BANFF – As the tourism industry continues to flourish around the world, many of the world’s protected places are struggling to find ways to manage visitation and Banff National Park is no exception.
With more than four million visitors per year, Banff National Park is one of the most popular tourism destinations in Canada, however it continues to struggle to find ways to manage the influx of people during the busy summer season.
Megan Epler Wood, director of the International Sustainable Tourism Initiative at Harvard University, said Banff’s experience is similar to many other tourism destinations around the world, however there are ways to manage it.
The first step is to place a value on the most strategic tourism assets found in the park and protect them with intensive management approaches using science-based data and investment.
“Most of our national governments, regional governments and local governments have done a lot to attract tourists, but they haven’t done enough to figure out, in many instances, how much it is costing them per tourist,” said Epler Wood, who was at the Banff Centre for a seminar hosted by Banff Lake Louise Tourism on April 25.
She said part of the problem is the vision for many of the world’s protected places, including Banff National Park, no longer aligns with today’s reality.
“It sets out a kind of vision that that is really what we’re seeking to achieve, but what we are now experiencing is often different and that can be painful,” said Epler Wood, using a photo of the summer crowds at Lake Louise as a prime example.
“We can have those visions, but we may have to adapt them to current reality and that’s the dialogue you need to have – how are you going to adapt to the modern reality?”
She said one way to do that is to create new forms of inclusive planning systems that require interactive science-based data to create “smart destinations.”
“The smart destination has to include all of your assets – historic centres, your cultural monuments, you vital ecosystems and your socio-cultural systems – that’s what your product is, but you now have to measure that,” said Epler Wood.
To do that, she said protected places need to set baseline measurements and then regularly monitor them to understand when certain assets are under threat, similar to Banff’s annual state of the park report, which measures the park’s major ecosystems, cultural assets and infrastructure.
“The more pressure there is on your place, on your systems, the more monitoring and regular measuring you need to do,” said Epler Wood. “Your tourism growth is fast and if you’re aren’t measuring regularly you’re not going to be on top of it and staying ahead of what you need to understand.”
She said key challenges facing protected places can be monitored and managed by using GIS tools to identify levels of vulnerability.
“That’s the kind of system that you can keep updated in order to understand how you are faring in all the categories you ultimately select.”
She said by using benchmarks and regularly monitoring key assets, protected places will be able to act more frequently to adapt to challenges, rather then relying on management plans that are renewed once every 10 years.
She said part of the reason a lot of protected places haven’t implement this type of monitoring already is that most protected places focus on economics.
“In a new report from our world tourism organization together with the United Nations environment program, they found that only 11 per cent of sustainability plans are actually implemented by tourism agencies,” said Wood.
She said there are lots of reasons why this may be, but what it comes down to is that most policies lack science-based measurements.
“If we can recover from this deficit of policy planning and investment, we could protect our world heritage sites in most circumstances,” said Wood. “We also know that if we achieve this that our visitors will be happier.”
She said implementing policies such as quotas, or a reservation system, could also help protect areas from being over-run by tourists.
“There’s a million ways that you could make it so it’s not just about access, but it’s about experience,” said Epler Wood, explaining implementing a demand management policy could also make it more equitable.
During her presentation, she said she was skeptical that educating tourists to be more responsible when they visit is an efficient way to manage visitation.
“I’m not sure we can influence the behaviour as much as control the circumstances,” said Epler Wood. “No matter how we use all these great new ideas to make tourists more responsible, it just never seems to work and I think the reason is that without question I’ve decided that people put their ethics on vacation when they go on vacation.”
While using science-based data to create robust management policies is a step in the right direction, she said it’s also critical governments invest to properly protect these places.
“One of things that we are certain is that when you see more people coming it’s going to cost you more to manage, it’s just a given,” said Wood. “With increased demand, without additional revenue to manage the situation you’re going to see a degradation of product.”
This topic has been an ongoing debate in the Bow Valley for decades, however attempts by Canmore, Banff and Jasper to lobby the provincial government for additional revenue tools to support their tourism-based economies has so far proved unsuccessful.
In 2016, a report commissioned by the three communities showed that collectively the towns make up less than one per cent of Alberta’s population, but play host to 13 per cent of the province’s visitors, attracting more than four million tourists annually.
The report found that visitor spending in the Rocky Mountains results in an annual economic impact of $2.46-billion and $756-million in tax revenue, however 97 per cent of the tax revenue goes to higher levels of government.
She said one solution to resolve this challenge could include figuring out the value of Banff National Park to the country’s economy and using this to convince policy makers that it’s worth their investment. Another solution could also include using revenue generated locally to support tourism-based economies.
