Global travel surge raises concerns, as local communities tackle over-tourism amid sustainability challenges - CNA

Mr Schalken said that travel has become a lot quicker, with travellers and industry players making shorter-term decisions on trips.

“In the early days, people started planning routes a few years in advance. Now it's three months, and before you know it, there's air traffic coming in for which a destination is not ready,” he said.

“It’s even more urgent now with the influence of climate change, which is basically going to double, if not triple, the negative challenges of some of these over-tourism impacts that we are seeing.”

By 2030, 57 per cent of an estimated 1.8 billion international travellers globally will be in emerging economies, studies have shown.

Mr Schalken emphasised the need for locals living in tourism hotspots to be able to benefit from the development too.

“It doesn't mean that they all need to be employed in tourism. Tourism is not for everybody. But if the shared resource impacts them, then there should be compensation,” he said.

“We can't expect them to look after pristine beach areas and not see any return for the care that they put into that.”

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