attract us? Do we want to explore the identity of the island through its landscapes, its monuments, its traditional settlements, its myths and its history, its tastes, or do we want to live as at home or maybe cosmopolitan?
Those of you who have already visited them either because you come from one of them, or because you visited them charmed by the stories of journalists, the works of writers and artists, the cinema, you have a better picture of what to expect. Of course it depends on how many years have passed since your last trip because most of the islands have changed a lot in recent years.
You will say and what remains unchanged? Should the islands have remained as they appear in the postcards of the decade of the ’60s and the ’70s? With the small poor houses, the paths or the “new” dirt roads, the cobblestone alleys inside the villages, the empty beaches and the picturesque taverns on the beach with the retirees of life drinking their ouzo or their wine and the children playing in the sand?
Of course not. The image described above may be attractive for the visitor of a few days, but not for the inhabitant. To remain on the island he needs a job that pays, infrastructures and services of health, education, transport, telecommunications, entertainment etc. similar to those of the mainland. Tourism is a driving activity that has multiple effects.
All this is good you will say, but up to where will this development go? And mainly could not everything follow the scale and the characteristics of the island? It is not self-evident because as we said above the locals also want to resemble us. But most importantly, we ask the places to adapt to what we want to live and we do not accept to adapt to what made them sustainable for many centuries. We ask for fast ships because we have no time, large houses with the comforts of the big cities or the resorts we saw in the advertisement with the large rooms and their pool, we ask for “good roads” and parking spaces, we ask to eat “cosmopolitan”, we ask, we ask, we ask not what the place is, but what we have dreamed.
We ask from the islands a model that is no longer sustainable anywhere on the planet, much less on the small islands with the limited resources and space. We ask for more space for house without realizing that this seals, concretes the land and reduces the biodiversity, more roads to move quickly with mechanical means even for short distances while we have come to relax making a break from our way of life, more water for the pool and the jacuzzi while it is necessary to operate energy-consuming desalination that will produce it etc.
We want more resources and we produce more waste, exceeding its carrying capacity. At the same time the concentration of many visitors in the same period creates crowding and dissatisfaction among the locals who despite the income from tourism see their quality of life decreasing and in us who do not enjoy the pleasure we would like.
The spread of tourist resorts and residences with the description we made, creation of a real estate that is in a hurry to take the money it invested many times over if possible, is at the core of the changes that are noted in recent years and change critical characteristics of the islands, change their identity. At the same time they increase the number of visitors who can be at the same time on the island, increasing even more the overtourism.
In many of the islands the limits of building and carrying capacity have been exceeded. The islands are more vulnerable than ever due to the tourist monoculture and climate change. Up to where though is this change acceptable?
To live like the locals we need much less. We need a slow and simple tourism that uses the special characteristics of the place – the culture, the environment, the productive tradition – that have been used through the specialized knowledge that the young workers have. We need to get to know the place and its people through unique experiences devoting the time that is required. We need a tourism that will help the people of the place live better now but also maintain it sustainable for tomorrow.
Yiannis Spilanis
Emeritus Professor – Laboratory of Local and Island Development – Observatory of Sustainable Tourism of the Aegean
Department of Environment – University of the Aegean
