Spanish Tourism Documentary

Thanks to Jamie from the ESA   and Matt Podbury for the lead to this new documentary on the impacts of tourism.
The site is part of a wider site on tourist impacts.

The movie is in Spanish, but has English subtitles.

TUI Better World Detectives

Spent part of the weekend working on some slides for a presentation I'm doing with colleagues from TUI who I worked with on a project called Better World Detectives.
One of the themes of the project is sustainable tourism.



Dubrovnik has the Game of Thrones connection which has drawn many people to see the film locations, and this has created some issues.
In Ireland, there are now plenty of Game of Thrones themed opportunities for visitors. This has created employment, but also brought lots of people to fragile landscapes such as the famous hedges.

This El Pais article is particularly good on the issues.

This article has links to a number of places and impacts too.
Venice is particularly overcrowded, and Prague has banned Segway tours.


Follow the project on @BetterWorldDets

Cambridge Retail change

Last weekend was spent in Cambridge, and not having been there for a while, and at the weekend in particular, it was clear that there has been a dramatic change to some parts of the city.
One stretch of road that I noticed had changed a lot was the end of Regent Street nearest to the train station (and the SPRI)

This has changed significantly over the last five years or so, when there were internet cafes and other similar businesses in this part of the city.
The first sign of the change is Jim Wah Express at the junction here.
Follow the red bus here, and you will head down Regent Street.
Look to left and right as you go, and you will see a clustering of shops which are of a particular type, and with a particular 'demographic' in mind...
Could this be linked to some other population changes within the city?



Image: Parkers Piece - Alan Parkinson shared under CC license

Responsible Tourism: some case studies

Responsible Tourism has a focus on the people who live in a place, and not on the tourists themselves. It is about reducing the impact on the environment, although there are some who suggest that the impact of tourism is greater than people believe.
For the last few month's I've been working to update some resources for TUI: they are called the Better World Detectives, and are for KS2 (keep an eye out for some resources for older students which will be appearing before too long)
I'll let you know when the final versions appear in the next week or so...

The stories from Venice a few weeks ago, with the installation of some turnstiles to try to reduce overcrowding at certain points, suggest that the residents of Venice are being sidelined in favour of tourists. They are being priced out of their own home town, which is being overrun every day by a growing tide of tourists.
Barcelona has seen similar protests. There is also a concern about the impact of Air BnB (which I shall return to later)
PEUAT is a Spanish scheme which aims to tackle one of the issues.
Read about it here. It's a Special Tourist Accommodation plan.



Barcelona is the city where this plan is being introduced

Another scheme encourages businesses to source the food that they serve to tourists from local producers rather than relying in imported food.
Fethiye is one of those...