Culture and tourism has become a big topic worldwide, and two months after WiK’s Heritage and Tourism symposium, Unesco and Unwto came to town for the 4th UNWTO/UNESCO World Conference on Tourism and Culture, which was followed by a two-hour Kyoto City symposium on promoting sustainable culture and tourism. I found the former more stimulating than the latter because of the practical measures put forward. (UNWTO is the United Nations World Tourist Organisation.)
There were 600 delegates from over 50 countries. As is usual at such gatherings, there was a lot of fine rhetoric using feel-good generalisations. Buzzwords included community-centred, sustainable development, responsible tourism, dispersal, mutual respect, destination management, forging partnerships, intercultural benefit, human resources, citizen initiative. Of those sustainable was the most used, and there seemed universal acceptance that despite worries about climate change tourism was bound to increase even more dramatically than heretofore. “Travel, enjoy, respect,’ is the favoured Unesco slogan.
One of the most interesting talks I heard concerned an initiative in S. America to train local businesses and craftspeople in digital skills in order to advertise themselves to tourists. The project had trained an impressive total of 120,000 people. (Related to this was an online campaign in Barcelona to draw people away from tourist hotspots by advertising new festivals, concerts and shopping suggestions away from the city centre.)
Another talk that caught my attention was a speaker from the Council of Europe who spoke of 38 transnational Culture Routes that have been set up with passports for stamping (in the manner of Japanese pilgrimages). The routes include not only famous tourist spots but villages along the way with a special restaurant or craft and art centre. The routes were based on thematic clusters, such as religious heritage / art and culture / early Europeans / landscape and handicraft etc. Walking and cycling was encouraged. It struck me as something Japan could do on a cross-prefectural basis, because the division between prefectural tourist boards can often be more rigid than between nation states in Europe.
Following the main conference, there was a symposium for promoting sustainable culture and tourism put on by the Kyoto City Tourism Association. The head of Ninna-ji spoke of restoring the temple following typhoon damage, which had led to greater involvement by local citizenry and the temple welcoming photography as opposed to its previous policy. A spokesman from Shimogamo Shrine spoke of how the shrine had exploited its rugby connection to increase tourists.
Kyoto city mayor Kadokawa noted that Kyoto had come no. 1 in a STG survey (Sustainable Tourism Growth) and how highly valued ‘the Kyoto model’ was by Unesco and Unwto. In 2018 Kyoto received 15.8 million overnight visitors, representing a 60% increase since 2000. In the light of this, the city has worked to decrease waste, energy consumption and road congestion.
In response to overtourism, Kyoto has taken various measures, one of which is addressing the seasonal imbalance by running such campaigns as Visit Kyoto in Winter. As a result the seasonal gap had lessened from 3.6 to 1.4 over the past few years. There had been an increase of 10% in stayers because of the increase in accommodation, while at the same time the city was working on shutting down unsuitable accommodation that caused nuisance to the citizenry. And there was also effort being put into redistribution as opportunities arise for practical participation rather than just sightseeing. There was publicity too to teach tourists Kyoto manners, and this was contributing to other countries learning good values from the Japanese (something incidentally that was very much evident during the rugby World Cup. A commentator on the BBC World Service suggested that his experience in Japan had made him a better person).
Other points of interest raised by Kadokawa were that 80% of visitors to the city are Japanese, that 38,000 buildings had to alter or dispose of signboards because of a city ordinance restricting their use, that there are 50 policies in place to unite visitors and tourists, and that revenue from the recently introduced accommodation tax would be spent on education to pass on Kyoto culture to future generations (third grade students will be introduced to tea ceremony and ikebana). He also said, interestingly, that the city has 2000 temples and shrines (contradicting the figure of 3000, as is often stated), and that of that number only 1% were overcrowded. That would mean 20 temples and shrines. I tried to work out what they might be: Kiyomizu, Fushimi Inari, Kinkakuji, Ginkakuji, Ryoanji….. then if one includes cherry blossom and maple season several more could be easily added.
Disappointingly there was no question period, so some of the most pressing issues didn’t get discussed at all. There was a self-congratulatory tone to the symposium which those travelling on overcrowded buses in the city centre might take issue with, but one thing the conference as a whole did impress on me was that the matter of overtourism is being seriously addressed by authorities worldwide even if some of the more severe problems are far from being solved.
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