When a Place's Story Leaves People Behind

27 Oct

Street art in Barcelona. Photograph: Mattsjc / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0. Image adapted with Adam Piotr Kossowski's Insights branding.

What happens when ambitious destination plans continue to be rolled out without the support of some of the people and communities whose lives and heritage are part of the place?

When people talk about developing a destination, there's often a great deal of enthusiasm about what might be possible. Perhaps it's an opportunity to attract more visitors, create employment, protect an important landscape or bring several communities together around a shared identity.

A vision begins to take shape, followed by plans, partnerships, investment proposals and eventually a story about what the place could become. And if that story is well presented, it also begins to attract considerable interest from businesses, public institutions, funders and visitors.

There's nothing wrong with any of this. Good ideas need people who can recognise opportunities and explain why they're worth pursuing. But what happens when not everybody shares the same vision, particularly when some of the people who live in or have longstanding relationships with a place feel that their concerns are not being heard? It's one thing to develop a strategy for a place. It's quite another to have the people whose lives and interests it affects genuinely involved in developing it. And when those differences remain unresolved, sometimes for years, the public story may continue to develop without them.

A shared place doesn't always mean a common vision

A destination may look like one place on a map, but it can mean very different things to the people who know it. For a tourism operator, it represents the opportunity to create new experiences and attract visitors. For an investor, it raises commercial potential. Conservation organisations may typically be concerned with protecting the landscape, while residents are simply thinking about employment, infrastructure, access or just keeping the character of where they live.

Indigenous communities also have cultural and legal rights concerning their territories, heritage and traditional knowledge. These cannot simply be treated as another interest in a broader consultation process.

These different interests don't necessarily mean conflict, and there may actually be considerable common ground between them. But I would not assume that because people share a geographical area, they automatically share the same ambitions and views for it.

A consultation meeting, for example, gives people an opportunity to express their views. That doesn't necessarily mean they have had a meaningful say in shaping the decisions being made. And being invited to participate in something that has already been substantially planned is quite a different experience from being involved in developing it from the beginning. So what appears to be a shared regional strategy from the outside may actually be a vision supported by some organisations and strongly questioned by others.

When a promising development doesn't go ahead

A useful example could be the Grand Canyon Escalade proposal in Arizona, which would have introduced a major tourism development near where the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers meet.

The plans included a gondola taking visitors down into the canyon, together with accommodation, restaurants and other visitor facilities. Supporters argued that the project would create employment and bring valuable economic opportunities to the Navajo Nation.

But the proposed location also had considerable cultural and spiritual significance for Indigenous communities. Over several years, concerns were raised about the impact on sacred land, the commercial arrangements and whether the people most directly affected had agreed to the development. The project had supporters within the Navajo Nation as well as opponents, so it wasn't simply a disagreement between an outside developer and a united local community.

Eventually, back in October 2017, the Navajo Nation Council rejected the proposal by 16 votes to 2. Despite the plans and the economic opportunities being promoted, the project did not go ahead.

The commercial potential of an idea may be considerable, but that doesn't mean it has the agreement or authority needed to proceed. If those questions aren't properly addressed, the time, effort and resources spent promoting and developing the proposal may ultimately achieve very little. In context, it's also worth noting that the rejection was a decision about this particular development, not a rejection of tourism or economic opportunity itself.

But when the disagreement becomes part of the visitor experience

Barcelona offers a very different example, one where the destination is already enormously successful in attracting visitors.

The city spent decades developing its international appeal through its architecture, culture, food, public spaces and Mediterranean character. Tourism has become an important part of its economy, supporting businesses and employment across the city. But the growth of tourism has also brought increasing concern among residents about its impacts – housing costs, crowded public spaces and neighbourhoods becoming more focused on visitors than the people who live there.

In recent years, those frustrations became very public. Protests against mass tourism have drawn international attention, with some demonstrators even confronting visitors directly. The city has also found itself reconsidering aspects of its tourism model and introducing measures intended to address pressure on local communities. Yet Barcelona hasn't failed as a destination. Visitors continue to arrive in large numbers, but I think this highlights something quite important about the relationship between a place and the people who experience it.

A visitor may arrive expecting a welcoming, vibrant city, only to discover that some residents have become deeply frustrated with their presence. That doesn't mean the visitor is personally responsible for those problems. Nor does it mean that every resident opposes tourism. But the disagreement has become part of the experience of visiting the city, and something that its tourism industry and public authorities can no longer easily ignore.

What was once largely a local debate about housing, public space and the direction of development has also become a question about how visitors perceive the destination.

The risks extend beyond the community

This is where I think the broader consequences of an unresolved disagreement deserve more attention.

When a destination initiative attracts financial support, institutional endorsements or commercial partnerships, those organisations become associated with the promises being made. They may be supporting a worthwhile idea, but they also have an interest in knowing whether the project has the participation and agreement it claims.

If serious concerns remain unresolved, the risks can extend well beyond negative publicity. Projects may face delays, require unexpected changes to their plans, encounter difficulties obtaining approval or experience a growing loss of confidence among the organisations supporting them.

Visitors can also be affected, although perhaps in a different way. Simply put, I think many people travel because they want to experience something distinctive about a place. They want to understand its culture, enjoy its landscape, meet people and feel that what they've encountered is genuine.

But what happens when the experience being promoted does not align with the way some local communities feel about that development? Or when visitors discover that activities presented as celebrations of local heritage are in fact being disputed by the very people whose heritage is being represented?

That can change the way somebody views a destination. An experience that might otherwise have been enjoyable can become uncomfortable, particularly when visitors feel they haven't been given the full picture. In a sense, they may feel let down by the difference between what they were promised and what they actually experienced.

Not every disagreement will have that effect, of course, and a destination can remain commercially successful despite substantial local opposition. But I think it would be a mistake to assume that these tensions will have no bearing on how people experience a place or whether they choose to return. The effects may take time to become visible, and by then the problems can often be considerably harder to address.

Listening isn't the same as agreeing

Successful destination development cannot require everybody to agree about everything. That would probably make many worthwhile projects impossible. There will always be different interests, priorities and opinions, particularly when a proposal covers a large geographical area or involves significant investment. But there is a difference between recognising those differences and simply continuing with a preferred vision while hoping that the objections will eventually disappear.

Sometimes an organisation may need to change its plans. Sometimes a different partnership or approach may be possible. And sometimes the people responsible for a project may conclude that it cannot proceed in the form originally envisaged.

Those decisions are of course difficult, especially when considerable time and money have already been invested. But ignoring unresolved concerns does not necessarily protect the investment. It may in fact expose the project and its supporters to much greater difficulties later.

I would not say though that this is only about avoiding conflict. Properly involving the people connected to a place can lead to better ideas, a clearer understanding of what makes it distinctive and opportunities that might otherwise be overlooked. I think that's an important long-term benefit that doesn't always receive enough attention. Ensuring a shared approach can therefore help establish whether the benefits being promised are genuinely shared, and not simply assumed.

A story people can recognise as their own

In my view, the way an organisation or destination presents itself needs to be supported by something real – something authentic. Good storytelling can help people understand a place, but it cannot create relationships, agreements or a shared sense of purpose that don't yet exist. Perhaps this is where we sometimes get the order wrong.

We become so focused on developing a convincing vision of what a place could become that we don't spend enough time understanding the people, relationships and sometimes difficult questions that will determine whether that vision is achievable, and what risks may be involved.

However, we should not avoid ambition or wait for complete agreement before discussing new ideas. But I think we should be clear about what has been agreed, who is involved, whose interests are affected and what still needs to be worked through. The examples of the Grand Canyon Escalade and Barcelona are very different, but they both remind us that a destination's development cannot be separated from the people who live with its consequences. That's an important consideration, not only for tourism authorities and destination organisations, but also for the businesses, funders and partners who become involved in these initiatives, or whose activities are affected by them.

If the people who give that place much of its character are left out of the conversation, something important may be missing. And sooner or later, that may well become the unfortunate part of the story visitors encounter too.