It is not just Petra that is under threat of destruction. More than 600 million tourists a year
now travel the globe, and vast numbers of them want to visit the world's most treasured sites:
the Parthenon, the Taj Mahal, Stonehenge, the national parks of Kenya. The tourist industry
will soon be the largest industry in the world, and it has barely reached its 50th birthday.
Many places that once were remote are now part of package tours. Will nothing put a stop to
the growth of tourism?
A brief history of tourism
T
he Romans probably started it with their holiday villas in the Bay of Naples.
In the 19th century, the education of the rich and privileged few was not complete without a
Grand Tour of Europe's cultural sites.
Things started to change for ordinary people in 1845 when Thomas Cook, of Leicester,
England, organized the first package tour.
By 1939, an estimated one million people were travelling abroad for holidays each year.
It is in the last three decades of the 20th century that tourism has really taken off. Tourism
has been industrialized: landscapes, cultures, cuisines, and religions are consumer goods
displayed in travel brochures.
Tourism today
T
he effects of tourism since the 1960s have been incredible. To take just a few examples:
The Mediterranean shores have a resident population of 130 million, but this
swells to 230 million each summer because of the tourists. This is nothing. The United
Nations projects that visitors to the region could number 760 million by the year 2025. In
Spain, France, Italy, and most of Greece, there is no undeveloped coastline left, and the
Mediterranean is the dirtiest sea in the whole world.
In the Alps, the cable cars have climbed ever higher. More and more peaks have
been conquered. It is now an old Swiss joke that the government will have to build new
mountains because they have wired up all the old ones. There are 15,000 cable car systems
and 40,000 kilometres of ski-runs.
American national parks have been operating permit systems for years. But
even this is not enough for the most popular sites. By 1981, there was an eight-year waiting
list to go rafting down the Grand Canyon's Colorado River, so now there is a lottery once a
year to select the lucky travellers.
In Notre Dame in Paris, 108 visitors enter each minute during opening hours.
Thirty-five buses, having put down their passengers, wait outside, their fumes eating away at
the stonework of the cathedral.
Poor Venice with its unique, exquisite beauty. On one hot, historic day in 1987,
the crowds were so great that the city had to be closed to all visitors.
In Barbados and Hawaii, each tourist uses ten times as much water and
electricity as a local inhabitant. Whilst feeling that this is unfair, the locals acknowledge the
importance of tourism to their economy overall.
The prehistoric cave paintings at Lascaux in France were being slowly ruined
by the breath and bacteria from 200,000 visitors a year. The caves have now been closed to
the public and a replica has been built. This is much r raised for its likeness to the original.
The future of tourism
W
ill there be more replicas like in Lascaux? There already are. Heritage theme parks (mini-
Disneylands!) are springing up everywhere. Many of the great cities of Europe, such as
Prague, Rome, and Warsaw, are finding that their historic centres are fast becoming theme
parks - Tourist ghettos, filled with clicking cameras and whirring camcorders, abandoned by
all local residents except for the souvenir sellers.
Until recently, we all believed that travel broadened the mind, but now many believe the
exact opposite: Modern travel narrows the mind'.