Over tourism or over visitation?

Nine Arch Bridge

Yala National Park

Sigiriya

Minneriya National Park 

In the wake of the post-pandemic tourism boom, there is also mounting backlash against an excess of tourism in many countries. When too many tourists flock to a destination, exceeding its ability to manage it sustainably, it leads to negative impacts such as overcrowding, environmental degradation, strained infrastructure, reduced quality of life for residents, and a diminished visitor experience. 

Tourists are loving a destination to death! 

This is referred to as ‘over tourism’ or sometimes as ‘over visitation’.

Although the two terms sound similar, they are not quite the same. They differ in scope, impact, and interpretation.

Over visitation 

Over visitation is a quantitative problem when a site or attraction gets more visitors than it can comfortably handle in a given period. It happens when the volume exceeds the physical and management capacity. It is all about numbers and visitation. It is seen as a localised issue and may or may not cause serious problems—depending on how well it’s managed. Sometimes overcrowding of an attraction can raise serious safety concerns of the visitors.

Over tourism

Over tourism on the other hand is a qualitative problem with broader impacts on socio-cultural, economic, and environmental issues, where tourism causes negative impacts that degrade quality of life for residents, harm the environment, or diminish visitor experience. It is not just numbers, but how tourism changes a place, often for the worse. It is more subjective—assessed by resident sentiment, environmental degradation, loss of authenticity, and decline in visitor satisfaction. It therefore is a more wide-spread and serious issue affecting an entire country’s tourism image and branding. 

So where does Sri Lanka stand? 

In my opinion, thankfully we have still not reached the level of wide scale over tourism. But alarmingly, on the other hand, over visitation is rampant in several tourism hot spots around the country. 

Here are a few examples:

The Yala National Park is all but ‘lost’ due to heavy over visitation, and today there are many negative comments from tourists about their safari experience at Yala. Several tour operators have taken Yala off their itineraries. And the impact on the environment and eco system is disastrous. 

The world famous ‘Gathering’ of elephants in Minneriya National Park is also fast following in the footsteps of Yala. 

From a safety aspect there is the possible danger of attacks on jeeps disturbing wildlife, particularly from wild elephants in the park. Some Jeep drivers tend to entice elephants with food (which is strictly prohibited inside a National Park) to provide a higher level of ‘excitement’ to the tourists, expecting a lavish ‘tip’ after the safari ride. The wild elephant Gemunu in Yala in particular, has a long track record for attacking jeeps. However warnings have fallen on deaf ears and this is a potential danger to tourists. 

The Sigiriya Rock Fortress is another example of gross over visitation with some 15,000 visitors said to be climbing the rock during peak months. Many bottlenecks, especially along the stairway, impede movement and the climb is by no means an easy task.  

There are many potential danger aspects during the Sigiriya rock climb, especially with such over visitation. Is the staircase towards the summit of the rock, designed to carry so many people at any given time? What would happen if a section were to collapse? 

Also what about the infamous wasps on the rock? Are they still there? These wasps are known to become aggressive and swarm when disturbed, particularly by loud noises or sudden movements. A local legend suggests the bees are the incarnation of the Sigiriya King Kasyapa’s soldiers. There have been instances of bad wasp attacks previously. (https://www.dailymirror.lk/print/breaking-news/wasp-attack-sigiriya-tourists/108-63085). With this type of overcrowding the consequences of a wasp attack would be disastrous. (The “wasps” on Sigiriya rock are actually Giant Honeybees (Apis dorsata), not true wasps or hornets).

Another new attraction vying for high over visitation levels is the Nine Arch Bridge in the Ella area.

There are many more examples… But the question is what can be done?

In Sri Lanka’s over visitation case, the problem lies mainly in the poor management of the sites. There are solutions which can to be implemented, however unpalatable they may seem in the short term (especially by the tourism industry) if we are to save these attractions from complete environmental destruction.

Here are some ideas to manage to situation:

• Implement a strict visitor carrying capacity
• Introduce differential pricing (higher price for peak periods) 
• Short term de-marketing strategy (reducing promotions and publicity) of the attraction
• Complete closure of the attraction for short periods (there was a practice of closing Yala during the months of October and November due to the dry season, but due to lobbying by the tourism industry this has been cancelled on some occasions) 

Conclusion

In the first instance urgent action needs to be taken to manage all the over visitation tourism hot spots by the respective Government authorities. Regulations governing the sites should be implemented strictly without bowing down to pressure from various interested parties with vested interests.

Secondly Sri Lanka tourism must have a proper strategy in place which, while driving growth in arrivals, must simultaneously drive for more high revenue yielding tourists.

Failure to do so will steer Sri Lanka tourism towards over tourism, resulting in us ‘Killing the Goose that lays the Golden Eggs’.