SUSTAINABLE TOURISM CAN'T DO WITHOUT ANY OF THEM
A pleasant drive from Puerto Vallarta’s airport, on Mexico’s west coast, leads to a breath-taking landscape of wetlands and long white sand beaches known as the Chalacatepec estuary. Here, camouflaged among the mango plantations in the heart of a vibrant ecosystem, we cross the invisible doors of a different kind of tourism project that has been ten years in the making. Xala, as this luxury resort is called, offers a guest experience focused on “slow living”, the empowerment of the local community and the conservation of the area’s biodiversity.
Its founder, Ricardo Santa Cruz, realized that only through cooperation with the local community could the resort guarantee the honest preservation of Chalacatepec’s flora and fauna. With the help of scientists, neighbors and friends in the hospitality industry, Santa Cruz has managed to build a resort that not only meets the needs of the most discerning travelers but also contributes to the collective prosperity of the area. Xala is involved in conserving turtle nesting hotspots, restoring estuaries, and purifying pesticide-damaged land, among other conservation activities.
Like Xala, there are already a multitude of tourism projects around the world that are applying sustainable strategies focused on the empowerment of local communities. In this article, we explain how a “local” approach is the best option for the hospitality industry to become truly sustainable.
Greenwashing VS True Sustainability
Sustainable tourism is one that tries to minimize its environmental and social impact and, if possible, become an engine of local regeneration. Far from merely compensatory practices, truly nature-committed tourism is sustainable by design. To do so, the participation of local communities is key.
Local communities not only contribute to tourism projects with first-hand knowledge of the surroundings, but also provide labor and resources.
Local partnerships shorten supply chains and enable the incorporation of local heritage into the guest experience, thus fostering the nurturing of traditions and cultural pride. In addition, members of a community who participate in the planning, management and monitoring phases of sustainable strategies are able to detect discontinuities and solve problems across the chain of responsibility more effectively and quickly than external stakeholders. When an entire community works together towards a shared goal, the collective prosperity resulting from that effort is reflected in the guest experience and becomes added value for the project.
Conservation or Growth?
Many people assume that conservation implies that growth stops: if we invest time and money in returning to a primordial state, we are not moving forward. It is perhaps more practical, and also more realistic, to understand conservation as expansion, that is, growth in all directions.
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