Beyond tourism

Over the past decade, numerous places in every corner of the planet have experienced profound transformations related to tourism: pollution and land consumption with unnecessary works and infrastructure for tourists, expulsion of disenfranchised inhabitants and historic businesses, depopulation and desertification of historic centers. Whether in art cities, natural paradises, hilltop villages or small archaeological sites, mass tourism triggers a process that alters the urban and natural ecosystem, consuming and often erasing the features that underlie the attractiveness of tourist destinations. Is tourism really a resource, the “oil of Italy”? Is it possible to think about sustainable tourism for local areas and people, without distorting the places where we spend our vacations? The author describes the development of tourism from travel for the few to mass tourism, showing the contradictions of an industry that has a huge inducement, but at the same time has often devastating consequences for the territories. For this to stop happening, it is necessary to rethink tourism from a new perspective, from a people’s ecology.