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The perils of being a pioneer. But despite its promise, ecotourism still remains a rough-and-tumble economic frontier. While travelers may be in it for the adventure, funding agencies, lodge owners, and travel agencies would much prefer predictability and profitability.

One fundamental problem is the lack of good information. Potential investors often lack reliable numbers on costs, logistics, and projected visitors they need, and as a result they may make bad decisions.

“Businesses sometimes make investment decisions on the basis of market demand that may be unrealistic,” says TIES’s Epler Wood. “The ecotourism growth projections of 20–30 percent, even if true, cannot be sustained, and lodges will not be able to fill rooms.” In Costa Rica, for example, investors assumed that the sector’s rapid growth would continue, and when the inevitable slowdown came, lodge owners found themselves with empty rooms.

Epler Wood stresses the need for market research that focuses on specific regions, since the realities of ecotourism vary considerably from place to place. For example, occupancy rates in the South Pacific are among the highest in the industry, but profits are generally very low.

One problem in getting a good statistical picture of ecotourism is coming to agreement on what is being measured. Is ecotourism leaving a cruise ship for a couple of hours to see a scarlet ibis rookery? Is it rafting down a pristine white-water river? Is it traveling to a remote Andean mountainside with the hopes of spotting a particular rare species of bird? Nature tourism, sustainable tourism, adventure tourism, and other kinds of “green” tourism are often spoken of in the same breath. But each represents a different slice of the tourism pie chart, and each has very specific requirements for marketing, infrastructure, and business planning.

Epler Woods’ organization opts for a restrictive definition of ecotourism: “Travel to natural areas which conserves the environment and sustains the well-being of local people.” She estimates that half of all tourism is nature tourism—such as taking a half-day trip to a national park. But only 7 percent of tourists are ecotourists using TIES definition.

The TIES ecotourism definition reflects the viewpoint of many professionals in the field, but not necessarily of the government agencies charged with gathering statistics. These may be the tourism ministry, the environmental ministry, or the forestry ministry, and each will have its own institutional bias.

Surveys with a specific ecotourism focus are rare. On most questionnaires, visitors may check off “pleasure,” but only rarely do they have the option of marking “nature travel” as their reason for traveling.

The IDB has made data collection a major part of its nature tourism projects, such as the major new initiative in the Brazilian Amazon. According to the IDB’s Juan Luna-Kelser, at its present preinvestment phase this project will gather information not only on demand, but also on ecotourism businesses currently operating in the area, manpower training, and the natural environment. Local tourism councils, made up of representatives of major stakeholders, are participating in the data collection.

Hard realities. All too often, well-meaning people promote ecotourism as an economic and environmental Holy Grail. The danger comes when others believe them. Some of the most distressing examples involve poor communities. In the Chilean Andes, for example, indigenous communities plan ecolodges on lakes where the natural forest is long gone, and where the calls of birds compete with the whine of Jet Skis. On Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast, a group of women wants to build a bungalow on a barren, treeless beach, a location they chose because they didn’t want their idyllic village corrupted by drugs, alcohol, and scantily clad foreign women. People in one Brazilian town are hoping that ecotourists will travel four hours to see Indian rock carvings.

Outsiders should take pains not to oversell a project’s potential. For example, they should think twice before persuading local people in the Peruvian Amazon to make handicrafts to sell to visitors. Quality-conscious tourists will probably hold off on buying souvenirs until they return to Cuzco, where people have been making fine crafts for many hundreds of years.

The key to ecotourism—as with any tourism—is the attraction. “The first question you have to ask is, ‘Is the nature content really there?’,” says Richard Ryel, president and founder of International Expeditions, Inc., one of the United States’ largest ecotourism organizations. On the plains of Africa, he says, the nature content is large, abundant, visible, and sometimes even dangerous. But in the Amazonian rainforest, large animals and birds are rarely in plain view, and visitors must consequently be willing to search for the nature content, often relying on skilled guides and interpreters. Ryel spends considerable time scouting out destinations for clients that offer attractions such as extensive trail systems, a river to explore, a walkway in the forest canopy, or a butterfly farm. The greater the number of specific activities, the longer tourists will stay at a given destination, and the more likely they will be to return.

“If a tourist is going to spend 14 hours in a plane and 7 hours in a boat to get to a lodge, it had better be good,” said Ryel. “We’re starved to find good quality lodges with good quality ethics.”

Promoters ignore the importance of good attractions at their own peril. A joke often heard in ecotourism circles is, “Build it and they will come,” according to Jaime Sweeting, ecotourism expert at Conservation International. “As a result,” he says, “there are a lot of communities out there where people live in big houses that once were ecolodges.”

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Date posted: January 2002

Lifeguard on patrol...

Ecotourism dreams...