In 1973 Tony Wheeler and his wife Maureen founded Lonely Planet Publications and went on to publish hundreds of popular travel guides. He talked to Saturday Morning about overtourism, and the travel industry post-Covid.
Tony Wheeler Photo: supplied
Prior to pandemic restrictions Wheeler was one of the world's most well-traveled people. But the Covid-19 pandemic has grounded him for possibly the longest period in his life; he's been stuck in the Australia for about 368 days now.
Wheeler has used his extra free time to contribute to a collection of essays: 100% Pure Future: New Zealand Tourism Renewed, which imagines a new, more sustainable phase of tourism in Aotearoa.
While it's easy to look back at the pre-Covid international travel industry with rose-tinted glasses, Wheeler says it's valuable to acknowledge some of the challenges as we reshape and grow the industry post-Covid.
"I think there were certain elements of travel that were becoming unsustainable... that overtourism question.
"It really popped up in different ways in different places. There was the Venice question; we don't want all those big cruise ships coming by. And it seems to me to solve that's very easy, you just charge them more and they wouldn't come.
"There was the Barcelona and Amsterdam question; where you've got too many tourists in cities where there's a limit to how many tourists can be handled, and the local population is not happy about being squeezed out by all the tourists around the canals in Barcelona, or wandering around Las Ramblas in Barcelona.
"And then you have the New Zealand one; where it's not the big cities that are being crowded out, it's the countryside and the tramping trails.
"So I think overtourism had different perspectives in every place. The trouble is there were lots of places that even before the pandemic, didn't have enough tourists, and they've gone from very small numbers to zero, and that can be painful as well."
Tourism after the pandemic will take time to bounce back, but won't be the same, he predicts.
"I think it's not going to just come back like the way it was before. We're not going to just open the doors and suddenly all the flights will be full and the destinations are going to be crowded. Because people are going to be concerned about going places, they're going to be thinking 'if I go there will I be safe?' or 'If I go there will there be anything to do?'"
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"Right now, you could say 'okay, we'll go to the UK because they're vaccinating like crazy and bringing their numbers down pretty quickly', but at the moment everything's shut. You can't go to the art galleries, you can't go to the theatre, and why else do you go to London? You go to London to dine out and see plays that you've read about, and visit the Victoria and Albert and the portrait gallery and things, and if you can't do those things, then why go there?
"And the other question is, if you go there are you going to be welcome or are the barriers going to be shut? Or have you got quarantine for two weeks... if you've got a two week holiday plan that puts you off a little bit.
"So I think it's not going to come back the same way as before. I think what we're going to see first is more local travel. And I think there'll be certain elements that pop up. Walking is a good example - if you're walking you're by yourself, you're not rubbing shoulders with people in crowded bars and restaurants and theatres and risking virus infection.
Wheeler is among those to have re-directed their wanderlust to do more travel locally.
"Here in Australia they say you cannot at the moment buy a caravan, they're just booked out. And that sort of base level tourism is the thing that's going to come back faster than anything else.
"But on the other hand, another category of travel that has thrived is taking your private jet. If you're really wealthy you can get around the legal requirements and the government will welcome you is often the situation. So travel at the extremes has been doing better."
How should New Zealand build the industry back? Is it as simple as saying 'lets just charge people more'?
"Just concentrating on just the high wealth travellers is not necessarily a good idea. That's a really easy way to do it... I think that's far, far too simple. Because then you're only getting one sort of tourist and in some ways in New Zealand you're probably getting the wrong tourists.
"If you're going to concentrate just on those who can really fork out the money, they're going to be the ones who say 'well, I'll only stay for 4 or 5 days'. I think in many ways you'd be much better off with backpackers who stay for a month or two, who may not spend so much money a day, but do spread it around and put it in more at base level.
"I do really worry that we are potentially going to cut out young travellers and backpackers, and so on, because I think for young people it's a really vital part of life. That first trip is part of growing up. Travel is how you see the world, it's how you meet people, it's how you become wider than your own local horizon. I'd hate it if people were just cut off from the travel experience."
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How can New Zealand's travel industry grapple with the environmental impact and carbon footprint of travellers coming here?
"There's no way you can get around the fact that travellers coming to New Zealand are going to travel a long way to get there, but I think it'd be dangerous to have only the ones that are going to stay for a short time.
"If you're going to have a limited number of travellers, perhaps limit some of it to people who stay for a longer time. You get negative points for travelling a great distance, but you get bonus points for staying longer."
He says overtouristed places in particular should take this opportunity to guide the regrowth of the industry in different directions.
"During my Lonely Planet years we used to stress that there's always the place two streets over, you don't have to walk down the main street of town and crowd into the same shops, the same cafes, the same restaurants. If you go two streets over you'll find it's not so crowded, and quite possibly the attractions there are just as great.
"There are lots of walks in New Zealand, we don't have to all do the Milford Sound, there are other walks.
"Maybe that's something we should be concentrating on, to look at the alternatives and tell people 'you'll get a better experience by going to the place that isn't the big icon, but nor is it so crowded'. It's word of mouth and getting that message out there, that it's really interesting to see that alternative to the big attraction, you need people who put that message out."
Wheeler believes the focus on socially and environmental responsible tourism will continue to grow.
"Even before the pandemic we were learning that Swedish word flygskam, or flight shame, you were a bit embarrassed about flying places if you could find an alternative.
"It's very easy for Europeans to say 'just get on the train'. If Greta Thunberg wants to go from Sweden to Spain she can just get on a high speed train, it won't take her six weeks.
"Whereas if you want to come to New Zealand by sailing boat it's going to take you more than six weeks. We don't have that alternatives."
He says we should be wary of travel bubbles, and doesn't believe they offer the safe salvation some in the industry might hope.
"They've been started and miss-started in all sorts of places."
Photo: AFP
Among the botched incidents, he says, were some of the first travellers from New Zealanders to take advantage of a one-way bubble to Sydney, and then break Australian rules about travelling between states.
"There was talk about [a travel bubble] within the Baltic states - Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia - because those three countries had really low case rates. And yet now you look at them and they've all three got terrible case rates.
"We shouldn't be too confident here. Who knows, we might in five years say 'well they thought they'd escaped it at first, but when it did start to spread around ... they couldn't do a thing about it. It could still all go wrong in Australia or New Zealand. I don't see this as the end game at the moment."
Wheeler says a 'vaccine passport' is now necessary for the industry, but there are currently no models for this. Previously proof has been required for vaccines such as yellow fever, but this has been provided with things like a letter from a doctor - which could easily be faked. Some work is needed for a sophisticated system to be developed, he says.
