The National Geographic Society: How A Place Can Change

The National Geographic Society

The National Geographic Society was founded in Washington, D.C. in January 1888 for ‘the increase and diffusion of geographic knowledge’. It is one of the world’s largest non-profit educational and scientific organizations. Their Center for Sustainable Destinations (CSD) seeks to help individual places use the geotourism approach to improve stewardship and attract the most beneficial, least disruptive forms of tourism. Through the use of a Geotourism Charter and Strategy they aim to identify, sustain, develop and market the geotourism assets that make each place unique. Eventually producing a co-branded National Geographic map highlighting the natural, historic, and cultural assets that are individual to a particular destination.

We first met Jonathan Tourtellot, Director of Sustainable Tourism at National Geographic back in 2006 during a trip to Washington D.C., he defines three styles of tourism:

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  Touring

  Generally a responsible form of tourism that brings benefits to local business and has a low environmental impact. Largely dependent on the human and physical geography of a place. Minimal negative impacts on the area. Examples – Hiking holidays, Homestays.

• R and R tourism

  Rest and recreation. Dependent only on the physical geography of a place and not concerned with heritage or cultural aspects. Destructive to the natural physical beauty of an area. Examples – Ski resorts, large scale coastal developments.

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  Entertainment style

  This form of tourism doesn’t depend on the character of a place at all. Industrial strength: high volume, high impact. Governments make desicions based on this type of tourism. Examples – Theme parks, Casinos, outlet shopping malls.

When tourism development is badly managed, badly planned or even completely neglected, market forces can quickly turn a once unspoilt area of natural beauty rich in cultural heritage into an ‘entertainment style’ tourism destination. This drift from ‘touring’ tourism to ‘entertainment style’ tourism is a lifecycle often exacerbated by governments keen to increase visitor numbers to a country or an area, encouraging rapid growth in the tourism sector.  When a destination loses its original appeal through too much traffic, crowding and over-commercialisation it is termed by academics as ‘the Butler resort lifecycle’.

The National Geographic Society recently held the first Geotourism Challenge – a global search for innovations in tourism that sustain, enhance and preserve local culture and place – earlier this year in association with Ashoka Changemakers.  The winners were 3 Sisters Adventure Trekking in Nepal, Rios Tropicales Lodge in Costa Rica, and Yachana Foundation in Ecuador.