Nagore Espinosa has been a speaker the past April 14th at “Towards a More Sustainable Tourism”, with the TED talk “Towards a More Sustainable Tourism”, addressing the relevance of shifting the current tourism development models to achieve sustainability, inclusiveness and smarter destinations, seeing tourism measurement as a core axis.
Nagore had the chance of explaining how we are traditionally governed by models of tourism development in which the resident person is not taken into consideration. In fact, models that do not study in depth whether the tourist’s expenditure benefits the resident community or whether it is income that leaves the country; a model, after all, that requires a change of mentality on the part of institutions as well as on the part of private companies and the tourist themselves.
The tourism sector is a complex sector that integrates several layers. From the territory itself to the person travelling to a destination, through the people living there and to the infrastructure of the place (running water, electricity, communications or sanitary infrastructure). All of this is part of the same system: from a sustainable tourism perspective, all these layers are interconnected and need to be managed in a coordinated manner and be balanced in order to achieve non-intrusive growth in the long term.
People who attended this presentation witnessed examples of tourism overcrowding, how other destinations around the world are addressing this situation and what to do on their travels to be an active part of the change. If you could not attend, you can see Nagore Espinosa’s participation here.