Overtourism: Code of Conduct

The idea came from Palau, one of the world's smallest nations. And it changed the travel world forever.

Back in 2015, Palau had a problem: new flight routes had created a huge upsurge in visitor numbers, to the point where those tourists outnumbered locals eight to one.

The revenue was welcome in this Micronesian outpost, but the effect of those visitors was not, the sheer weight of numbers putting pressure on Palau's infrastructure, water supply and natural environment.

So the country came up with a novel solution, asking all visitors upon entry to sign the "Palau Pledge", in which they promised to "tread lightly, act kindly and explore mindfully".

"Palau Pledge"

The pledge is a code of conduct, a contract between visitors and locals, a commitment to do the right thing to protect a fragile nation.

Clearly, other destinations took note because there are now multiple tourist hotspots around the world that have introduced a recommended code of conduct for visitors, both to curb poor behaviour and inform those trying to do the right thing of best practice as popular spots struggle under the weight of numbers.

The likes of Kyoto, Bali and even Amsterdam have specified the way they want visitors to act to lessen the impact on locals and their environment.

These are the new rules of travel, which are clearly necessary given the well-publicised poor behaviour of certain tourists in the past few years.

Though some destinations are open about their desire to curb visitor behaviour, others are a little more low-key. Still, any place that is experiencing overtourism will be seeking to strike a balance between allowing visitors access, and keeping the effects of that visitation to a minimum.

Below are some of those fragile though ever-popular destinations, with our guide (and theirs) to how best to conduct yourself to ensure minimum impact and maximum enjoyment for all. Think of it as a Palau Pledge – only, for every destination.

Kyoto, Japan

Kyoto is a classic case of overtourism, a historic and beautiful city that is also quite small with a population of about 1.5 million. Yet it attracts more than 70 million visitors a year. This has led to significant problems for locals, who are unable to move about their city, to shop, dine and indulge in their cultural heritage in the same way they used to.

The Kyoto City Tourism Association has released a "Kyoto Tourism Code of Conduct", a series of recommendations for visitors to lessen their impact. These recommendations include advice on cultural education and respect, encouraging visitors to interact with locals and participate in festivals and events, and even asking that they don't leave leftover food when dining at restaurants (which is seen as very wasteful in Japanese culture).

One of the ways visitors can ease the burden is to seek attractive alternative destinations, such as Kanazawa and Sakata. If you are going to visit Kyoto, refrain from photographing and hassling geiko and maiko (popularly called geisha) on the streets, and try to travel by subway instead of using the over-crowded bus system.

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Here is another classic case of an intensely popular destination that is also locked into a small area with little room for overflow. Amsterdam is home to a little under a million people, yet welcomes more than 21 million visitors a year, many of whom are drawn by the liberal, party-going reputation this city has. That means a lot of drunk, rowdy tourists in a small space.

Amsterdam's tourism bureau has released a list of rules and regulations for visitors, introducing on-the-spot fines of €150 ($250) for acts of public nuisance such as littering, noise pollution and public urination, while drunkenness and the use of marijuana in the old city centre now carry a €100 fine.

Acting appropriately in Amsterdam isn't difficult – if what you're doing would be illegal or upsetting at home, there's a good chance it will be in the Netherlands, too. Authorities want visitors to go out and have fun but to do it in a way that doesn't negatively affect residents.

Machu Picchu, Peru

Not so long ago, Machu Picchu was a niche destination, considered too far off the beaten track for many travellers. Since the turn of the century, however, the Incan citadel's popularity has exploded, with more than a million visitors tramping across this UNESCO heritage-listed site every year. These tourists have been causing permanent damage to the ruins and the surrounding landscape.

Peruvian authorities are clearly torn. On one hand, several sections of Machu Picchu have been closed indefinitely to tourists; those visitors must now follow marked trails, and the number of daily entrants to the site has been capped at 3800. On the other hand, that daily cap will rise next year to 4500, and a controversial new airport is under construction nearby at Chinchero.

To help protect Machu Picchu, it's essential visitors follow all rules and stick to pathways on their visit. It's also best to go in the low season, around April and May, to help spread out crowds and support local businesses. Even better, give Machu Picchu a miss in favour of less-visited historic sites such as Choquequirao, Vilcabamba and Kuelap.

June to August are the peak months for visits to Machu Picchu, but April and May are cooler and quieter, and September and October are also pleasant. 

Southern Thailand

The beaches and islands of southern Thailand are phenomenally popular. Though this boom was in part sparked by the movie The Beach , the truth is that the likes of Phuket – according to some measures, the most overcrowded tourist destination in the world – Koh Phi Phi, Koh Samui, Pattaya and Krabi were always going to attract large crowds, and those crowds would always damage the local environment.

In 2018, Thai authorities took a drastic step: Maya Bay, the perfect patch of sea and sand that featured in The Beach , was closed to tourists entirely for three-and-a-half years to allow for its marine ecology to recover. The bay was closed again in 2023 for two months for similar reasons. Tourist boats can no longer land at the bay and swimming is prohibited.

It's essential for visitors to any popular area in southern Thailand to respect local rules and regulations. This is a country that relies heavily on the revenue generated by tourism, so don't stop visiting – instead, seek to reduce your impact on sensitive areas, and look to alternative islands such as Koh Lanta or Koh Yao Noi.

Prague, Czechia

Prague has been booming as a tourist destination ever since the fall of the Iron Curtain, and that popularity has led to huge changes in the historic centre of the city, where the resident population has been halved, driven out by higher prices, short-term apartment rentals, and tourist hordes. Boozy stag party groups are an ongoing issue.

Prague authorities had the chance for a reset during the pandemic and introduced "Putting Prague First", a plan to sustainably manage the tourism industry as it recovers. This means adding facilities for residents in the historic centre, more closely regulating short-term apartment rentals and appealing to visitors to travel in a way that is slower and more respectful of locals.

There are two key issues that visitors to Prague can help alleviate: the proliferation of short-term rentals, which visitors can manage by staying with traditional accommodation providers such as hotels, or staying outside the historic centre; and the behaviour of drunk, obnoxious tourists, which you can sort out by, you know, not being a drunk, obnoxious tourist.

Bhutan

Bhutan as a country has always been wary of tourists – the Himalayan nation was closed entirely to the world until 1974. Since then, entrant numbers have been carefully managed. The Bhutanese view their environment and their culture as extremely fragile, and so steps are still taken to curb the already low numbers of foreign visitors entering.

In June, 2022, the Bhutanese government introduced a drastic measure to deter all but the wealthiest visitors: it raised its "Sustainable Development Fee" – essentially a daily tax for foreign travellers – from about $100 a day to about $300 a day, on top of a $60 visa fee. That measure was a little too successful, however, with only 14,000 visitors subject to the tax arriving in the first six months of 2023. In September last year, the government slashed that fee to about $150 a day, effective until 2027.

Bhutan is an incredibly beautiful, culturally rich nation that will reward those who make the effort – and pay the money – to experience it. But visitors must ensure they're environmentally and culturally aware, behave respectfully and keep their impact as low as possible. Don't litter, don't steal, be polite, be unobtrusive, support local businesses and guides.

Venice, Italy

The two factors that lead to overtourism – big crowds, small spaces – clearly apply to Venice, the floating city that has been incredibly popular among visitors for decades. Venice's resident population has shrunk from a high of 175,000 to 50,000, while up to 120,000 daily visitors put a huge strain on its infrastructure and environment.

Venetian authorities have introduced measures to curb overtourism, including banning cruise ships over 25,000 tonnes from docking in the city, and beginning later this year, the city will experiment with ticketed, timed entry (checked by QR code), plus a €5 tax on visitors who aren't staying overnight.

Part of the problem in Venice is that there are too many short-term visitors, many alighting from cruise ships, who don't stay the night, and barely spend any money, but just take up space. Visitors can help alleviate this by spending more time and money, steering clear of popular spots such as Piazza San Marco and the Rialto Bridge, while also investigating alternative destinations such as Burano, Caorle and Udine.

Bali, Indonesia

In Bali it's not so much the number of visitors, though, of course, that exacerbates the problem. The main, well-documented issue here is the behaviour of those tourists. News has travelled around the world recently of visitors to Bali exposing themselves at sacred sites, including temples, driving recklessly, drinking to excess, becoming violent, and working without permits.

Last June, Balinese authorities released a list of "do's and don'ts" for visitors. These urge visitors to dress appropriately, respect the customs and beliefs of locals, behave properly at religious sites, refrain from climbing sacred trees, and don't litter, behave aggressively, or take inappropriate photographs.

Without putting too fine a point on it, the code of behaviour required for Bali is simple: don't be an idiot. Don't act in ways you know would be unacceptable at home, and are certainly unacceptable in a foreign, more conservative country. Take the time to learn about local culture and sensitivities and act in ways that are respectful of that.

Five more destinations with rules for visitors

Issues for the German capital, which has seen a boom in visitor numbers, include short-term rentals driving out inner-city residents and local services being replaced by tourist-focused infrastructure. In response, the city has restricted short-term rentals and has also released "Sustainable Berlin" guidelines for visitors, encouraging them to stay in eco-hotels, plus shop, eat and move around the city in a sustainable way. See visitberlin.de

The trick when visiting this tourism-dependent city and country is to do so ethically and sustainably, given previous issues with water insecurity, damage to Angkor Wat and surrounding temples, and the popularity of elephant rides and orphanage visits. Visitors are encouraged to seek out ethical organisations such as Fair Trade Village, Kulen Elephant Forest and Jaya House River Park for accommodation and to obey all rules when visiting historic sites. See tourismcambodia.org

Italian authorities have introduced a range of country-wide rules and fines (from $16,500 to $99,000) for anyone caught vandalising a monument or cultural site. Tourists can also be fined for sitting on Rome's Spanish Steps, swimming in the Trevi Fountain, eating or drinking at famous sites around the country, organising a pub crawl in Rome, or even taking a photo of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. See italia.it

Yellowstone has a problem: it's really, really popular with vehicle accidents up 90 per cent, ambulance use up 60 per cent, and search and rescue efforts up 130 per cent. Staffing numbers, meanwhile, have dropped. As work on ways to deal with the influx of tourists continues, visitors can help by sticking to marked trails, disposing of all rubbish correctly, and visiting outside the busy summer period. See nps.gov

Barcelona is a relatively small city with a huge number of visitors, many of whom are there to well and truly have a good time. In response, government authorities have introduced strict new licensing laws for properties placed on the short-term rental market, banned smoking on beaches, restricted tour group sizes and limited night-time noise levels in popular tourist districts. See barcelonaturisme.com

source: https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/traveller/reviews-and-advice/the-new-rules-of-travel-14-destinations-that-are-done-with-bad-tourists-20231221-p5eswt.html

When Tourism Destroys the Heritages

The temples of Angkor were built for worship and contemplation. The rulers poured their wealth into them, gilding the spires in gold and silver, commissioning carvings that memorialized their conquests and statues of Hindu gods that were in fact carved to resemble the kings and queens of Angkor. Hundreds, not millions, walked the temples.
 
“For sure, these temples weren’t made to welcome the world, only to pray to God. It is a place solely for God, not even like a western Cathedral where people were meant to assemble,” said Dominique Soutif, head of the EFEO Center.
 
Groslier and his father George, both scholars, had dedicated their lives to Angkor. Now the son was forced to abandon it. I asked if he thought the Khmer Rouge would destroy the temples. He shook his head and said no. The temples were too important to both sides: to prove their nationalism, their patriotism, the superiority of the Cambodian culture. He said he believed the armies would be more protective of the stones at Angkor than the Cambodians who revered them. He was right. Through the six-year war and the Khmer Rouge revolution that ended in 1979, the temples were left largely untouched. Whatever damage they suffered was from decay.
 
Instead, since the war, the worst culprits have been bandits who stole the statuary, often cutting off the heads, and now it is tourism. Soutif outlined the immediate damage being done by the millions of tourists who march all over the temples, their fingers touching the intricate carvings, their arms brushing up against the stones.
 
“Wat Phnom Bakheng, the temple on the hill, the effect of the daily traffic has degraded the temple considerably,” he began. “The steps of Angkor Wat are slippery from the damage by tourists. Inevitably with millions of guests the bas-reliefs have been touched by them and that’s extremely detrimental. I’ve seen Korean guides hitting those bas-reliefs with sticks to demonstrate an historical fact. It’s all just inevitable.”
 
What can be done to reduce the sheer numbers of tourists and prevent this cumulative damage? His answer was revelatory, as if the other shoe had dropped. “It is not as simple as you think,” he told me. “Without the tourists, there would be no restoration, no research,” he said.
 
The Restoration and Recovery
 
That is the price the foreign preservationists and archeologists pay: they have become a very sophisticated clean-up crew, repairing damage caused by tourism as the quid pro quo for the privilege of working at Angkor. The arrangement goes something like this. Angkor draws in the millions of tourists who bring in billions of dollars to this poor country. That tourism volume, in turn, draws the attention of foreign investors who put more money into the country, much of which lands in the private bank accounts of officials. The system works brilliantly for some, but it rests on the splendor of those temples in Angkor. They have to be restored and maintained.
 
This is where the foreign archeologists and their governments enter the picture. In order to have the key role in Angkor, sixteen foreign governments offered to provide their expertise, their labor and their money to restore and research the site. The Cambodian government accepted this proposition on the express condition that this work cannot interfere with tourism at Angkor.
These countries, along with the United Nations, became part of the International Coordinating Committee for the Safeguarding and Development of the Historic Site of Angkor (ICC-Angkor).
 
The Cambodian government created a complementary Apsara association that works with the foreigners while the Cambodian government retains authority over all decisions regarding Angkor as “an historic site, a natural site and a tourist site.” To streamline the effort, each country “adopts” a temple for restoration and posts signs showing that Hungary, Japan, India or the United States is financing the recovery and maintenance of that temple. Germany is the master for stone conservation. France trained a 300-member Cambodian heritage police force to prevent thieves from hacking off statues, bas-reliefs and lintels with hammers and saws. Now theft has largely ended in the official Angkor area. All of the countries praise the “very great openness of the Cambodian authorities to debate aspects of the country’s economic, environmental and social policies that elsewhere would remain jealously guarded.”
  

- Elizabeth Becker, Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism, 2013.

When Tourism Destroys the Foundation

A mounting problem is water. Siem Reap does not have the modern water and waste system to accommodate these tourists. The temple foundations are sinking as the surrounding water table is being drained by hotels that drill down as deep as 260 feet into ponds and underground aquifers, emptying them in order to have enough water to allow tourists to shower and flush toilets, to clean their clothes and to irrigate hotel landscapes and golf courses at an unsustainable rate. There is no adequate system to filter and dispose of the resulting sewage and the Siem Reap River has been polluted from the irresponsible dumping of waste.

The result is an ongoing threat to the foundation of the temples. At the Bayon, fifty-four towers have started sinking into the ground. Experts worry that the sandy soil is becoming so unstable it could threaten other temples.
 

With the Cambodian government’s approval, Japan drew up a master plan and is building a water supply system for the city of Siem Reap. Korea began building new drainage and sewage networks. France is cleaning up the Tonlé Sap River. The Asian Development Bank is loaning money for some of the projects, and a few hotels have promised to install recycling systems for their used water, all with the aim of repairing the damage done by draining the water table.
 
The Major Patron: South Korea

South Korea is a major patron of the Cambodian tourism industry in Siem Reap. Overall, South Koreans account for billions of dollars of private investment in the Cambodian economy, with a strong accent on tourism. (Only China has invested more money in Cambodia.)

Korean visitors fly to Cambodia on one of Korean Airlines’ nearly daily flights from Seoul. In Siem Reap, Koreans have invested in restaurants, hotels and karaoke bars. The largest project is a new $1.6 billion international airport for Siem Reap that, in theory, could bring up to 14 million tourists to the temples every year. Another South Korean developer is building a $400 million casino resort near Angkor with the avowed goal of drawing the high rollers from Macao and Singapore. The government not only promised the Korean company incentives like corporate tax holidays and low gaming levies; Prime Minister Hun Sen himself entertained the developer in Phnom Penh.

- Elizabeth Becker, Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism, 2013.

When Tourism Becomes Land Grabbing

Then one morning in 2005 workers came, and in three days they had torn down the ministry’s building. Local reporters rushed to the site thinking this was an illegal demolition of one of the city’s historic villas. Not so. The destruction was legal. The reporters were told that the government had given the property to a new Cambodian development company in exchange for a nondescript new building on Street Number 73 in a nondescript neighborhood. No money was exchanged for the villa or the land that was worth millions. The company did pass out $100,000 to divide among the employees of the Ministry of Tourism to thank them for accepting the deal. The developer, in turn, built a hotel on that prime property.
 

This noncompetitive sale of public property for private gain was being duplicated around the country. The government has orchestrated the sale of state assets to new private business ventures that had close ties to top officials and their families. The government used the same dictatorial powers to declare privately held lands part of new “development zones” to sell those, in turn, to business ventures tied to the government. This was all done behind closed doors with no competitive bidding, public hearings or judicial review.

 
The Ministry of Tourism was unhappy with the building on Street Number 73 and set its eyes on land in the central district of Phnom Penh known as Borei Keila. It was home to some of the city’s poorest residents, including a high concentration of people suffering from AIDS. The area was declared an “economic concession” and the families were evicted from there. The government then sold the land to private developers who promised to replace the hovels with clean modern apartments for the poor. That didn’t happen. The dispossessed were never given market value in return for their land and only half received new apartments. A Cambodian nonprofit organization trying to help the evicted said it was difficult to find any proof that money made from the sale ended up in the national treasury.
 
The Life and Threat of Forced Eviction
 
In 2009 the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights called for a moratorium on further evictions and said it was “gravely concerned over reports that since the year 2000, over 100,000 people were evicted in Phnom Penh alone; that at least 150,000 Cambodians continue to live under threat of forced eviction; and that authorities of the State party are actively involved in land-grabbing. . . . ”
 
Global Witness, the nonprofit British advocacy group, has documented how 45 percent of the country’s land has been deeded to private interests through these land grabs. (Land is also grabbed to sell to agribusinesses as plantations, to mining companies, to logging firms and, recently, to oil and gas companies.)
 
Land for the Cambodian tourism industry was opened up in 2005 when Prime Minister Hun Sen said he was resuming his land concession program despite earlier pledges to wait until those already evicted could be resettled.
 
“I have to make a decision for my country’s development,” he told a group at the Government Private Sector Forum in Phnom Penh, a government group that coordinates private investment, especially foreign investment. “I can’t wait. So I have gone ahead to provide concession land to investors. This is a necessary way to attract investment.”
 
The Lax Enforcement of Money-laundering Laws
 
Adding to the insult, the government sold the land at bargain prices and gave foreign investors extraordinary financial enticements, including nine-year tax holidays. The country already had a reputation for lax enforcement of money-laundering laws, and it allows holding companies in Cambodia to be 100 percent foreign-owned.
 
Within three years the entire coastline and most of the islands were privately owned, and resorts for tourism were under construction everywhere. Cambodia’s natural heritage of coral reefs, endless stretches of empty, palm-fringed beaches, and sapphire-blue waters had been sold off.

The human cost was enormous. Whole communities were summarily evicted despite a 2001 law that requires due process and full compensation in these cases. Farmers and fishermen fought back as police and the army burned down their villages on government orders, bulldozing fields and orchards and tearing down docks.
 
Those villages and wild open spaces were replaced by a mix of seedy hotels, private luxury resorts, and rampant sex tourism. Coastal resorts from Sihanoukville, the largest and the least attractive, to Kep and Koh Kong, exploded with tension as the new private owners took control of the land. Stories of evictions and clashes over ownership are commonplace. More than 100 families fought eviction from the homes overlooking Serendipity Beach and lost. Now that beach is famous among the Lonely Planet crowd as the Waikiki of Cambodia.

- Elizabeth Becker, Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism, 2013.

When Museum Becomes Tourism

France took a step that inadvertently elevated the standard of tourism by creating the world’s first Ministry of Culture in 1959. The newly elected President Charles de Gaulle wanted to revive and enhance French culture. He appointed the writer André Malraux the first minister of culture, with a mandate to give the public free access to the culture of France. The hyperactive Malraux jumped into the job. With equal doses of imagination and egalitarianism, Malraux assembled a bureaucracy to register, repair and recover all that was considered France’s patrimony or national heritage.
 
Malraux built on the work begun a hundred years earlier by Prosper Mérimée, also an author, who as France’s inspector-general of monuments spent over eighteen years listing and protecting France’s historic masterpieces. He blocked locals from destroying masterpieces, saving 4,000 buildings by classifying them as historical monuments, including the bridge at Avignon and the basilica at Vézelay. Malraux institutionalized this preservation and went further by getting laws passed requiring the centuries-old buildings to be cleaned. And he declared that, if at all possible, these gorgeous buildings and monuments had to be open to the public—French and foreign alike.
 
Under Malraux, the French museum system became one of the most expansive in the world. Paris alone seems to add a new major museum every decade: the then-audacious Centre Georges Pompidou, which included the National Museum of Modern Art, opened in 1977; the Musée d’Orsay was a masterful 1986 conversion of a Beaux-Arts railroad station into the permanent home of the country’s collection of Impressionist paintings, and most recently the Quai Branly Museum of indigenous art was inaugurated in 2006.
 
That is just a portion of the cultural world opened up by the new ministry. From the beginning, Malraux was keen on establishing and supporting arts festivals around the country: music in Aix-en-Provence, photography in Perpignan, film in Cannes. The aim was to raise the profile of French culture; the result fifty years later was a multimillion-dollar cultural tourism business.

And so it went for several decades. Decisions and innovations of the French government, somehow, eventually provided the undergirding of the classic tourism industry of today. Tourism officials told me repeatedly, “This was done without regard to tourism,” while relating how critical some innovation had been for tourism.

 - Elizabeth Becker, Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism, 2013.

When Tourism Alleviates Poverty

The final anomaly is the central role of government. Tourism is that rare industry whose “product” is a country. Travelers first decide what countries to visit, and then what city, region, beach resort or historic site. And all travelers to foreign lands must pass through borders that are controlled by a government that issues visas, stamps passports or turns people away.
 
That is only the beginning. Governments are like the head of the octopus, controlling in obvious and subtle ways just about everything that affects travel and tourism. Governments can preserve cultural sites or allow them to be destroyed; they can set aside wilderness areas or issue permits to build resorts along a deserted beach; they can require sewage and water installations for any new construction or they can build super airports that flood rural areas with tens of thousands of tourists.
 
Some preservationists see proper tourism as a salvation for remote areas; others see tourism as slow death. Governments—local, regional and national levels—decide whether an international company can build a new hotel, whether to give a new route to an airline, whether to build a conference center, whether to bid for an international event like the Olympics. The list is endless and is critical to the industry.
 
Finally, governments are the main sales force for tourism. Offices and ministries of tourism spend millions of dollars promoting their country to tourists, with brands and slogans like “New Zealand—100% Pure”; “Incredible India”; “Austria. You’ve arrived!”; “South Africa: Inspiring new ways” or “Smile, you’re in Spain.” National tourism websites are the starting point for many travelers.

Tourism Requires Models of Good Practices
 
“The issue of numbers of tourists, what they do, that is the key to sustainability,” said Luigi Cabrini, the UNWTO’s expert on the subject. “We have to get away from the idea that sustainability is just ecotourism with five people alone walking in a forest. We need models of good practices.”
 
“The reputation of tourism is often poor, and rightly so,” said Cabrini. “It is an extremely sensitive sector. We need ethics codes, guidelines, statistics and data that help the industry, and to work with business, education, governments. That means also looking at pollution; environmental degradation; corporate cultural monotony of tourist establishments; international tourism that undermines local economies and dealing with the sheer number of tourists. In the end, tourism plays an important role alleviating poverty, widening appreciation of different cultures, as informal diplomacy and exchanging wealth from the rich to the poor nations.”

- Elizabeth Becker, Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism, 2013.

When Tourism Enriches the Elites

Cambodia was the last country drawn into the larger Vietnam War, and it was being torn apart by massive bombings, indiscriminate shelling and horrifying atrocities… Cambodians had to wait twenty more devastating years for peace to come, twenty years of unimaginable hell. The war ended in 1975 but the victorious Khmer Rouge immediately launched a revolution that killed off one-fourth of the people and purposely destroyed most of Cambodia’s sophisticated, cultured society. That fatal madness was followed by another decade of decay and neglect as Cambodia was fought over as a dubious prize in the last decade of the Cold War.
 
The United Nations finally sent a peacekeeping mission to Cambodia in 1993, putting an end to foreign intervention and years of war. They supervised a democratic election, but the losers threatened a civil war if they weren’t included in the government. The U.N. gave in to their demands and anointed a joint government that included some brilliant officials, some incompetent officials, many corrupt officials, all working in an atmosphere of mistrust. These were the people charged with reviving a poor, exhausted country with few resources.
 
They did agree on one matter—tourism would be essential to their recovery. There wasn’t much left standing after war, revolution, genocide, famine and degradation: manufacturing had been depleted by 1975; farming was largely at a subsistence level thanks to too many radical experiments; and many of the surviving professionals and educated classes had fled Cambodia for life overseas. Tourism, centered on Angkor, that would attract wealthy middle and adventurous classes, was the only industry that could bring in desperately needed foreign exchange.
 
Among poorer countries, Cambodia became a pioneer in using tourism as a development strategy at the end of war. In theory, the country had everything: the exquisite ruins at Angkor, comparable in their majesty and cultural importance to those in Greece and Egypt; unspoiled beaches and islands on the southern coast along the Gulf of Thailand; and the sophisticated French colonial legacy that could be seen in the cities and towns with their blend of Cambodian and French colonial architecture that was as seductive to modern tastes as the overlay of the British Raj in India. The fact that the country had been forbidden to tourists for decades made it all the more attractive. Cambodia was “authentic,” with its tragic history, delicate art, dance and cuisine, and its reputation for enchantment as well as cruelty.
 
Corruption and Shoddy Development
 
Tourism brings in $2 billion each year, but it enriches Cambodia’s elite rather than helping the underprivileged. Poverty and unemployment is worse around tourist areas, especially Angkor. It is changing the face of Cambodia—not for the better. In two recent surveys the National Geographic evaluated how countries cared for their priceless cultural heritage sites and coastlines. Cambodia was the only country that ranked among the worst in both categories. Angkor still impressed but was criticized for the unrestricted flood of tourists under “atrocious” management, the overdevelopment of nearby hotel areas that was threatening the temples themselves, and the exclusion of local Cambodians from benefiting from “this resource.”
 
Tourism has thrived on the practice of the government grabbing land from the farmers and peasants and then selling the property to firms tied to a few dozen elite officials. They are behind the country’s new resorts, hotels, spas and prime beachfronts. Those beach resorts in the south were singled out by the National Geographic jury for shoddy development, with too many seedy bars and hotels, poor waste management and a strong whiff of corruption.
 
Cambodia’s beauty can be breathtaking: Angkor gives many visitors a taste for the mystical. At the same time, tourists are often moved by this splendor in contrast to the country’s tragic modern history and poverty.
 
And on the surface the tourism industry is a huge success. Tourism proceeds account for 20 percent of Cambodia’s domestic product. Tourism is the second-largest employer in the country, providing 350,000 jobs, just behind the garment industry. Roland Eng, who is still a champion of his country’s tourism industry, presciently warned a few years ago that while tourism can bring wealth, alleviate poverty and conserve natural and cultural heritages, it has to be regulated. “Left to itself, tourism development does not necessarily fulfill those roles,” he wrote.

- Elizabeth Becker, Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism, 2013.