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Environment of Madagascar faces alot of problems. These include deforestation, erosion, a changing climate, hunting and the over-collection of animals and plants from the wild. A lot of these problems are caused by tourist and tourism.

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The Coquerel Sifaka in its natural environment in a Malagasy national park. Eugen Haag/Shutterstock

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the restriction policies used to mitigate the spread of the virus, are being felt all over the world. It affects all parts of life including conservation especially in developing countries like Madagascar.

Madagascar's natural environment faces multiple challenges. These include deforestation, erosion, a changing climate, agriculture fires, hunting and the over-collection of animals and plants from the wild. One of the biggest hurdles, which exacerbates these issues, is that poverty is widespread in Madagascar. It's estimated that 75% of people in Madagascar live on less than $1.90 per day, and so many depend on natural resources.

There are about 500 conservation projects which are trying to address these challenges and provide employment to local communities.

I collaborated with a group of conservation managers and researchers, mostly from Madagascar, to assess exactly how the pandemic has affected conservation activities. Our paper is based on our personal experiences and involvement in establishing management strategies during the pandemic.

We found that the pandemic challenged existing conservation structures and management. The issue is that most of Madagascar's conservation and research projects are conceptualised and funded from abroad - the Global North. Non-governmental organisations on the ground implement their activities with the help of communities living close to protected areas.

Because of COVID-19 travel restrictions, several activities were forced to stop. This included vital training and biodiversity monitoring.

This situation provides us with the opportunity to re-examine strategies and research approaches to build resilience for future crises. The foundation of which lies with the true empowerment of local communities, conservationists and researchers.

Challenges and coping strategies

Our research involved members of organisations that manage multiple sites and protected areas across Madagascar. These included WWF Madagascar, the Aspinall Foundation, the Missouri Botanical Garden in Madagascar and the Madagascar National Parks. The type of activities they carry out include both research and conservation.

Prior to the pandemic, activities were directed and funded by local and international agencies. Although there are initiatives that emerged locally, typically foreigners would lead and manage the projects. Malagasies (often those that live around the conservation areas) were usually employed to take on basic roles. For instance as project assistants, field guiding and patrolling. These activities provided them with an additional income to subsistence agriculture.

We found that restrictions, taken to reduce the spread of the new coronavirus, had a dramatic effect on conservation and research activities. Travel from abroad and within the country reduced the ability of projects to conduct activities. Foreigners, who were running projects, couldn't come in. And there were also challenges managing activities from the capital, Antananarivo.

Border closures also meant international tourists and researchers couldn't come into Madagascar. This resulted in less financial resources for conservation activities. For instance, park entrance and research permit fees are often used to fund conservation activities such as surveillance activities. They also provide park guides with an income.

In addition to a loss of income, in some cases project costs grew. This was because staff had to work from home, which increased communication expenses, and because local communities needed to report to head offices using phones. There were also additional costs related to health safety measures, such as masks and sanitisers.

Because there's less surveillance activity, and also because many communities living close to protected areas had lost their supplementary income, there's been an increase in illegal activities inside some national parks. This includes more hunting, logging and charcoal production.

In addition, environmental education and awareness activities for local communities living around protected areas ceased.

Not all local communities lost their work. In some places local communities were relied on to continue conservation and research activities, like reforestation and forest surveillance. But, because they weren't adequately trained, this compromised the project.

Forest rangers, usually accompanied by permanent staff, had to perform habitat and species monitoring alone. But they faced challenges. This relates mostly to the transfer or proper storage of monitoring data because of the lack of technological knowledge and reduced connectivity in some remote sites.

Improving the model

All of these insights make a strong case for a change in Madagascar's conservation model. In recent years, scientists and researchers have argued that locally-based conservation activities are more resilient as they engage and provide benefits to local communities.

Our paper supports this. Projects should be more independent so that they can continue to run without such a heavy reliance on human resources from abroad. More needs to be done to ensure that the workforce is predominantly local, and driven by locals.

Projects should also provide leadership opportunities to local managers and researchers.

Communities living near protected areas have benefited from the efforts of NGOs and conservation organisations. However, such an approach should include possibilities for diversifying livelihoods that take into account local needs and values.

We hope that the lessons we have learned in Madagascar during COVID-19 will help to drive conservation and research in developing countries towards a more inclusive, sustainable, and equitable model. This would help to improve the success of conservation activities.

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The COVID-19 pandemic is affecting conservation efforts in Madagascar

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The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the restriction policies used to mitigate the spread of the virus, are being felt all over the world. It affects all parts of life including conservation especially in developing countries like Madagascar. Madagascar's natural environment faces multiple challenges.

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tourism is affecting the natural nature in New Zealand as more people come to visit New Zealand and can get over crowed, with each person pollution it may hurt nature. "over-tourism may affect nature giving the government pressure" Even if tourism gives millions of dollars new Zealand income. And New Zealand is spending millions to stop tourists, making new Zealand's economy go down.

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The days of allowing tourist hordes to some of New Zealand's best-known natural attractions are over, the government has signalled, as it unveiled new plans to protect the environment and reconsider the role of tourism in its economy.

The tourism minister, Stuart Nash, outlined on Tuesday plans to "reset" tourism for a post-Covid world - planning for fewer international visitors and attempting to diversify the economies of tourism-dependent towns.

Some of the country's best-known natural attractions, such as Unesco world heritage site Milford Sound-Piopiotahi, will be transformed to take far fewer visitors. The dramatic slopes, still waters, and frolicking fur seals of Milford Sound-Piopiotahi have attracted millions of visitors.

But the site "cannot return to its pre-Covid state", Nash said. Previously, it had been under "significant pressure" from 870,000 annual visitors - a deluge of people that Nash said undermined the infrastructure and cultural and environmental values of the place.

Tourism is a major part of New Zealand's economy. According to Tourism Industry Aotearoa, it is the country's biggest export industry, making up about 20% of total exports. Tourism spend makes up a large chunk of the country's overall economy, accounting for more than 5% of GDP, and directly or indirectly employing 13.6% of the national workforce.

Before the trans-Tasman bubble allowed for quarantine-free travel with Australia in March, New Zealand had been shut to all international tourists for the better part of a year. During that time, Nash has repeatedly said the government would attempt to transform the country's tourism offering - focusing on attracting a smaller number of "high-value" visitors and trying to ease the environmental and social burden that crowds of international tourists placed on small towns.

"The reality is that we have a responsibility to take an intergenerational view of the role of tourism in New Zealand, Nash said in March. "It can't go back to how it was."

"Unsustainable tourism levels put far too much undue pressure on communities and our natural attractions and many communities have struggled to absorb."

Nash outlined more concrete plans for the government's new vision, including a $200m package, more than half of which will go to struggling South Island towns hit hard by the border closure. As well as supporting some businesses to reopen when visitors return, large chunks of the funding would be devoted to helping businesses and communities to break their dependency on international tourists. Twenty million dollarswould go to the popular Queenstown Wanaka region, "to help develop alternative industries". Another $15m would go to the "transformation [which] is needed to protect Milford Sound-Piopiotahi".

"The economic impact of the loss of international visitors is felt beyond the tourism workforce and businesses," Nash said on Thursday. "Whole communities, especially in five South Island regions, are facing new challenges to their way of life."

To ease the environmental damage inflicted by tourism, the parliamentary commissioner for the environment, Simon Upton, has recommended a departure tax for all international flights. The money raised - an anticipated $400m annually - would go to researching lower-emissions aviation, and mitigating the effects of the climate crisis across the Pacific.

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New Zealand to spend millions weaning holiday towns off international tourism

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The days of allowing tourist hordes to some of New Zealand's best-known natural attractions are over, the government has signalled, as it unveiled new plans to protect the environment and reconsider the role of tourism in its economy.

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The tourist causes a big amount of pollution to Iceland. The number of people going to Iceland start increasing year by year, and the pollution went alot more severe.

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Down in the icy tunnel, the glacier is sweating. A dozen tourists slip around in the dark, taking selfies and scooping water into bottles from slushy puddles whenever the guide stops walking. Water streams down in thick rivulets throughout, dousing everyone in frigid water.

At the Into the Glacier attraction in northern Iceland, the waves of rapacious tourists snapping up dirty water from a rapidly melting glacier is a stark reminder of the state of Iceland's tourism sector.

Iceland has been the poster child for the positive and negative effects of the overtourism phenomenon. Tourism growth helped the country recover after a brutal financial crisis and has empowered a new breed of entrepreneurs. Tourism revenue now accounts for 42 percent of Iceland's economy, an increase from around 27 percent in 2013, according to Statistics Iceland.

With tourism taking on increased importance, the country's fishing and manufacturing sectors have contracted over time. The change has made the country's overall economy reliant on foreign visitors.

"It's never been about the tourists, it's more about the industry itself," said Inga Hlín Pálsdóttir, director of Visit Iceland. "After the financial crisis, we were always worried. Are we going into the same bubble? Are we going in the same direction, that this is a bubble that is going to burst?"

Nearly a decade into Iceland's unprecedented growth as a global tourism hotspot, a variety of issues have led to an economic slowdown that many, surprisingly, see as a good thing for the country's travel sector.

As the wave of overtourism crested in Iceland over the summer, the country is looking for what's next. Fortunes have been made and lost over the last decade, with many now looking to the future of Iceland as a more mature tourism destination. Skift returned after three years to Iceland in July, speaking to more than a dozen tourism leaders and residents about the country's troubles and path forward.

What was different this time was a sense of concern for the country's overheated tourism industry, What's more, there is a worry about a malaise left in the wake of an unprecedented boom period that helped bring the country out of an economic recession. Instead of embracing tourism growth, nearly everyone said it is now time for the country to sit back and take stock of how tourism fits into a more sustainable overall economy for Iceland.

The city of Reykjavik remains dotted with cranes as new construction projects have blossomed in recent years. New international shopping outlets, like H&M, have invaded the city at the same time. Generic restaurants and boutiques have popped up, bringing with them new inauthentic locations for travelers to shop and eat.

Many expect these types of projects to be put on hold as the country's business community grapples with a reality where tourism may not be a reliable cash cow. As Reykjavik has transformed itself into a modern international city, the rest of Iceland may have been left behind. With the lack of a serious cultural backlash against tourism, most have now realized just how crucial the travel sector is to Iceland's future prospects.

Much in Iceland has changed since Skift visited three years ago. The attitude of Icelanders is now much more cautious, as the business people and small towns lifted up by tourism face the prospect of forging ahead with fewer visitors. Let's look at how the country got to this point and how its tourism leaders are adapting despite deep uncertainty.

The Big Picture

To understand where Iceland stands today, it's important to chart the last decade of the country's evolution following a devastating financial crisis in 2008. Iceland had relied on heavy industries and fishing to power its economy, but over-leveraged banks helped lead to a dramatic drop in the value of the Icelandic krona and led to a rise in unemployment as the country had to be bailed out by the International Monetary Fund.

Tourism in Iceland began to grow following the April 2010 eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in the country's south. It was cheap to visit and costs were affordable due to the country's weak currency; the eruption acted as a global billboard for Iceland's natural beauty.

Tourism morphed from a minor part of the economy to its biggest industry over the course of the decade.

As time went on and its economy recovered, prices began to rise for residents and tourists alike. What was once an affordable vacation became pricier despite the cheap flights that continued to bring passengers to Iceland. Gas and food became pricier for Icelanders, too, putting pressure on households across the country.

"Iceland was in fashion, and the exchange rate of the krona was attractive from the UK, where the boost in tourism really started," said Magnus Arni Skulason, chairman of Reykjavik Economics, a consulting group. "Tourists from the UK started it, then the U.S., then Germany and other European countries. Post-Brexit, there was a big impact on medium-income Brits who wanted to come to Iceland. And then the appreciation of the krona made it more expensive to come here."

Now Iceland's economy is in its first slump since its financial crisis began in 2008. The strong krona, the collapse of Wow Air, the Boeing 737 Max fiasco, and rising labor costs have each contributed to the current downturn.

"We were going down as well, regardless of Wow Air, and that was because the currency was too strong," said Bjarnheiður Hallsdóttir, head of the Icelandic Travel Industry Association. "It was mainly that but it was a few things at the same time which caused this rather strong decline."

It's been a near perfect storm of factors that have led tourism growth numbers to fall and left many Icelanders wondering whether tourism is truly the answer for Iceland's future. The unexpected collapse of Wow Air in late March helped kick off the massive decline in tourism; tens of thousands of passengers who were planning to visit Iceland on the cheap can simply no longer visit.

The last time international visitation dropped so steeply? The month following the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull, which led to the cancellation of 95,000 flights in Europe and Iceland. This crisis is manmade, though.

Statistics don't bear out a catastrophic collapse of Iceland's tourism sector. Far from it, in fact; tourism in 2019, so far, has fallen to 2017 levels, according to leaders across Iceland's tourism sector judging by their businesses. The full picture won't emerge until the end of the year, when Iceland enters the shoulder season for its tourism industry.

The latest tourism accounts from Statistics Iceland show what tourism executives have noticed in their own businesses. In June, the beginning of Iceland's busiest traditional tourism period, tourist visitation dropped by 15 percent year-over-year. Tourism VAT turnover dropped 12 percent, mimicking the visitation drop.

To put a potential 15 percent decline into perspective, Iceland experienced 5.4 percent growth in international visitation in 2018 and 24.1 percent growth in 2017 according to the Iceland Tourist Board. So a 15 percent decline over the next year would bring visitation back to 2017 levels, which represents a 400 percent increase from 2011 visitation levels.

A few wrinkles emerge that show how the slowdown is affecting the types of vacations people are taking. Hotel stays were flat year-over-year in June, while Airbnb stays dropped 11 percent. Unpaid accommodations, like camping, declined a massive 30 percent, presenting more evidence that Iceland's tourism economy is shifting away from affordability to a more expensive and upscale proposition for travelers.

Iceland's hotel sector has been built up during the boom, growing 9 percent in number of rooms from July 2014 to July 2019, according to STR. Seven hotels totaling another 1,129 rooms are in the country's pipeline, and many in the tourism sector are concerned those properties will be shelved if economy uncertainty persists. Strong regulations against Airbnb, limiting rentals to 90 days each year, have also decreased the ability of travelers to use homesharing services.

Still, housing in Reykjavik remains incredibly more expensive than elsewhere in the country.

The flip side is that tourism's growth outside of the Reykjavik area, which has helped revitalize sleepy towns and empowered entrepreneurs to build businesses, is perhaps most severely affected by this slowdown.

Vehicle traffic around Iceland's ring road has decreased across all of the country's regions, with East and West Iceland seeing double-digit year-over-year declines in July. All those remote villages and fishing towns which rode the wave of increased tourism are now feeling the effect of fewer visitors during the peak summer travel season.

"In a way this growth was unexpected and then too much," said Hallsdóttir. "But on the other hand, we have a lot of new investment and new companies which are suffering right now because of that. For the long term thinking, it's good that we have a little break now regarding the tourism infrastructure. And then I'm talking about the public sector. The private sector is ready and was ready when the big boom came, but the public sector wasn't."

Air Trouble

While the collapse of Wow Air helped touch off the downturn, the struggles of national carrier Icelandair over the last year bear some responsibility as well.

Wow Air, the low-cost carrier launched by entrepreneur Skúli Mogensen in 2012, eventually grew to a 20 plane fleet before economic trouble hit in 2018. New widebody planes increased its operating costs and the airline had trouble filling the extra seats on these planes. The airline began to lose money before collapsing into bankruptcy on March 28, 2019 following a failed acquisition by Icelandair.

The collapse immediately made it more difficult and expensive for U.S. travelers, who account for about a third of total visitors to Iceland, to visit this year. High costs already deterred U.S. visitors with 7.1 percent fewer visiting from August 2018 to July 2019 than in the previous year.

Chinese visitors continued to surge 14.8 percent over the same period while top European destinations except for Poland declined. Chinese visitors also spend the most of any traveler, likely helping stanch some of the bleeding from the widespread decline in tourism.

At the same time, rival Icelandair was beset by its own problems. It was forced to lease aircraft after grounding its fleet of nine Boeing 737 Max aircraft, leading to a decline in capacity and increased costs as the summer travel season began. Strong competition from European carriers also limited its ability to grow airfares in 2018, causing it to lose money.

It sold off 80 percent of its Icelandair Hotels division to Malaysian investor Vincent Tan as part of a plan to focus solely on air transportation and tourism operations.

"The MAX aircraft were intended to cover 27 percent of Icelandair's passenger capacity in 2019," said Icelandair CEO Bogi Nils Bogason in a recent earnings report." For this reason, the position in which the company now finds itself as a result of the suspension of the MAX aircraft is without any precedent and has a significant impact on the operations and performance of the Company... We have also placed emphasis on ensuring seating capacity to and from Iceland, with the result that the number of Icelandair's passengers traveling to Iceland has increased by 39 percent in the second quarter compared to the same period last year."

The loss of Wow Air, then, has helped to boost the future prospects of Icelandair once the Boeing 737 Max situation is sorted out.

The growth of both airlines essentially eliminated seasonality for Iceland's tourism industry, and a lasting disruption is likely to bring it back in a major blow to the sector's less established players. An analysis by Airlines Reporting Corp., which provides services to most global passenger airlines, found that its partner airlines have actually sold more tickets to Iceland in 2019 than 2018, presenting some hope that the downturn will be limited in scope.

"Both Icelandair and Wow Air were adding seat capacity during the winter," said Sveinbjörn Indridrason, managing director of Isavia, Iceland's airport authority. "Last year there was no seasonality in Iceland. So you had this summer traffic three months, these shoulders four months and then the winter traffic five months. Similar distribution passenger-wise, not per passenger. So the seasonality just went out of the Iceland market."

A side effect of the decline in flights has been the limited ability for Icelandic goods to reach global markets, injuring economic sectors outside of tourism in the process. International cargo shipping has increased from 35.2 million tons in 2010 to 57.4 million tons in 2018, broadening the ability of Icelandic companies to sell goods in foreign markets.

For what it's worth, the hub strategy which helped power the growth of aviation in Iceland is still being pursued by Isavia. While the company's master plan from 2015 did not anticipate the massive surge in new routes and arrivals, this downturn is helping to bring the sector back to its original projections.

"When Wow Air went bankrupt it was not bad timing if you look at it from a construction perspective," he said. "So we are not in the middle of any real construction so we don't have to lay down any hammers and have like a half-built terminal building with a lot of invested costs but maybe not the revenues to finish it."

Indridrason confirmed that he had been contacted by representatives of WAB Air, which had designs to restart Wow Air's operations in the near future as an Icelandic company, and American investor Michelle Ballarin who purchased Wow Air's assets following the bankruptcy. In early September, Ballarin announced her plans for Wow Air to begin service once again over the next year although experts are unsure of how realistic her timetable is.

"There's a reason Wow Air failed the first time," said Jay Shabat, senior analyst at Skift Airline Weekly. "There was simply too much capacity in the market and what's known of the plan to revive it doesn't inspire much confidence."

There have also been rumblings of the potential for a new international airport near Keflavik to help supercharge tourism growth and the country's cargo business. It's a thorny political issue, but Indridrason noted there would be many challenges faced by operating two busy airports so close to each other.

Even if the government wanted to close Keflavik and operate a single international airport, the U.S. Navy's base at the airport complicates the matter.

Perhaps the biggest opportunity to grow tourism would be through a more robust network of regional airports across the country. Right now, tourists are forced to transfer from Keflavik to Reykjavik City Airport, nearly an hour away, in order to fly into one of Iceland's smaller domestic airports.

Many proponents of increased tourism across Iceland believe an increase in domestic flights from Keflavik would help boost the industry as it spreads across the country. Right now, direct flights are available for tourists from Keflavik to Akureyri in Northern Iceland but not to other areas. Besides occasional charter flights direct from international destinations that already happen, a more robust series of routes and airports have the potential to boost future growth.

"If you need to build infrastructure that can handle serious international traffic [in these smaller regions], it would be very costly and will probably never be profitable," said Indridrason. "The domestic airport system, it's a public transportation system funded by the State of Iceland. And public transportation always needs to be funded by the municipalities or the individual States. But you can't combine those things if you don't bring [travelers first to boost the economies in those regions]."

Tour Operator Woes

Part of the problem is that many emerging tourism companies acted to take advantage of the boom by growing quickly instead of taking a more measured and conservative approach.

Travelers are still spending on package tours when they visit, despite flights and accommodations eating up a more significant portion of travelers' budgets, according to data from the Iceland Tourist Board.

While travelers continue to spend, the margins operators are likely to have shrunk.

"Wow Air went down in April, and that obviously had an effect," said Hjalti Baldursson, CEO of Reykjavik-based tour operator technology company Bokun, which is owned by TripAdvisor and operates the technology backbone for most tour companies in Iceland. "There was a small decrease in May. April was 1 percent up year-on-year, but other months are up significantly in terms of booking numbers. That doesn't tell the story of whether the companies profitable, because if you look at the average order value measured in dollars that is going down quite significantly. This has to do with currency fluctuations between the Icelandic króna and the U.S. dollar.

"The margin of the companies that are selling is going down. On top of this, there is big competition in Iceland. There are more and more companies coming into the market that are providing good products."

Bokun's data also show an increase in direct online booking, meaning operators pocket more of a booking's value, increasing the margins on their products in the process. The cost of labor, though, presents a major challenge to tour operators operating on thing margins.

"Another thing influencing companies in Iceland is that salary costs are going up," said Baldursson. "Iceland has been coming off its own success, the economic metrics of the country are extremely good. It's a very healthy economy and in all measurements a rich country. So getting staff and competing with lower paid staff in other markets is becoming harder and harder."

Evidence backs this claim up. Iceland has the fifth highest gross domestic product per capita among European countries, and the country's wages increased 6.7 percent from 2016 to 2018. The country's strongest unions also recently locked in a wage increase, putting more pressure on low-margin businesses. Even with seasonal workers from other European countries working during peak periods, the cost of labor remains a major obstacle to growth.

The economic contraction is leading to a wave of consolidation in Iceland's tour industry. On Skift's last trip to Iceland three years ago, we spoke to Hjörvar Sæberg Högnason, who had founded tour operator Reykjavik Sightseeing in order to appeal to the new wave of international visitors to Iceland.

Since then a race to the bottom on pricing coupled with rising labor costs and the high value of the krona have caught up to Högnason. Competition with the established Gray Line Iceland and Reykjavik Expeditions, the other two major bus tour operators in Reykjavik, had led the company down an unsustainable path once signs of a tourism slowdown began to emerge late last year.

An effort to grow his business by partnering with Blue Lagoon for the spa's shuttles, and earning the concession for Keflavik's city shuttle to Reykjavik, also proved challenging with respect to low margins and the complications of running a bus tour operation alongside shuttles.

In an effort to compete going forward, Gray Line Iceland and Högnason's Reykjavik Sightseeing announced a merger earlier this year to provide a competitive advantage against Reykjavik Expeditions.

"There's increasing talk of companies needing to merge," said Högnason. "We're nowhere near a catastrophe; the situation gives us the time to step back and run our businesses in a more economic fashion."

He also noted that self-guided tours and the ease of renting a car likely contributed to a downturn in business for bus tour operators. A recent report suggests 80 percent of visitors to Iceland rent a car at some point in their trip.

"Year-round, we think there will be more car rentals on the road," said Högnason. "You have all the international car rental brands and local ones; I'd imagine they are in a bidding war for travelers right now."

In the rush to compete over the last three years, money was invested in growing his fleet and branding at the expense of innovating in the actual tour experience. Finding skilled, qualified guides remains a challenge particularly as Iceland's tourism sector continues to mature.

"We need to do it extra well, in a way that makes people excited to come back the next day," said Högnason. "The agenda is to teach travelers how to behave and embrace the traveler experience. There is decreasing demand, so let's make sure they leave with a positive impression."

Much like Wow Air couldn't survive a blip in demand after a potential merger with Icelandair was tabled, so too are tourism companies consolidating in order to better weather this uncertain period. A return to strong growth instead of the explosive growth the country has seen this decade will ensure that business practices shift and become less risky for operators and their employees.

"It is quite easy to run a company if your business is growing 50 percent," said Baldursson. "Then you're typically worried for the customers and not the operational efficiencies. Now when we're seeing small double digit growth, maybe, as for example, in July we saw a 15 percent growth, in June we saw a 7 percent growth in number of bookings. We're seeing that companies have a tendency now to look more into their costs and cost base. It's an opportunity for them, and I think it's a healthy revamp of their operations that they're running through right now."

Another wrinkle could spell future trouble for Iceland's tour sector: the quiet rise of cruising in ports across Iceland. Overall, the number of cruise ships entering port has increased from 476 in 2016 to 750 in 2018, according to Cruise Iceland. Passengers arriving in port grew from 326,850 to 441,789 over the same period, a 35 percent increase in the number of potential visitors to Iceland's port cities.

Cruise passengers tend to cause congestion at a city's most popular attractions without contributing much to the local economy.

The biggest beneficiaries have been not just Reykjavik, but the smaller cities across the country that see few international visitors from tours and domestic flights. With the high costs associated with a trip to Iceland expected to remain, a more affordable cruise vacation is becoming a compelling option for vacationers.

"Above all the ports are happy about it," said Hallsdóttir, head of the Icelandic Travel Industry Association. "Some of the smaller communities in the rural areas very far away from Reykjavík, they are getting some business at least. This is a topic we have to really have to think about and regulate before it gets over our heads."

Something for Everyone

As a tourism hotspot matures, it tends to lose some of the authenticity that made it attractive to visit in the first place. Iceland, too, with its ample natural beauty and unique culture isn't immune to the forces of globalization, as evinced by the transformation of Reykjavik into something resembling a traditional international city.

As investment dollars have flowed into tourism, new attractions have been under development that wouldn't be out of place in any major travel destination around the world. The difference is that these attractions are being designed for not just travelers, but native Icelanders as well.

One example is Perlan, a landmark overlooking Reykjavik which has been converted into a museum and restaurant with stunning views of the city. A dome built around six water tanks, the building used to house a rotating restaurant on its top floor. Today, the building attracts visitors during the week and Icelanders on the weekends.

By appealing to locals instead of just tourists, the somewhat strange attraction has found new life in an Iceland where the new can coexist with the old.

"Flying is now more expensive, and accommodations are more expensive; Southern hotels aren't fully booked," said Eva Björnsdóttir, the reception manager at Perlan, of the country's prospects amid a tourism decline. "Icelanders need to come together and help each others' businesses. We need to make sure that travelers have a good time, not just in one place, but across their entire trip. They're competing for the same guest. We need to think of Iceland as a whole experience for travelers."

Another newcomer to Reykjavik is FlyOver Iceland, a mixed media experience where visitors go on a virtual flyover around Iceland's most scenic landmarks.

On a hard-hat tour of the attraction in the final stages of construction, it was clear Flyover Iceland could exist in any major tourist destination; the concept, created by the Canadian company Pursuit, already has similar operations in Toronto and Las Vegas.

"A lot has happened in the tourism sector over the last year," said Eva Eiríksdóttir, manager of marketing and brand experience for FlyOver Iceland. "It has cooled down and people were panicking, but the slow down is probably a good thing."

Eiríksdóttir pointed out that the weather is often bad in Iceland, increasing the demand for indoor activities like FlyOver Iceland for visiting families and residents. With high property values and rent prices in downtown Reykjavik as well, new attractions could provide the impetus for the development of new neighborhoods and communities too.

These types of attractions aren't just popping up in Reykjavik, though. New spas, attractions, and experiences are popping up in the country's North and South regions, offering a blend of Icelandic culture and modern convenience. One of the most absurd is 1238: The Battle for Iceland, a virtual reality experience that puts visitors inside a variety of historical viking battles.

The attraction is located in Skagafjörður, which sits about 3 hours by car from Reykjavik and 90 minutes from secondary city Akureyri, showing how regions outside Iceland's capital have benefitted from the tourism boom.

Instagram and Its Discontents

Speaking with tourism experts and locals alike, concerns about the damaging effects of increased tourism on Iceland's environment were minimal.

Iceland is a victim of climate change like so many places but has chosen to focus on sustainability in the areas it can control, like traveler behavior and waste management. A major campaign to encourage visitors to drink tap water instead of bottled water, for instance, has found success this year as news of the demise of Icelandic glacier Okjokull entered global headlines.

Specific cases of overtourism, though, gravely concern many who have tired of people exploiting the environment for profit.

Many tie the rise of social media to the growth of Iceland's tourism sector in an integral way, and it's difficult to see a way out.

"There's an issue with locations and the number of people visiting them," said Joe Shutter, a Reykjavik-based photographer who leads small group photography tours across the country. "You can have a well behaved visitor and a not very well behaved visitor. They both have two feet. There is a certain critical mass. There's a scale transformation that takes place. Location A: 10 people visit. Location B: 100 people visit. The damage is more than ten times worse on location B. Damage goes up exponentially. Some places literally cannot handle it."

He gave an example of an Instagram influencer who had recently posted specific information for travelers to visit a remote and beautiful location he shoots at, replete with geotag information. When he asked the influencer to remove the geotag, the influencer simply said it would violate their ethics to do so and updated their caption with a warning for travelers not to litter or damage the location.

"This is the absolute lowest common denominator of how anybody should behave with a modicum of decorum in a location," said Shutter. "I explained to them that two feet are two feet. And a hundred feet are worse than ten. And that a scale transformation takes place with that and that means that behaviors have to be modified in that sense in that certain places literally can't handle that."

Others say it should be up to the government to select specific places to protect instead of residents working to limit what areas that tourists can access. The Icelandic government has some of the strongest sustainability standards in Europe, but has been hands off when it comes to limiting where tourists can visit.

"If it's a natural site and it has to be protected then there has to be a protection put on that area and with that comes regulation," said Katarzyna Maria Dygul, who works with Visit Iceland on public relations and social media. "You can also put a quota on that, like you have all around the world a quota of how many people can visit a location because of that. Or when there's vegetation, then the local authorities also have to understand that with the growing number of people they will have to adjust. People will not be able to go all the way on that vegetation but instead there will be a viewing patio or platform. That's fine because... half a year later, other people who come will never expect to go on the grass. They will expect to stand on the platform."

Dygul and Shutter are co-owners of The Space, a co-working space and art studio in downtown Reykjavik that wouldn't be out of place in Berlin or Brooklyn.

This tension was also present during Skift's earlier trip to Iceland. Many who are concerned about the effect of increased tourism on the environment and roads, for instance, also believe that increased fees or restrictions will drive away the travelers the country needs to continue its strong tourism growth.

It's one thing, though, to appeal to the individual values or ethics of the individual traveler and encourage them to drink tap water or avoid driving their truck off a cliff. It's another to curb the damage caused by social media's herd mentality.

"The big group of people who come here are millennials," said Dygul. "This is a group generally that is more empowered to do things on their own. We work with influencers all the time and it's very easy to filter out those people who maybe have a large following and stunning content but basically the same content as everybody else... when you have another few hundred thousand people that do not know anything about photography but they want to take the same picture, you're suddenly in a very different dilemma."

The line between being a beneficiary or a victim of social media is slim in the age of overtourism. With Iceland's tourism growth in doubt, it's possible that the need to attract tourists will outweigh calls to limit tourism and its damage to the environment.

Others, though, have a more conservative vision for the future of tourism in Iceland. In the town of Húsafell, about 90 minutes from Reykjavik, sustainability and hospitality merge in a manner that attracts both international tourists and Icelandic families.

The small town is a destination for Icelanders looking to camp, and the family which owns the town built Hotel Húsafell to cater to the growing cadre of international tourists in 2015. The town also operates as a jumping off point for glacier and lava cave tours. There's no Instagram bait, save for the mountains in the distance where Icelandic strongman competitions once took place.

The small hotel is popular with families and groups who tend to stay for just a day or two on their vacation, according to Kristján Guðmundsson, marketing manager for Hotel Húsafell. China is a major source market. During slow periods and the shoulder season, the property offers Icelander-only rates to increase demand. The small stature of the hotel, and popularity of Húsafell as a camping destination, make it less likely to be severely impacted by reduced tourism demand.

The hotel and the entire town is powered by sustainable geothermal energy, as well, with food from local fisheries and farms. The ownership is considering building a spa for international visitors, and is currently building a bath in a perilous, but scenic, valley nearby.

Húsafell is just one example of many Icelandic towns that have taken a more measured approach to profiting off the tourism boom. Those who grew more slowly during the boom years seem better positioned to survive the current downturn.

Uncertain Times

In many ways, it is likely a slowdown in tourism will help Iceland's tourism industry become not just more stable, but more sustainable. While the future of Iceland's tourism sector remains murky, the bottom hasn't fallen in the first few months of the downturn.

It may be time for the Icelandic government to finally make a concerted effort to prepare for Iceland's future as a beacon for tourists, particularly if its other industries continue to struggle. With limited growth expected from its flagging fishing and manufacturing sectors, leaders need to articulate a vision for the country that goes beyond becoming more hospitable to foreign guests.

The lack of a major backlash against tourism has led to the lack of a cohesive government policy to oversee its growth. There is something of a vocal minority, as one source put it, but those people are simply annoyed at seeing more tour buses and rental cars driving by their farms.

"The government is going to finish a new tourism strategy," said Hlín Pálsdóttir, director of Visit Iceland. "Like probably everywhere else in the world, the main focus is on sustainability. How can we be sustainable? Because what has not been that much discussed is how important tourism has been for the regions. Many people are actually moving back to their hometowns, And they didn't really have that opportunity a few years back."

The good news for environmentalists and those concerned with the environmental impact that overtourism has had on Iceland is that the slowdown will reduce the effect of tourism in the short term. It may limit domestic investment in the country's tourism infrastructure, though.

"Some of the tourism sites need more investment; we have to regulate the traffic, the tourism flow in certain areas," said Hallsdóttir, head of the Icelandic Travel Industry Association. "There has been a lot more consciousness from the public sector in the last two, three years. They know now what they have to do and are willing to do it. So I think we will cope. That's my strong belief... We are hoping to get in line with the normal growth, which is about 4 or 5 percent per year. Not these crazy numbers from a few years ago."

With tourism growth tailing off, Iceland needs to look to the future. Relying on tourists to boost its economy worked for nearly a decade, but leaders need to search for methods to build a more stable environment for workers and entrepreneurs.

Tourism is an export that is highly susceptible to shifts in both supply and demand. With a global recession likely on the way in coming years, even a quick recovery for Iceland's tourism industry may leave its overall economy in a rut should global tourism decline.

Perhaps the lesson from the end to Iceland's tourism boom extends beyond tourism itself: it's time to take action during a crisis instead of waiting for another miracle.

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The Rise and Fall of Iceland's Tourism Miracle

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Down in the icy tunnel, the glacier is sweating. A dozen tourists slip around in the dark, taking selfies and scooping water into bottles from slushy puddles whenever the guide stops walking. Water streams down in thick rivulets throughout, dousing everyone in frigid water.

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talking about rome

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WORCESTER - Assumption University students and staff lived and studied at Villino Dufault, the university's campus in Rome, for an entire semester during which they were immersed in Italian cuisine, art and culture.

The small group of students and staff, who returned to the United States last week, were the first group to spend a semester overseas in over a year.

"With the pandemic, many students had not been on Assumption's campus the year before, and so many students wanted to be back in Worcester and so it really took, I think, a special group to want to go to Rome," said Maryanne Leone, a professor at Assumption and one of the staff members who joined the students in Rome this year.

"I think most of the students...had not been on Assumption's Worcester campus last year, so they delayed even further going back...and decided to go to Rome," she said. "So I think it was a really unique group, you know, everybody wanted to be there."

Rebecca Jalbert, a junior at Assumption studying finance and data analytics, was one of seven students who attended the campus this year.

She said that she has been trying to go since her sophomore year, first during the fall semester and then in the spring, but both times the pandemic prevented it from happening.

"This was the first semester that they actually let people, so I was ready to go," Jalbert said. "I have been waiting, so so excited to finally go."

The Rome campus, which opened in the spring of 2013, temporarily suspended operations last year as concerns of the COVID-19 pandemic grew.

Jaylin LaCasse, a sophomore at Assumption studying political science and one of the seven students who attended this year, said that she was hesitant about going to Rome at first.

"I was a little hesitant at first, just because I didn't really know what to expect," she said. "I had dragged my roommate at Assumption at the Worcester campus along with me, and I said, 'Nope, we're doing this,' so it ended up being the best decision I could have made."

A variety of courses

Students took courses on different topics including business in Italian tourism, Renaissance art and architecture and Italian-language classes.

"For art, we would go to site visits, which could be either a church or seeing specific sculptures or going to specific places in Rome that we were studying the day of in art," LaCasse said.

The experiences not only in the classroom but also in Rome itself gave them real-world experience and also had some impact on what the students want to eventually do after graduating.

"I think this was a little bit of a break for me from my major classes, but the business of Italian tourism class, that one was definitely most related to my majors," Jalbert said. "That one was interesting because I had no idea how much economic activity that the tourism industry created until I took this class. And I also didn't realize the positive and negative effects of the tourism industry."

She said that the experience has made her think about getting a job outside of the U.S., not only in Italy but also in other countries.

Meeting with the mayor

Students took site visits around Rome as well, including meeting the mayor, a moment that stood out for LaCasse.

"I was able to compare what I saw in Italy versus what I saw in America and relate them back to each other. We did that a lot," she said. "Throughout our Encounters with Rome class, we were able to compare and try to relate our home country versus our host country, which in some ways is great and others is not."

Leone explained that part of the Encounters with Rome course involved a unit looking at the Constitution of Italy.

"We look at the U.S. Constitution and compare them and they had to do a project where they had to give examples of how they saw the Constitution lived in Rome by noticing, observing the city," she said. "And it could have been the education system or health care or the politics...the mayor race was going on when we were there."

Students also took a course in environmental cultures of Europe, a class designed by Leone.

"It was based on research that I've been doing and a book project I have that's under review, so it was a unique opportunity to turn that into a course," Leone said. "I had to modify that for a course, and then use Rome as part of my classroom for that."

She explained that the course was designed to engage students with "pressing ecological issues," which are also "cultural ones."

"So we studied current ideas in the humanities regarding nature and culture, and human and nonhuman relationships through literature and film," Leone said.

They looked at the slow food movement in Italy, looking for sustainable food choices, taking care of the Earth and other topics as well.

Students had Friday through Sunday to themselves, using the long weekends to take day trips to places like Lake Como, or taking weekend-long trips to visit other areas of Italy, Jalbert said.

Travel limited to Italy

Due to COVID-19 travel restrictions, students and staff were not allowed to leave Italy and visit other European countries.

"I thought of it as a positive because it gave us an even deeper experience into Italy itself," Jalbert said. "I gave the metaphor that...'We could have gotten an appetizer of each country but instead, we got a full meal of Italy' and I enjoyed that. It was a different experience from a normal study abroad, you think of going all throughout Europe, but we got to really experience Italy on a very deep level."

The campus is located in a residential neighborhood of Rome, allowing students to experience the city aside from its tourist attractions - although there were plenty of opportunities to do those things as well.

"We were able to experience the Sistine Chapel with a very minimum number of tourists, which I thought was amazing," LaCasse said.

Leone explained that the number of people allowed in the sites was limited.

"I've been to the Sistine Chapel many times and, normally you can't move, but they didn't allow as many people in at once," she said.

Students and staff were also able to start developing daily routines, such as going to the gym together in the morning or getting an afternoon coffee.

"Every afternoon around 2:30 or 3, I would get a caffè macchiato and a cookie," said Leone. "And I would converse with the people at the local café or trying out different cafés. I had my favorites."

Although the students and staff would also dine out, they mostly ate at the campus as they were provided meals by "Chef Monica, the sweetest Italian lady ever," Jalbert said.

"We were able to develop a relationship with some of the priests because we got together with them for dinner a couple of times," Leone said. "Father Jerome was our priest who gave us Mass every Sunday and came to dinner with us after Mass, and so it was a unique opportunity also to get to know these priests who come from different parts of the world."

Father Jerome, she explained, was from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, while some of the other priests were from France.

Living in a residential neighborhood rather than in the center of Rome allowed the students and staff to feel like they were taking part in Italian culture.

"We had our go-to cafés in our neighborhood and a deli, where we would get paninis," Jalbert said. "So we just had regulars and people would recognize us through our neighborhood. So it just made it feel more homey."

LaCasse said that while the decision to go on the trip was great, she's excited to get back to the Worcester campus as she had only experienced half of one semester before the pandemic shut it down.

"I can't wait to get back to the Worcester campus and experience it," she said. "I think starting with Rome was definitely an eye-opener. It was a game-changer."

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'The best decision I could have made': Assumption students return from semester abroad on Rome campus

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WORCESTER - Assumption University students and staff lived and studied at Villino Dufault, the university's campus in Rome, for an entire semester during which they were immersed in Italian cuisine, art and culture. The small group of students and staff, who returned to the United States last week, were the first group to spend a semester overseas in over a year.

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This place is a accumulation of garbage in the North Pacific Ocean, the ocean has driven debris from the Asian countries, USA and more.

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The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a collection of marine debris in the North Pacific Ocean. Marine debris is litter that ends up in the ocean, seas, and other large bodies of water.

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International tourists were expected to reach 1.8 billion by 2030.Such huge number of tourists is a double-edged weapon. If not managed sustainably, then the conventional tourism can causes irreversible negative impacts to natural areas, for example, they put excess pressure on resources like water beside pollution

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We all love tourists and tourism because it creates employment opportunities and help our economy to grow. Unfortunately, mass conventional tourism is unsustainable economically and environmentally. On the other hand, the sustainable tourism (ecotourism) is about protecting environment and natural resources, empower local communities socially and economically. In addition, ecotourism is also about educating tourists on minimising their impacts on the environment.

The sustainable tourism (ecotourism) is defined as "tourism that takes full account of its current and future economic, social and environmental impacts, addressing the needs of visitors, the industry, the environment and host communities".

Last year alone, international tourists were around 1.2 billion and the figure is expected to reach 1.8 billion by 2030. Such huge number of tourists is a double-edged weapon. If not managed sustainably, the conventional tourism causes irreversible negative impacts to natural areas, by putting excess pressure on resources like water beside pollution.

The UAE has managed in the last 46 years to transform into a major entertainment, leisure, shopping and business destination. It is obvious that, in order to maintain its position and development pace, the country needs to pay more attention to sustainable tourism.

Sustainability in UAE

By 2021, the UAE is expecting to welcome around 30 million international visitors. Many of them will come not only for conventional tourism activities that can be found nowadays easily in many countries around the globe but they will be looking to explore the spectacular and natural attractions of the country.

There is no doubt that UAE is keen to become one of the most sustainable countries in the world with its green economy path. Thus, an ecotourism is definitely a future for UAE, as it will help realise it social, economic and environmental goals. In fact, UAE Vision 2021, launched by the President His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, emphasises the importance of "protecting the country's natural environment from the dangers of human activities" thus the country is undertaking a wide variety of projects focusing on conservation, community development and raising awareness of the importance of responsible tourism development to both communities and visitors.

UAE officially declared 43 protected areas that span more than 14 per cent of the country's territory that exceeds the target set in the National Strategy for Biodiversity 2015-2021. In addition, UAE is developing hundreds of natural sites, established tourist resorts around the most important natural and historical areas.

Tourists can enjoy the unique natural areas like oasis such as Liwa, natural hot springs such as Al Ain hot springs, natural reserves such as the Wathba Wetland Reserve. In addition to enjoying the desert, beaches, mountains, aflaj and sabkhas where one can try nature-based eco activities such as camping, horse riding, excursions on camels, dune cycling, dune boarding, dune gliding/paragliding and many more desert adventures.

Creating eco attractions will provide socio-economic and environmental benefits to rural communities. It is worth mentioning that such activities do not have to be mega-scale projects. In fact, the majority of them can be a small-scale project that can open up more economic opportunities for small private companies and local communities.

In addition, UAE can benefit from the presence of many visitors for business and leisure visiting for instance Shaikh Zayed Mosque, Burj Khalifa, Mall of the Emirates and Palm Jumeirah to promote ecotourism activities as well. Visitors like to have a wide variety of tourist attractions at a single location. That will boost the demand together for both conventional tourism and ecotourism.

Carrying capacity

Definitely, UAE needs an updated strategy to better utilise its natural attractions in the best way to maintain its economic growth and protect environment. Needless to say that large tourist numbers visiting natural areas is not an indicator for success, on the contrary, large tourist numbers pose pressure to ground water in tourism hotspots, increase pollution and disturb wildlife.

So, an exercise of calculating the carrying capacity for each natural attraction in order to identify the number of visitors that maintain sustainability for each area at specific period. Increasing the minimum charge for the visit can compensate the lower number of visitors as well as protecting the environment.

In short, UAE is best qualified to be one of the top ecotourism destinations in the region in the near future.
Dr. Mohamed Abdel Raouf is an independent environment researcher.

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By Mohamed Abdel Raouf, Special to Gulf News

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We all love tourists and tourism because it creates employment opportunities and help our economy to grow. Unfortunately, mass conventional tourism is unsustainable economically and environmentally. On the other hand, the sustainable tourism (ecotourism) is about protecting environment and natural resources, empower local communities socially and economically.

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Most tourist visited Iceland because of unqiue Galcier. Which means tourists will take their water bottle and harvest water from the Galcier, causing the Galcier to slowly melt.

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Down in the icy tunnel, the glacier is sweating. A dozen tourists slip around in the dark, taking selfies and scooping water into bottles from slushy puddles whenever the guide stops walking. Water streams down in thick rivulets throughout, dousing everyone in frigid water.

At the Into the Glacier attraction in northern Iceland, the waves of rapacious tourists snapping up dirty water from a rapidly melting glacier is a stark reminder of the state of Iceland's tourism sector.

Iceland has been the poster child for the positive and negative effects of the overtourism phenomenon. Tourism growth helped the country recover after a brutal financial crisis and has empowered a new breed of entrepreneurs. Tourism revenue now accounts for 42 percent of Iceland's economy, an increase from around 27 percent in 2013, according to Statistics Iceland.

With tourism taking on increased importance, the country's fishing and manufacturing sectors have contracted over time. The change has made the country's overall economy reliant on foreign visitors.

"It's never been about the tourists, it's more about the industry itself," said Inga Hlín Pálsdóttir, director of Visit Iceland. "After the financial crisis, we were always worried. Are we going into the same bubble? Are we going in the same direction, that this is a bubble that is going to burst?"

Nearly a decade into Iceland's unprecedented growth as a global tourism hotspot, a variety of issues have led to an economic slowdown that many, surprisingly, see as a good thing for the country's travel sector.

As the wave of overtourism crested in Iceland over the summer, the country is looking for what's next. Fortunes have been made and lost over the last decade, with many now looking to the future of Iceland as a more mature tourism destination. Skift returned after three years to Iceland in July, speaking to more than a dozen tourism leaders and residents about the country's troubles and path forward.

What was different this time was a sense of concern for the country's overheated tourism industry, What's more, there is a worry about a malaise left in the wake of an unprecedented boom period that helped bring the country out of an economic recession. Instead of embracing tourism growth, nearly everyone said it is now time for the country to sit back and take stock of how tourism fits into a more sustainable overall economy for Iceland.

The city of Reykjavik remains dotted with cranes as new construction projects have blossomed in recent years. New international shopping outlets, like H&M, have invaded the city at the same time. Generic restaurants and boutiques have popped up, bringing with them new inauthentic locations for travelers to shop and eat.

Many expect these types of projects to be put on hold as the country's business community grapples with a reality where tourism may not be a reliable cash cow. As Reykjavik has transformed itself into a modern international city, the rest of Iceland may have been left behind. With the lack of a serious cultural backlash against tourism, most have now realized just how crucial the travel sector is to Iceland's future prospects.

Much in Iceland has changed since Skift visited three years ago. The attitude of Icelanders is now much more cautious, as the business people and small towns lifted up by tourism face the prospect of forging ahead with fewer visitors. Let's look at how the country got to this point and how its tourism leaders are adapting despite deep uncertainty.

The Big Picture

To understand where Iceland stands today, it's important to chart the last decade of the country's evolution following a devastating financial crisis in 2008. Iceland had relied on heavy industries and fishing to power its economy, but over-leveraged banks helped lead to a dramatic drop in the value of the Icelandic krona and led to a rise in unemployment as the country had to be bailed out by the International Monetary Fund.

Tourism in Iceland began to grow following the April 2010 eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in the country's south. It was cheap to visit and costs were affordable due to the country's weak currency; the eruption acted as a global billboard for Iceland's natural beauty.

Tourism morphed from a minor part of the economy to its biggest industry over the course of the decade.

As time went on and its economy recovered, prices began to rise for residents and tourists alike. What was once an affordable vacation became pricier despite the cheap flights that continued to bring passengers to Iceland. Gas and food became pricier for Icelanders, too, putting pressure on households across the country.

"Iceland was in fashion, and the exchange rate of the krona was attractive from the UK, where the boost in tourism really started," said Magnus Arni Skulason, chairman of Reykjavik Economics, a consulting group. "Tourists from the UK started it, then the U.S., then Germany and other European countries. Post-Brexit, there was a big impact on medium-income Brits who wanted to come to Iceland. And then the appreciation of the krona made it more expensive to come here."

Now Iceland's economy is in its first slump since its financial crisis began in 2008. The strong krona, the collapse of Wow Air, the Boeing 737 Max fiasco, and rising labor costs have each contributed to the current downturn.

"We were going down as well, regardless of Wow Air, and that was because the currency was too strong," said Bjarnheiður Hallsdóttir, head of the Icelandic Travel Industry Association. "It was mainly that but it was a few things at the same time which caused this rather strong decline."

It's been a near perfect storm of factors that have led tourism growth numbers to fall and left many Icelanders wondering whether tourism is truly the answer for Iceland's future. The unexpected collapse of Wow Air in late March helped kick off the massive decline in tourism; tens of thousands of passengers who were planning to visit Iceland on the cheap can simply no longer visit.

The last time international visitation dropped so steeply? The month following the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull, which led to the cancellation of 95,000 flights in Europe and Iceland. This crisis is manmade, though.

Statistics don't bear out a catastrophic collapse of Iceland's tourism sector. Far from it, in fact; tourism in 2019, so far, has fallen to 2017 levels, according to leaders across Iceland's tourism sector judging by their businesses. The full picture won't emerge until the end of the year, when Iceland enters the shoulder season for its tourism industry.

The latest tourism accounts from Statistics Iceland show what tourism executives have noticed in their own businesses. In June, the beginning of Iceland's busiest traditional tourism period, tourist visitation dropped by 15 percent year-over-year. Tourism VAT turnover dropped 12 percent, mimicking the visitation drop.

To put a potential 15 percent decline into perspective, Iceland experienced 5.4 percent growth in international visitation in 2018 and 24.1 percent growth in 2017 according to the Iceland Tourist Board. So a 15 percent decline over the next year would bring visitation back to 2017 levels, which represents a 400 percent increase from 2011 visitation levels.

A few wrinkles emerge that show how the slowdown is affecting the types of vacations people are taking. Hotel stays were flat year-over-year in June, while Airbnb stays dropped 11 percent. Unpaid accommodations, like camping, declined a massive 30 percent, presenting more evidence that Iceland's tourism economy is shifting away from affordability to a more expensive and upscale proposition for travelers.

Iceland's hotel sector has been built up during the boom, growing 9 percent in number of rooms from July 2014 to July 2019, according to STR. Seven hotels totaling another 1,129 rooms are in the country's pipeline, and many in the tourism sector are concerned those properties will be shelved if economy uncertainty persists. Strong regulations against Airbnb, limiting rentals to 90 days each year, have also decreased the ability of travelers to use homesharing services.

Still, housing in Reykjavik remains incredibly more expensive than elsewhere in the country.

The flip side is that tourism's growth outside of the Reykjavik area, which has helped revitalize sleepy towns and empowered entrepreneurs to build businesses, is perhaps most severely affected by this slowdown.

Vehicle traffic around Iceland's ring road has decreased across all of the country's regions, with East and West Iceland seeing double-digit year-over-year declines in July. All those remote villages and fishing towns which rode the wave of increased tourism are now feeling the effect of fewer visitors during the peak summer travel season.

"In a way this growth was unexpected and then too much," said Hallsdóttir. "But on the other hand, we have a lot of new investment and new companies which are suffering right now because of that. For the long term thinking, it's good that we have a little break now regarding the tourism infrastructure. And then I'm talking about the public sector. The private sector is ready and was ready when the big boom came, but the public sector wasn't."

Air Trouble

While the collapse of Wow Air helped touch off the downturn, the struggles of national carrier Icelandair over the last year bear some responsibility as well.

Wow Air, the low-cost carrier launched by entrepreneur Skúli Mogensen in 2012, eventually grew to a 20 plane fleet before economic trouble hit in 2018. New widebody planes increased its operating costs and the airline had trouble filling the extra seats on these planes. The airline began to lose money before collapsing into bankruptcy on March 28, 2019 following a failed acquisition by Icelandair.

The collapse immediately made it more difficult and expensive for U.S. travelers, who account for about a third of total visitors to Iceland, to visit this year. High costs already deterred U.S. visitors with 7.1 percent fewer visiting from August 2018 to July 2019 than in the previous year.

Chinese visitors continued to surge 14.8 percent over the same period while top European destinations except for Poland declined. Chinese visitors also spend the most of any traveler, likely helping stanch some of the bleeding from the widespread decline in tourism.

At the same time, rival Icelandair was beset by its own problems. It was forced to lease aircraft after grounding its fleet of nine Boeing 737 Max aircraft, leading to a decline in capacity and increased costs as the summer travel season began. Strong competition from European carriers also limited its ability to grow airfares in 2018, causing it to lose money.

It sold off 80 percent of its Icelandair Hotels division to Malaysian investor Vincent Tan as part of a plan to focus solely on air transportation and tourism operations.

"The MAX aircraft were intended to cover 27 percent of Icelandair's passenger capacity in 2019," said Icelandair CEO Bogi Nils Bogason in a recent earnings report." For this reason, the position in which the company now finds itself as a result of the suspension of the MAX aircraft is without any precedent and has a significant impact on the operations and performance of the Company... We have also placed emphasis on ensuring seating capacity to and from Iceland, with the result that the number of Icelandair's passengers traveling to Iceland has increased by 39 percent in the second quarter compared to the same period last year."

The loss of Wow Air, then, has helped to boost the future prospects of Icelandair once the Boeing 737 Max situation is sorted out.

The growth of both airlines essentially eliminated seasonality for Iceland's tourism industry, and a lasting disruption is likely to bring it back in a major blow to the sector's less established players. An analysis by Airlines Reporting Corp., which provides services to most global passenger airlines, found that its partner airlines have actually sold more tickets to Iceland in 2019 than 2018, presenting some hope that the downturn will be limited in scope.

"Both Icelandair and Wow Air were adding seat capacity during the winter," said Sveinbjörn Indridrason, managing director of Isavia, Iceland's airport authority. "Last year there was no seasonality in Iceland. So you had this summer traffic three months, these shoulders four months and then the winter traffic five months. Similar distribution passenger-wise, not per passenger. So the seasonality just went out of the Iceland market."

A side effect of the decline in flights has been the limited ability for Icelandic goods to reach global markets, injuring economic sectors outside of tourism in the process. International cargo shipping has increased from 35.2 million tons in 2010 to 57.4 million tons in 2018, broadening the ability of Icelandic companies to sell goods in foreign markets.

For what it's worth, the hub strategy which helped power the growth of aviation in Iceland is still being pursued by Isavia. While the company's master plan from 2015 did not anticipate the massive surge in new routes and arrivals, this downturn is helping to bring the sector back to its original projections.

"When Wow Air went bankrupt it was not bad timing if you look at it from a construction perspective," he said. "So we are not in the middle of any real construction so we don't have to lay down any hammers and have like a half-built terminal building with a lot of invested costs but maybe not the revenues to finish it."

Indridrason confirmed that he had been contacted by representatives of WAB Air, which had designs to restart Wow Air's operations in the near future as an Icelandic company, and American investor Michelle Ballarin who purchased Wow Air's assets following the bankruptcy. In early September, Ballarin announced her plans for Wow Air to begin service once again over the next year although experts are unsure of how realistic her timetable is.

"There's a reason Wow Air failed the first time," said Jay Shabat, senior analyst at Skift Airline Weekly. "There was simply too much capacity in the market and what's known of the plan to revive it doesn't inspire much confidence."

There have also been rumblings of the potential for a new international airport near Keflavik to help supercharge tourism growth and the country's cargo business. It's a thorny political issue, but Indridrason noted there would be many challenges faced by operating two busy airports so close to each other.

Even if the government wanted to close Keflavik and operate a single international airport, the U.S. Navy's base at the airport complicates the matter.

Perhaps the biggest opportunity to grow tourism would be through a more robust network of regional airports across the country. Right now, tourists are forced to transfer from Keflavik to Reykjavik City Airport, nearly an hour away, in order to fly into one of Iceland's smaller domestic airports.

Many proponents of increased tourism across Iceland believe an increase in domestic flights from Keflavik would help boost the industry as it spreads across the country. Right now, direct flights are available for tourists from Keflavik to Akureyri in Northern Iceland but not to other areas. Besides occasional charter flights direct from international destinations that already happen, a more robust series of routes and airports have the potential to boost future growth.

"If you need to build infrastructure that can handle serious international traffic [in these smaller regions], it would be very costly and will probably never be profitable," said Indridrason. "The domestic airport system, it's a public transportation system funded by the State of Iceland. And public transportation always needs to be funded by the municipalities or the individual States. But you can't combine those things if you don't bring [travelers first to boost the economies in those regions]."

Tour Operator Woes

Part of the problem is that many emerging tourism companies acted to take advantage of the boom by growing quickly instead of taking a more measured and conservative approach.

Travelers are still spending on package tours when they visit, despite flights and accommodations eating up a more significant portion of travelers' budgets, according to data from the Iceland Tourist Board.

While travelers continue to spend, the margins operators are likely to have shrunk.

"Wow Air went down in April, and that obviously had an effect," said Hjalti Baldursson, CEO of Reykjavik-based tour operator technology company Bokun, which is owned by TripAdvisor and operates the technology backbone for most tour companies in Iceland. "There was a small decrease in May. April was 1 percent up year-on-year, but other months are up significantly in terms of booking numbers. That doesn't tell the story of whether the companies profitable, because if you look at the average order value measured in dollars that is going down quite significantly. This has to do with currency fluctuations between the Icelandic króna and the U.S. dollar.

"The margin of the companies that are selling is going down. On top of this, there is big competition in Iceland. There are more and more companies coming into the market that are providing good products."

Bokun's data also show an increase in direct online booking, meaning operators pocket more of a booking's value, increasing the margins on their products in the process. The cost of labor, though, presents a major challenge to tour operators operating on thing margins.

"Another thing influencing companies in Iceland is that salary costs are going up," said Baldursson. "Iceland has been coming off its own success, the economic metrics of the country are extremely good. It's a very healthy economy and in all measurements a rich country. So getting staff and competing with lower paid staff in other markets is becoming harder and harder."

Evidence backs this claim up. Iceland has the fifth highest gross domestic product per capita among European countries, and the country's wages increased 6.7 percent from 2016 to 2018. The country's strongest unions also recently locked in a wage increase, putting more pressure on low-margin businesses. Even with seasonal workers from other European countries working during peak periods, the cost of labor remains a major obstacle to growth.

The economic contraction is leading to a wave of consolidation in Iceland's tour industry. On Skift's last trip to Iceland three years ago, we spoke to Hjörvar Sæberg Högnason, who had founded tour operator Reykjavik Sightseeing in order to appeal to the new wave of international visitors to Iceland.

Since then a race to the bottom on pricing coupled with rising labor costs and the high value of the krona have caught up to Högnason. Competition with the established Gray Line Iceland and Reykjavik Expeditions, the other two major bus tour operators in Reykjavik, had led the company down an unsustainable path once signs of a tourism slowdown began to emerge late last year.

An effort to grow his business by partnering with Blue Lagoon for the spa's shuttles, and earning the concession for Keflavik's city shuttle to Reykjavik, also proved challenging with respect to low margins and the complications of running a bus tour operation alongside shuttles.

In an effort to compete going forward, Gray Line Iceland and Högnason's Reykjavik Sightseeing announced a merger earlier this year to provide a competitive advantage against Reykjavik Expeditions.

"There's increasing talk of companies needing to merge," said Högnason. "We're nowhere near a catastrophe; the situation gives us the time to step back and run our businesses in a more economic fashion."

He also noted that self-guided tours and the ease of renting a car likely contributed to a downturn in business for bus tour operators. A recent report suggests 80 percent of visitors to Iceland rent a car at some point in their trip.

"Year-round, we think there will be more car rentals on the road," said Högnason. "You have all the international car rental brands and local ones; I'd imagine they are in a bidding war for travelers right now."

In the rush to compete over the last three years, money was invested in growing his fleet and branding at the expense of innovating in the actual tour experience. Finding skilled, qualified guides remains a challenge particularly as Iceland's tourism sector continues to mature.

"We need to do it extra well, in a way that makes people excited to come back the next day," said Högnason. "The agenda is to teach travelers how to behave and embrace the traveler experience. There is decreasing demand, so let's make sure they leave with a positive impression."

Much like Wow Air couldn't survive a blip in demand after a potential merger with Icelandair was tabled, so too are tourism companies consolidating in order to better weather this uncertain period. A return to strong growth instead of the explosive growth the country has seen this decade will ensure that business practices shift and become less risky for operators and their employees.

"It is quite easy to run a company if your business is growing 50 percent," said Baldursson. "Then you're typically worried for the customers and not the operational efficiencies. Now when we're seeing small double digit growth, maybe, as for example, in July we saw a 15 percent growth, in June we saw a 7 percent growth in number of bookings. We're seeing that companies have a tendency now to look more into their costs and cost base. It's an opportunity for them, and I think it's a healthy revamp of their operations that they're running through right now."

Another wrinkle could spell future trouble for Iceland's tour sector: the quiet rise of cruising in ports across Iceland. Overall, the number of cruise ships entering port has increased from 476 in 2016 to 750 in 2018, according to Cruise Iceland. Passengers arriving in port grew from 326,850 to 441,789 over the same period, a 35 percent increase in the number of potential visitors to Iceland's port cities.

Cruise passengers tend to cause congestion at a city's most popular attractions without contributing much to the local economy.

The biggest beneficiaries have been not just Reykjavik, but the smaller cities across the country that see few international visitors from tours and domestic flights. With the high costs associated with a trip to Iceland expected to remain, a more affordable cruise vacation is becoming a compelling option for vacationers.

"Above all the ports are happy about it," said Hallsdóttir, head of the Icelandic Travel Industry Association. "Some of the smaller communities in the rural areas very far away from Reykjavík, they are getting some business at least. This is a topic we have to really have to think about and regulate before it gets over our heads."

Something for Everyone

As a tourism hotspot matures, it tends to lose some of the authenticity that made it attractive to visit in the first place. Iceland, too, with its ample natural beauty and unique culture isn't immune to the forces of globalization, as evinced by the transformation of Reykjavik into something resembling a traditional international city.

As investment dollars have flowed into tourism, new attractions have been under development that wouldn't be out of place in any major travel destination around the world. The difference is that these attractions are being designed for not just travelers, but native Icelanders as well.

One example is Perlan, a landmark overlooking Reykjavik which has been converted into a museum and restaurant with stunning views of the city. A dome built around six water tanks, the building used to house a rotating restaurant on its top floor. Today, the building attracts visitors during the week and Icelanders on the weekends.

By appealing to locals instead of just tourists, the somewhat strange attraction has found new life in an Iceland where the new can coexist with the old.

"Flying is now more expensive, and accommodations are more expensive; Southern hotels aren't fully booked," said Eva Björnsdóttir, the reception manager at Perlan, of the country's prospects amid a tourism decline. "Icelanders need to come together and help each others' businesses. We need to make sure that travelers have a good time, not just in one place, but across their entire trip. They're competing for the same guest. We need to think of Iceland as a whole experience for travelers."

Another newcomer to Reykjavik is FlyOver Iceland, a mixed media experience where visitors go on a virtual flyover around Iceland's most scenic landmarks.

On a hard-hat tour of the attraction in the final stages of construction, it was clear Flyover Iceland could exist in any major tourist destination; the concept, created by the Canadian company Pursuit, already has similar operations in Toronto and Las Vegas.

"A lot has happened in the tourism sector over the last year," said Eva Eiríksdóttir, manager of marketing and brand experience for FlyOver Iceland. "It has cooled down and people were panicking, but the slow down is probably a good thing."

Eiríksdóttir pointed out that the weather is often bad in Iceland, increasing the demand for indoor activities like FlyOver Iceland for visiting families and residents. With high property values and rent prices in downtown Reykjavik as well, new attractions could provide the impetus for the development of new neighborhoods and communities too.

These types of attractions aren't just popping up in Reykjavik, though. New spas, attractions, and experiences are popping up in the country's North and South regions, offering a blend of Icelandic culture and modern convenience. One of the most absurd is 1238: The Battle for Iceland, a virtual reality experience that puts visitors inside a variety of historical viking battles.

The attraction is located in Skagafjörður, which sits about 3 hours by car from Reykjavik and 90 minutes from secondary city Akureyri, showing how regions outside Iceland's capital have benefitted from the tourism boom.

Instagram and Its Discontents

Speaking with tourism experts and locals alike, concerns about the damaging effects of increased tourism on Iceland's environment were minimal.

Iceland is a victim of climate change like so many places but has chosen to focus on sustainability in the areas it can control, like traveler behavior and waste management. A major campaign to encourage visitors to drink tap water instead of bottled water, for instance, has found success this year as news of the demise of Icelandic glacier Okjokull entered global headlines.

Specific cases of overtourism, though, gravely concern many who have tired of people exploiting the environment for profit.

Many tie the rise of social media to the growth of Iceland's tourism sector in an integral way, and it's difficult to see a way out.

"There's an issue with locations and the number of people visiting them," said Joe Shutter, a Reykjavik-based photographer who leads small group photography tours across the country. "You can have a well behaved visitor and a not very well behaved visitor. They both have two feet. There is a certain critical mass. There's a scale transformation that takes place. Location A: 10 people visit. Location B: 100 people visit. The damage is more than ten times worse on location B. Damage goes up exponentially. Some places literally cannot handle it."

He gave an example of an Instagram influencer who had recently posted specific information for travelers to visit a remote and beautiful location he shoots at, replete with geotag information. When he asked the influencer to remove the geotag, the influencer simply said it would violate their ethics to do so and updated their caption with a warning for travelers not to litter or damage the location.

"This is the absolute lowest common denominator of how anybody should behave with a modicum of decorum in a location," said Shutter. "I explained to them that two feet are two feet. And a hundred feet are worse than ten. And that a scale transformation takes place with that and that means that behaviors have to be modified in that sense in that certain places literally can't handle that."

Others say it should be up to the government to select specific places to protect instead of residents working to limit what areas that tourists can access. The Icelandic government has some of the strongest sustainability standards in Europe, but has been hands off when it comes to limiting where tourists can visit.

"If it's a natural site and it has to be protected then there has to be a protection put on that area and with that comes regulation," said Katarzyna Maria Dygul, who works with Visit Iceland on public relations and social media. "You can also put a quota on that, like you have all around the world a quota of how many people can visit a location because of that. Or when there's vegetation, then the local authorities also have to understand that with the growing number of people they will have to adjust. People will not be able to go all the way on that vegetation but instead there will be a viewing patio or platform. That's fine because... half a year later, other people who come will never expect to go on the grass. They will expect to stand on the platform."

Dygul and Shutter are co-owners of The Space, a co-working space and art studio in downtown Reykjavik that wouldn't be out of place in Berlin or Brooklyn.

This tension was also present during Skift's earlier trip to Iceland. Many who are concerned about the effect of increased tourism on the environment and roads, for instance, also believe that increased fees or restrictions will drive away the travelers the country needs to continue its strong tourism growth.

It's one thing, though, to appeal to the individual values or ethics of the individual traveler and encourage them to drink tap water or avoid driving their truck off a cliff. It's another to curb the damage caused by social media's herd mentality.

"The big group of people who come here are millennials," said Dygul. "This is a group generally that is more empowered to do things on their own. We work with influencers all the time and it's very easy to filter out those people who maybe have a large following and stunning content but basically the same content as everybody else... when you have another few hundred thousand people that do not know anything about photography but they want to take the same picture, you're suddenly in a very different dilemma."

The line between being a beneficiary or a victim of social media is slim in the age of overtourism. With Iceland's tourism growth in doubt, it's possible that the need to attract tourists will outweigh calls to limit tourism and its damage to the environment.

Others, though, have a more conservative vision for the future of tourism in Iceland. In the town of Húsafell, about 90 minutes from Reykjavik, sustainability and hospitality merge in a manner that attracts both international tourists and Icelandic families.

The small town is a destination for Icelanders looking to camp, and the family which owns the town built Hotel Húsafell to cater to the growing cadre of international tourists in 2015. The town also operates as a jumping off point for glacier and lava cave tours. There's no Instagram bait, save for the mountains in the distance where Icelandic strongman competitions once took place.

The small hotel is popular with families and groups who tend to stay for just a day or two on their vacation, according to Kristján Guðmundsson, marketing manager for Hotel Húsafell. China is a major source market. During slow periods and the shoulder season, the property offers Icelander-only rates to increase demand. The small stature of the hotel, and popularity of Húsafell as a camping destination, make it less likely to be severely impacted by reduced tourism demand.

The hotel and the entire town is powered by sustainable geothermal energy, as well, with food from local fisheries and farms. The ownership is considering building a spa for international visitors, and is currently building a bath in a perilous, but scenic, valley nearby.

Húsafell is just one example of many Icelandic towns that have taken a more measured approach to profiting off the tourism boom. Those who grew more slowly during the boom years seem better positioned to survive the current downturn.

Uncertain Times

In many ways, it is likely a slowdown in tourism will help Iceland's tourism industry become not just more stable, but more sustainable. While the future of Iceland's tourism sector remains murky, the bottom hasn't fallen in the first few months of the downturn.

It may be time for the Icelandic government to finally make a concerted effort to prepare for Iceland's future as a beacon for tourists, particularly if its other industries continue to struggle. With limited growth expected from its flagging fishing and manufacturing sectors, leaders need to articulate a vision for the country that goes beyond becoming more hospitable to foreign guests.

The lack of a major backlash against tourism has led to the lack of a cohesive government policy to oversee its growth. There is something of a vocal minority, as one source put it, but those people are simply annoyed at seeing more tour buses and rental cars driving by their farms.

"The government is going to finish a new tourism strategy," said Hlín Pálsdóttir, director of Visit Iceland. "Like probably everywhere else in the world, the main focus is on sustainability. How can we be sustainable? Because what has not been that much discussed is how important tourism has been for the regions. Many people are actually moving back to their hometowns, And they didn't really have that opportunity a few years back."

The good news for environmentalists and those concerned with the environmental impact that overtourism has had on Iceland is that the slowdown will reduce the effect of tourism in the short term. It may limit domestic investment in the country's tourism infrastructure, though.

"Some of the tourism sites need more investment; we have to regulate the traffic, the tourism flow in certain areas," said Hallsdóttir, head of the Icelandic Travel Industry Association. "There has been a lot more consciousness from the public sector in the last two, three years. They know now what they have to do and are willing to do it. So I think we will cope. That's my strong belief... We are hoping to get in line with the normal growth, which is about 4 or 5 percent per year. Not these crazy numbers from a few years ago."

With tourism growth tailing off, Iceland needs to look to the future. Relying on tourists to boost its economy worked for nearly a decade, but leaders need to search for methods to build a more stable environment for workers and entrepreneurs.

Tourism is an export that is highly susceptible to shifts in both supply and demand. With a global recession likely on the way in coming years, even a quick recovery for Iceland's tourism industry may leave its overall economy in a rut should global tourism decline.

Perhaps the lesson from the end to Iceland's tourism boom extends beyond tourism itself: it's time to take action during a crisis instead of waiting for another miracle.

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The Rise and Fall of Iceland's Tourism Miracle

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Down in the icy tunnel, the glacier is sweating. A dozen tourists slip around in the dark, taking selfies and scooping water into bottles from slushy puddles whenever the guide stops walking. Water streams down in thick rivulets throughout, dousing everyone in frigid water.

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Hawaii is a beautiful place and it is a good place for tourists. But it is $1950 per day unless you are joining a hunting safari.

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Osaka was running at full speed on tourism, but now they are moving to a more sustainable pace of growth because there is a lot of pollution going on in Osaka.

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OSAKA/TOKYO (Reuters) - Osaka, long Japan's "second city," is winning the race against Tokyo to draw foreign tourists, but after a boom, its retailers and property developers are adapting to shifting tourism spending patterns.

Inbound tourism to Osaka surged five-fold between 2012 and 2017, faster than visits to Tokyo, as the city lured low-cost carriers and promoted itself as a base to visit the 25 World Heritage sites in nearby Kyoto and Nara.

Initially, developers and retailers scrambled to build new hotels, expand floor space, and install cashless payment systems like AliPay and WeChat to keep up with the sudden influx of big-spending tourists, mostly from China.

But tourism is entering a new phase now, where instead of loading up on luxury brands, visitors want to spend more on services like makeup consulting, maternity goods, and other cheaper items.

Businesses expect that to become the norm - and to provide a permanent boost to the economy of the Kansai region around Osaka as the city prepares to build a large casino resort.

"Osaka was running at full speed on tourism, but now we're moving to a more sustainable pace of growth," said Takeshi Yamaguchi, associate director of research at real estate consulting firm CBRE in Osaka.

"Compared to Tokyo, Osaka is positioned for longer and more sustainable growth in development and tourism because of things like the integrated resort," Yamaguchi added.

TOURIST BOOM

The success of Osaka, long overshadowed by Tokyo and dismissed as gritty and chaotic, has caught analysts by surprise.

The city's compact layout and food culture have proven a hit with Asian tourists, and that has created new opportunities for start-ups, social media marketing consultants and foreign property developers.

Osaka and its surrounding cities may become the most visible example of how Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's economic policies have changed Japan.

Since Abe took office in late 2012, the government has relaxed visa requirements for China and other Southeast Asian countries. Foreign visitors to Osaka hit 11.1 million in 2017, a five-fold increase from 2012, making it Japan's fastest-growing inbound tourist destination, government data show.

By contrast, visits to Tokyo roughly tripled in the same period.

Foreign visitors to Osaka could reach 26 million per year by 2030, CBRE's Yamaguchi says.

"I've been to Osaka three times, and I like it better than Tokyo," Zhang Xin Jie, 30, a software engineer from Shenzhen, China, said at a shopping arcade in Osaka's bustling Shinsaibashi district. "I like the vibe, the history, and the shopping."

Tourism spending in the Kansai area, which includes Osaka, Kyoto and Nara, more than tripled to 1.3 trillion yen ($11.64 billion) in fiscal year 2017 from fiscal 2013, adding an average 0.2 percentage point to the Kansai area's economy for the past three fiscal years, according to a central bank report.

'SELLING EXPERIENCES'

The economic benefits are expected to continue, but Osaka's retailers say tourism spending is slowing.

Average incomes of visitors are falling as more cheap flights become available. China's government enacted a law in January taxing Chinese sellers who buy Japanese goods in bulk and resell them online.

Chinese tourists are growing more interested in beauty treatments, maternity wear, baby bottles and other goods that cost much less than luxury items, retailers say.

Duty-free sales at Takashimaya Co's Osaka department store rose 13 percent in 2018, much slower than a 71 percent increase in the previous year.

"The amount purchased per customer is falling, so we are reaching a point where we need to think more about selling experiences instead of selling only goods," said Tatsuya Inagawa, deputy manager of public and investor relations at Takashimaya's Osaka store.

More Chinese shoppers are asking sales assistants to show them different makeup techniques, according to Inagawa, so stores may offer tourists more beauty counseling.

Some start-ups are taking things a step further by marketing Osaka to Chinese tourists as a destination for spa treatments and medical tourism.

Property development, which was once red-hot in Osaka, is also starting to slow.

New construction of hotels and restaurants surged six-fold from 2012 to 2017 but slumped by 87 percent in 2018 compared with the previous year, a sign of concerns that too much supply came to market too quickly. Construction of wholesale and retail space also fell 28 percent in 2018 from the previous year.

Some property analysts and retailers say the slowdown in tourist spending and property development is just a temporary dip.

Their rationale: Osaka plans to open a 1 million-square-metre casino and conference center in fiscal 2024 on par with Singapore's casino on Sentosa Island. The Osaka facility is expected to draw 2.2 million visitors by 2030 at an estimated economic impact of 760 billion yen per year.

In addition, Osaka will host a Group of 20 heads of state summit in June, Rugby World Cup matches in September and October, and a World Expo in 2025, which should keep tourists and their money flowing steadily into Osaka and the Kansai region.

"Tourism in Osaka is growing faster than in Tokyo, so I am certain that one day soon we will overtake Tokyo," Hirofumi Yoshimura, mayor of Osaka city, told reporters in Tokyo.

"Osaka is close to a lot of attractions in Kyoto and Nara that tourists want to see," Yoshimura added. "This is a catalyst for tourism that Tokyo doesn't have."

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general department stores (trbc level 5)

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Tourism in Osaka, often overshadowed by Tokyo, is catching up

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OSAKA/TOKYO (Reuters) - Osaka, long Japan's "second city," is winning the race against Tokyo to draw foreign tourists, but after a boom, its retailers and property developers are adapting to shifting tourism spending patterns.

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China, He Bei Sheng, Shi Jia Zhuang Shi, Xin Hua Qu, 天山公寓10栋 邮政编码: 050005

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China, He Bei Sheng, Shi Jia Zhuang Shi, Xin Hua Qu, 天山公寓10栋 邮政编码: 050005

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China, He Bei Sheng, Shi Jia Zhuang Shi, Xin Hua Qu, 天山公寓10栋 邮政编码: 050005

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During summer Hebei Shijiazhuang had been completely isolated for a few weeks, and no one was allowed to go there, and everyone must stay at home only delivery mans can go deliver food to people's homes.
(Link: https://www.ntdtv.com.tw/b5/20211103/video/308831.html?中國17省爆疫情%20河北石家莊2縣市連夜「封城」)

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【新唐人亞太台 2021 年 11 月 03 日訊】中共病毒疫情，擴散至中國大陸17省份，鄰近首都北京的河北省，疫情持續升溫，其中，石家莊市的深澤縣和辛集市已經被封，恐成下一個疫情爆發熱區。河北省1名副縣長及相關衛生官員遭到免職。有當地居民表示，深澤市的疫情遠比官方說的更嚴重。

據河北省衛健委通報，11月2號，石家莊市新增確診病例14例，分別是晉州市3例，深澤縣11例。

10月31號16點到11月1號16點，石家莊市新增6例確診，其中，郭某有內蒙古額濟納旗12天旅居史，11月1號，深澤縣河莊村被調整為中風險地區。

深澤縣居民李先生向新唐人透露，全縣被要求居家隔離，整個縣城、周邊縣市都被封，河莊村村民也都被轉移出去。

河北深澤縣居民 李先生：「整個縣城都封了，所有的人都在居家隔離，周邊縣市都封了，都不允許出入了，小區單元門都封了，所有的一切都停了。沒有提前通知，是10月31號晚上突然就封了，河莊（村）也都轉移出去了，整個村裡沒人了。」

李先生表示，深澤縣的疫情遠比官方報導的嚴重。

河北深澤縣居民 李先生 ：「是一個蒙古回石家莊的，沒有報備，他就上深澤縣轉了好多天，不是說光河莊村的有，整個深澤縣，嚴重嚴重，他回來的早，10月10幾號就回來了，31號才檢查出來，中間20多天，醫院、超市、藥店啊，滿大街、每個村，串的地方太多了。」

據通報，在深澤縣的第二輪核酸檢測中，發現了19例初篩陽性，正在進行複檢。

此外，河北辛集市11月1號新增4例確診，據報導，該市也已經被封。

河北辛集市某酒店 工作人員：「我們酒店被徵用了，現在應該是進不來，高速口也是封著的，辛集，路都已經封了。所有的店都關了。因為深澤確診的那個村子跟我們是交界，所以辛集這邊是挺嚴重的。」

新唐人記者 李珊珊 陳潔 柏妮 採訪報導

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中國17省爆疫情 河北石家莊2縣市連夜「封城」 - 新唐人亞太電視台

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【新唐人亞太台 2021 年 11 月 03 日訊】中共病毒疫情，擴散至中國大陸17省份，鄰近首都北京的河北省，疫情持續升溫，其中，石家莊市的深澤縣和辛集市已經被封，恐成下一個疫情爆發熱區。河北省1名副縣長及相關衛生官員遭到免職。有當地居民表示，深澤市的疫情遠比官方說的更嚴重。 據河北省衛健委通報，11月2號，石家莊市新增確診病例14例，分別是晉州市3例，深澤縣11例。 ...

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Antarctic tourism industry picks up and species from other locations are now appearing there. And, according to a new study, it’s threatening species and ecosystems in the southernmost continent.

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As more tourists visits the West Lake, the waters became more and more polluted. The water quality decreased rapidly throughout 2008 and 2018 because the increasing of tourism population.

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Singapore is a very popular city. In 2019, around 19 million tourists visted Singapore. And because of the tourist, most locals works at a tourism business, which means there will be low amount of people working as other jobs.

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SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singapore's tourism sector is facing an existential crisis, its tourism board chief said on Wednesday, laying out plans to boost local demand after a collapse in visitor arrivals due to COVID-19 travel restrictions.

Singapore had welcomed a record 19.1 million travellers in 2019 - more than three times its total population.

But the island city-state closed its borders earlier this year and has advised its citizens to avoid going overseas - a position that is unlikely to change in the near term.

Tourism numbers for the remainder of the year would be similar to April and May when they fell 99.9%, said Singapore Tourism Board chief executive Keith Tan. The board unveiled a S$45 million ($32.5 million) marketing and promotion campaign to drive local demand for lifestyle and tourism businesses.

Singapore is hoping locals, who spent S$34 billion on overseas travel in 2018, will splash out on staycations at hotels and visit tourist attractions.

Still, the STB does not expect residents, already worried about salaries and jobs, to be able to fill the S$27.1 billion hole left by international visitors.

"Given the severe impact that COVID-19 has had on international travel, it is inevitable that more job losses will happen in the coming months," Tan added.

The government has pumped in stimulus of nearly S$100 billion to cushion the impact of Singapore's worst recession.

"It is not sustainable for us to keep supporting a business model that may not longer be available or at least will not come back within the next one, two years," said Chan Chun Sing, minister of trade and industry, urging tourism businesses to seek new markets and niche offerings.

While demand for mass market tourism is unlikely to pick up in the near term, Chan said, Singapore has agreed to resume essential business travel with China and Malaysia. It is in talks with South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and some European nations for similar agreements.

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hotels & entertainment services (trbc level 3)

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Singapore seeks local boost for tourism sector facing existential crisis

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SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singapore's tourism sector is facing an existential crisis, its tourism board chief said on Wednesday, laying out plans to boost local demand after a collapse in visitor arrivals due to COVID-19 travel restrictions. Singapore had welcomed a record 19.1 million travellers in 2019 - more than three times its total population.

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Tourists who arrive to Paris are bringing more Covid germs with them. The government of France wants to lower down the Covid germs, so they restricted people to travel to France. Now France's population has lowered down by 40%.

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France in 2020 was mostly left abandoned as the COVID-19 pandemic-induced lockdowns grounded air traffic, reduced international and local travel for both leisure and business globally, incurring economic losses of over €60 billion.

"The year 2020 was a shock. The tourism sector was down by 41% causing a shortfall of 61 billion euros [nearly $74.6 billion]," Secretary of State for Tourism Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne said in an interview to local channel BFMTV.

In 2019, it recorded a footfall of over 90 million foreign tourists. The sector accounts for 8% of the GDP and employs 2 million people in direct and indirect jobs, including the hospitality and catering businesses.

In the first seven months of 2020, there was a 66% drop in arrivals and tourism revenue fell by 50%. European tourists, who generated 69% of the tourism revenue in France in 2019, rose to 81% last year.

Geographically, the fall in the international tourism revenue was strongly noted in the Ile de France region which includes the capital city Paris (€23.1 billion drop), the Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes region (€7.2 billion), Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur (€6.7 billion), Occitanie (€4.5 billion), Nouvelle Aquitaine (€4.1 billion) and Corsica (€800 million).

The tourist activity was contributed mostly by the 94% of the French people who traveled and stayed in France instead of travelling overseas.

Lemoyne said that to compensate the losses the government has doled out a bailout package of up to €16 billion for the industry and the supportive measures will be maintained for as long as the situation requires.

He appealed French people and European tourists to not cancel their ski holidays as he said he was hopeful of the ski stations opening very soon. A meeting on Jan. 20 is likely to decide the fate of ski resorts which have remained closed for the season starting October.

Authorities are expecting the sector to rebound this year with domestic and international tourists generating €111 billion in tourism revenue.

Famed for its cultural and art attractions not just limited to the iconic Eiffel Tower and Louvre Museum, the scenic French riviera in the south, gastronomic and wine destinations in the east and the Alps in the southeast, France is among the sought-after destinations for foreign and local European tourists.

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Pandemic leaves tourism in France down by 40%

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France in 2020 was mostly left abandoned as the COVID-19 pandemic-induced lockdowns grounded air traffic, reduced international and local travel for both leisure and business globally, incurring economic losses of over €60 billion. "The year 2020 was a shock.

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Since the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games was held during Covid-19 It has benefited Tokyo in a positive way. According to the TravelDailyMedia, It has helped the transport link and made the transportation more smooth during the Olympics considering there are fewer visitors. But One Negative impact is that the country has gotten less money considering there has been fewer tourists and visitors to the Olympic games.

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Although some people are opposed to holding the Tokyo Olympics, the sporting event may have a positive impact on Japan's tourism.
Ralph Hollister, travel and tourism analyst at GlobalData, comments: "The positive aspects of Tokyo 2020's tourism legacy will offer no quick fix for the amount of investment that will be lost due to no international visitation and restricted domestic visitation. However, it offers benefits for Japan in the long-term, and will assist the nation by creating a more robust and varied tourism product for future years."

New infrastructure will increase productivity, capacity, and attraction

Improved transport links for the Olympics, such as Tokyo's new Yamanote Line Station, will reduce congestion for Japanese residents and help to improve the efficiency of domestic business travel going forward, creating an increase in the productive capacity of the Japanese economy.

Additionally, the expansion of Terminal 2 at Haneda Airport was partly done to create capacity for the surge of international visitation that would have been created by the Olympics. Terminal 2 was previously domestic only. However, it has had a portion of its terminal converted and expanded to accommodate international gates. In 2020, ANA unveiled three brand-new lounges as it moved most of its international operations to Terminal 2.

Hollister said: "This move from Japan's largest airline shows how this expansion, which was done primarily for the Olympics, will benefit inbound tourism for years to come, adding greater capacity and brand-new lounges, which will increase tourism expenditure and improve touristic experiences."

According to GlobalData, pre-pandemic domestic visitation levels in Japan are forecast to be retained by 2022, then growth is expected to increase at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 6.3% from 2021 to 2024. Inbound visitation is expected to reach pre-pandemic levels by 2024, which is significantly later than domestic tourism. However, inbound arrivals will be likely to grow after 2024 and improved destination attraction, along with capacity, will be necessary to facilitate future growth from international markets. With these improvements already complete for the Olympics, Japan will be in a prime position to capture returning domestic, but more importantly, international demand after the Olympics has taken place.

World-class sporting facilities for future events

Japan made huge investments in improving or building various sporting facilities, which can be used in the future making the country a prime destination for sports tourism.

"Japan now has a range of modern, world-class sporting facilities in place to host future sporting events, which means that losses from the Olympics could be salvaged in the future. When bidding for future events, Japan's case will now be strengthened with these new facilities. These bids could either be in the form of other high profile multi-sport events, or in the form of single sport events. Regardless of the type of sporting occasion, Japan can now position itself as a major destination for sport event tourism and sport participation tourism," Hollister said.

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Tokyo 2020 tourism legacy could create some positive impacts

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Although some people are opposed to holding the Tokyo Olympics, the sporting event may have a positive impact on Japan's tourism. Ralph Hollister, travel and tourism analyst at GlobalData, comments: "The positive aspects of Tokyo 2020's tourism legacy will offer no quick fix for the amount of investment that will be lost due to no international visitation and restricted domestic visitation.

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Tourism can impact places like coral reefs, in good ways and bad ways. Tourists create income which helps fund conservation programs. But tour groups also can damage delicate reefs.

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The tourism operators who depend on the natural wonder, already contending with climate change, have been walloped by the pandemic. The absence of visitors is bad for them - and the reef.

Travel bans are keeping thousands of international travelers away from the Great Barrier Reef, endangering the economic future of Cairns, Australia, the gateway to the natural wonder.

CAIRNS, Australia - Diving beneath the ocean, Russell Hosp swam toward the limestone bed of the Great Barrier Reef, where he reattached bits of blue staghorn coral. With tourists gone, he was filling the void with this small act of conservation, which took his mind off the uncertain future on land.

"It was a bit surreal," Mr. Hosp, a reef guide, said of spending hours at sea unaccompanied by the usual enthusiastic visitors. Aboard the quiet catamaran, he said, he realized just how much the coronavirus "had changed the world."

The pandemic has fast-forwarded a looming reckoning for the tropical city of Cairns, the main gateway to the reef and the base for Mr. Hosp and many others whose livelihoods depend on it.

Tour operators there were already fighting a perception that the reef is in its death throes, as warming waters cause repeated mass bleaching that has robbed many corals of their vivid colors. But where climate change has been more of a creeping threat to the reef's survival, and thus to Cairns's tourism lifeblood, the coronavirus has delivered a hammer blow.

Now this city, so linked with the natural wonder just off its shore that it can scarcely imagine life without the visitors who come in droves, has been forced to confront the prospect that it can no longer depend on tourists.

Foreign and local travelers, already deterred by last summer's devastating bush fires and now locked out by Australia's international and domestic travel bans, have all but vanished, and a $4.6 billion industry built around the world's largest living structure has ground to a near halt.

The sudden disappearance of visitors feels all the more unreal because the virus itself has barely touched Cairns: The city of 150,000 people in far northeastern Australia has recorded only a couple of dozen cases, and has none currently.

But there is no escaping the reach of the pandemic.

"We'd never stopped running before - the global financial crisis, terrorism attacks, airline strikes; you name it, the world has thrown it at us," Mr. Hosp said. "We don't know if we'll ever get back to normal."

In Cairns, visitors who usually cram the jetty every morning as they wait to pile onto boats have dwindled from the thousands to a few hundred, leaving operators out of work, boats moored at the dock, and some hotels and restaurants shuttered.

Storefronts on the main drag are for lease, and the esplanade, usually heaving with tourists at dusk, looks like something out of a sleepy beach town.

"It's been so quiet," said Heather Forbes, a Cairns resident, adding that because the city had been dependent on tourism for so long, it was difficult to know how to diversify its economy.

"I don't think anywhere should be solely dependent on one thing," she said.

It might seem that there was a silver lining in all this, that the exodus of tourists would be a boon for the health of a reef in critical condition.

But while the abrupt absence of visiting crowds has had surprising effects in other places - monkeys overrunning a city in Thailand, deer wandering cities in Japan looking for food - the environmental impact of tourism on the reef is negligible, scientists say, especially when compared with climate change.

The reduction in international travel, and therefore planet-warming emissions, has created only a short-term benefit. The "infrastructure of fossil fuels wasn't affected," said Prof. Terry Hughes, a global expert on coral reefs at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia.

In the end, a prolonged downturn in visits to the reef could actually be detrimental to its well-being. "Tourism provides a social and economic rationale for why the reef needs to be better protected," Professor Hughes said.

The situation has prompted the Cairns region to look more critically at its dependence on international travelers, especially those from China, who make up a large portion of reef visitors. China and Australia are engaged in an increasingly bitter diplomatic tug of war that could keep Chinese travelers away even after the borders are reopened.

"We're realizing that we can't rely on China," said Samantha Davidson, a travel consultant at the Reef Info Visitor Center. "It's good," she added, because it's sending a message to those closer to home: "Hey, come and see us."

As recent flare-ups of the coronavirus have closed state borders within Australia, some people have taken the opportunity to explore their own (very large) backyards.

"We were supposed to be in Hawaii, but we said we still wanted to take a trip somewhere warm," said Alicia Dean as she lounged in a sarong on the deck of a boat heading out to the reef. She had traveled within the state of Queensland from Brisbane, the capital, to Cairns, more than 1,000 miles to the north.

And some foreigners, stranded in Australia, figured they may as well take the time to experience the reef, a World Heritage Site. "My flight keeps getting canceled," Julia Pape, a 27-year-old from Germany, said as she donned her flippers and wet suit, ready to plunge into the tropical waters.

Tourists like Ms. Dean and Ms. Pape, however, don't make up for the hundreds of thousands of missing international arrivals in the region, the throngs who help support the jobs of more than 60,000 people (more than those employed by Australia's oil and gas industry). Experts have warned that even with a vaccine, it may be years before travel returns to pre-coronavirus levels.

But while the idled boats and empty storefronts tell the story of a city shaken by Australia's travel bans - which led overseas arrivals to collapse by 99.5 percent in May compared with the previous year - in other pockets of Cairns there is a sense of relief at having made a lucky escape from the threat of infection.

Patrons at bars flout the rules of social distancing, and backpackers from overseas - many of whom have decided to ride out the pandemic wave in Australia - share close quarters in dormitories at hostels. Real estate agents say the area has drawn some clients looking to flee the danger of Covid-19.

"It's a good place to be stuck," said Brent Bundy, a cyclist from Oregon who has been in Australia two months longer than planned. He is "in no hurry" to return to the United States, given the country's huge number of infections, he added.

At night, parts of the city could almost be mistaken for a pre-pandemic world.

On a recent Saturday, locals and backpackers spilled out into the streets, shouting from the back of cycle rickshaws and lining up to get into the only nightclub in town. Inside, guests, mandated to sit down, had organized their stools in a circle on the dance floor, arms draped around one another's backs. Members of the group took turns sneaking in an illicit dance.

Even this limited revelry was not possible a few months ago, with Queensland in lockdown as virus cases were rising.

With little else to do during those eight weeks, Mr. Hosp, the reef guide, and crew members from other tour companies, undertook work that the government had deemed essential: replanting hundreds of pieces of coral as part of a study on the impact of heat stress on their growth.

Under the ocean, among the parrotfish and green turtles, Mr. Hosp said, "you could almost forget what was going on in the world." But aboard the boat, the harsh reality of the virus's impact came flooding back.

"I definitely missed the tourists," Mr. Hosp said. "It was very humbling."

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'A Bit Surreal': The Lonely Plight of the Great Barrier Reef (Published 2020)

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The tourism operators who depend on the natural wonder, already contending with climate change, have been walloped by the pandemic. The absence of visitors is bad for them - and the reef. CAIRNS, Australia - Diving beneath the ocean, Russell Hosp swam toward the limestone bed of the Great Barrier Reef, where he reattached bits of blue staghorn coral.

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Tourism has created environmental impacts in El Nido including diminishing water quality, and biodiversity loss. However, the local government is fighting these issues in a number of ways, including limiting tour group sizes and monitoring water pollution.

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El Nido’s balancing act: Managing nature and tourism

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The national and local governments are putting in place measures to minimize the negative impact of tourism pressure on El Nido