Every Destination Has a Tipping Point

In my 2021 TEDx talk, I was either brave enough or naive enough to contend that there is a tipping point after which more visitor numbers may mean less value to a destination. In tourism terms, this was borderline blasphemous. 

From the Beginning of Tourism Time, the sector has run through the lens of The Numbers Paradigm, the basis of all capitalist economies. It is the "more means more" approach: keep growing the economy so you can keep growing jobs, which in turn grow personal and societal wealth, and through that, the potential of wellbeing, happiness, equality and all the other happily-ever-after stuff. 

It is through this lens that the tourism "industry" has set its targets and measured its performance. Visitor numbers on the bottom, visitor revenue up the side. As the numbers grow, the economy grows. For most of tourism time we have assumed the line keeps going up: more visitors, more value, year on year, with no ceiling worth thinking about. 

So what was I thinking in 2021? 

We were just coming out of a long lockdown that had given pause for reflection on many fronts. For tourism, there was already undeniable evidence that the numbers model worked well up to a point, then reached a tipping point where it no longer worked so well. 

The table-toppers of the world, the destinations that grew and grew their visitor numbers, were running into trouble: community pushback, ecological damage, cultural dilution, fading distinctiveness. For many of the world's leading destinations, the very thing that had made them successful was visibly becoming the source of strain. 

The conclusion is hard to avoid: there is a point on the road of tourism growth where the very thing that built a destination may begin to undo it. What the Numbers Paradigm does not account for is that places and people have a hard, in-built carrying capacity.  

This is why The Tipping Point is not a problem reserved for the famous few. Every destination has one. Carrying capacity is a property of place itself, so the threshold exists whether a destination is near it or not. Most have not reached it yet. Most do not even have it in view. 

Nonetheless, a destination that keeps its eyes fixed only on the numbers is moving towards its tipping point.  Since the dashboard signals greater success the whole way there, the upward-only trajectory creates its own blindspot. 

What we choose to measure 

Suppose we take that blindspot seriously - what would that change about how we set goals and measure success? If tourism exists to serve places, and if a place and its people start to feel the strain past a certain point, then it makes sense to measure growth in visitor numbers against the vitality of the place itself.

There is a clear logic to it. The vitality of a place - its character, its nature, its culture, the life of its community - is what makes it attractive in the first place. It is the base asset, the thing that makes a destination a destination. Loss of that vitality, perceived or real, is what has produced the tensions now visible across many destinations.  

Plotting numbers against place is a strategic choice. It tracks the leading variable in a destination's long-term success.

How the curve looks through the lens of place 

Imagine a different curve: - along the bottom we track visitor numbers and up along the side, the vitality of the place itself. Here is what that might look like: 

In the early days, the two rise together. Visitors bring the spend that opens commercial opportunities, grows jobs and community, and funds investment in the place. More numbers result in more vitality. I like to call it Tourism's Comfort Zone. More really does mean more in this phase, and tourism as a global phenomenon has lived largely here.  

As numbers keep growing, the rise in perceived value to the place slows and levels off. Part of what is happening is acclimatisation. Tourism becomes part of the fabric of daily life, and people adjust to it. What once felt like a noticeable gain now reads as normal. The place may be no less vital than before, yet the sense of added value flattens, because everyone's baseline of expectation has settled higher. 

Further along that plateau, perceived value starts to fall for some places and some people. We begin to hear of residents avoiding their own town in high season, of locals no longer able to afford to live there, of natural features eroding and culture thinning. The numbers are still rising, so the economic dashboard is healthy. At the same time, place vitality has plateaued and is perceived to be at risk. This is the stage where mitigation strategies have typically appeared: seasonality and dispersal, regionalisation, carbon reduction, visitor management, greater consultation.  

And beyond the Tipping Point? It's no a fantasy place. The Canary Islands delivered record GDP growth and nearly eighteen million arrivals in 2024. In the same year tens of thousands of residents took to the streets under the banner that the islands have a limit. It is the most vivid expression of how two things can be true at once: the Numbers Paradigm signalls success while the Place Paradigm signals stress. This is Tourism's Discomfort Zone, beyond the Tipping Point, where more numbers actually reduce place vitality. 

The trouble with calling tourism an industry 

Most industries do not have a tipping point of this kind. Growth in most sectors is, in principle, a line that keeps rising. This is what the modern obsession with scaling is all about. A new factory, an AI multiplier, a limitless online reach - all let you deliver more without damaging the key input. 

Tourism cannot do this. What it sells is place, and the people, culture and landscape that give a place its character. Those have an upper carrying capacity by their very nature. This is why calling tourism an "industry" sits awkwardly. It is a system, a web of relationships between hosts, visitors and a range of other stakeholders, human and non-human, lived through a place and depending on that place staying whole and full of life. 

 What the curve tells us

The curve explains a good deal about where tourism leadership finds itself. It explains why stewardship and regeneration are gaining curiosity as leadership choices. It also explains why mitigation can only ever have limited, short-term impact if the focus remains primarily on growing the numbers underneath it.  

Beyond that, three strategic insights stand out. 

1. Strong economic performance is not evidence of place vitality. Only destinations that excel at the numbers game ever reach the tipping point. The places most at risk are often the ones atop the leaderboards.  
2. The numbers cannot tell you which side of the Tipping Point you are on. Rising visitor figures look the same whether a destination is climbing towards its tipping point or already sliding past it.  
3. The further along the curve, the more costly the correction. Recovering a destination that has crossed the Tipping Point is slow and unpredictable The cost of losing a sense of welcome for visitors is inestimable. 

Tourism in its Era of Navigation 

Tourism is partway through a crossing, navigating from one lens to another, from measuring tourism by its economy to measuring it by the vitality of the places it depends on. 

It would be easy to read that as a straight swap, the Place Paradigm replacing the Numbers Paradigm, stewardship and regeneration arriving to push growth aside.

Unfortunately, that is how the choice is often framed, as growth or place, economy or stewardship, one model defeating the other.  

I believe that that framing is a mistake.  

 The curve says something more useful. Economy does not sit opposite place vitality. It sits inside it. Visitor revenue is one of the ways a place expresses its health, one indicator among several, alongside the strength of its community, its culture, its nature and its identity. A thriving economy is a sign of a vital place. So the task is to put the numbers in their proper context, as one reading on a fuller dashboard

 That double vision, holding the old measure inside the new one, is the work of tourism leadership now.  

Download my strategic leadership paper 'The Place Paradigm: A New Lens for Tourism Leadership' for more insights.