Sustainable Tourism North America Podcast

A group of students discusses the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of sustainable tourism and social media in North America. They talk about the popularity of posts featuring animals, the importance of posting high-quality content, and the need for responsible travel practices. They also mention the negative impacts of social media, such as over-tourism, commercialization, and exploitation of local communities. The students highlight the potential for social media to promote sustainability and inspire positive change. However, they also discuss the threats of environmental degradation, security issues, and the extinction of wildlife. They emphasize the need for awareness and responsible actions to protect natural landscapes and cultures. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to the Sustainable Tourism Podcast. My name is Hayden Marshall, I'm joined by Cameron Gonzales, Cameron Levy, and Harrison Murray. We'll just do a quick round of introductions here. My name is Hayden, I'm a Parks, Recreation, and Tourism student with an emphasis in Outdoor Recreation Studies. I'm originally from Massachusetts, I live in Utah now, I'm a senior, and we're all tasked here to give you a nice podcast about the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats sustainable tourism and social media using with sustainable tourism has in North America. Cam, I'll let you give a little introduction. Hey Hayden, I'm Cameron, I'm happy to be in the studio here with you today. I'm a senior civil engineering student, and I'm also here to talk about tourism. I'm very excited, along with us today is also Cameron. Yes, I'm the other Cam, I'm a senior, I've been local my whole life here, grew up in the Sugar House area, and I've always been super interested in traveling, so I'm just excited to get here and talk about international tourism. I think it's no secret that tourism has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, but as the world continues to open up, we're finally starting to see some people traveling again, so I think it's always great to see that kind of thing going on. I'm going to go ahead and send it over to Harrison here. And I'm Harrison, I'm also a Parks, Recreation, and Tourism major, I have an emphasis in Outdoor Recreational Studies. I grew up here in Salt Lake City, Utah, so I have a lot of love for the local area, but today we're going to be exploring more adventurous and international options to kind of get us outside of our own little bubbles, and to really explore and experience new things. Thanks for the introductions, boys. I'll get us started off talking about some of the strengths that I saw in my social media I followed for the last couple weeks, specifically in Alaska. Talking about some of the strengths, we saw not a ton of views and likes overall, but certain posts, specifically ones that included animals, were really popular and got more likes in the interaction, which it can be interesting to think about when you're trying to promote an area, specifically in Alaska, like dog sledding was really very popular and very interacted with online. Cam, why don't you take it away and tell us about some of your strengths. Yeah, well said. Yeah, Hayden, I noticed a similar kind of thing going on with my social media pages as well. The ones I kind of chose to follow were more pages ending in explorees. You know, they were posted about nine times a week. Oh, wow. Not very much follower interaction, however, about 400 likes a post, and so in my strengths and weaknesses, I kind of talked about how we can continue to grow those platforms and what they're doing right and wrong, and one of the things I noticed was that I think you can actually post too much on a social media site, especially if it's not quality content. In the two that I saw that were being successful in getting likes and comments, feedback, I noticed trends of people who are posting more, when they're posting more high-quality content, they're obviously getting more follower interaction, and it's obviously just more important that they're posting high-quality content than the actual amount of content that they're creating. Interesting point, Cameron. Well, that's a great point, Cameron. I noticed that one thing that was very helpful for the social media pages that I followed was sticking to a regimen, however. Like, I can see how overposting into a feed and getting very, lots of low-quality posts can drive people away from a site or a location. The sites that I noticed that stuck to more of a regular posting time had a lot more interaction because I feel like it made it accessible for followers to, like, have a sort of interaction and have a schedule to keep to and have a regimen, a plan of when they were going to get online and when they were going to look at the posts. It also helps out with the algorithm of the social media sites that I use, like TikTok and Instagram, when they were posting regularly but not too often to get scanned as a bot, and that also made it so that they could post on more locations, on more activities, and a lot of just general things to do in our individual spots. Thank you for those great points you made there, Harrison and Cam. We'll take it away and give it to Cam to hear what he has to say about his topics. Thanks, Hayden. I was also following some pretty big accounts, mainly the Yellowstone National Park, the Yosemite National Park, and the U.S. Department of the Interior, and I found that a strength that these had in common is that through their size, they were able to produce a pretty wide variety of content, which kept it interesting and really helped the users interact pretty well into the post. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, social media has undoubtedly transformed the way people travel and plan their trips. However, yeah, it also has its weaknesses, though. When it comes to sustainable tourism, one of the primary weaknesses of social media is that it can promote unsustainable travel behaviors, like over-tourism or, you know, where you just get too many tourists in one spot. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Like, you'll see posts, people in, like, narrows at Zion, where there's a million people there, and there's two, three-hour bus lines getting to the park, and that's just because so many people have posted about it on social media, and it might not even be a post that's promoting non-sustainability, but people just see the beauty of the place and just want to go there. Yeah, and not only that, but just, like, the environmental degradation of all these heritage sites, the deterioration of some of these great monuments happens due to overcrowding, which is something that needs to be considered. Thank you, Cameron. Would you say that social media's lack of coverage on the downsides of these national parks contributes to this? Yeah, and I would say that's more of a question on Harrison. Harrison's been kind of headlining that kind of question. Right, so it has to all do with oversaturation. A little, it's all about moderating the amount of social media that these sites are using and the way that they advertise it. So when, like, a national park, for example, wants to advertise to a large community to get more visitors, they also should include the resources to assist with Leave No Trace and other sustainability practices. Otherwise, it's just going to lead to further destruction of our parks. And as we all know, once something like that is destroyed, you can't ever really get it back. I don't know. What are your thoughts on it, Adrian? Yeah, for sure. Definitely looking at my specific area, Alaska, there's lots of posts about Denali, right, because it's the tallest mountain in the U.S. Not the confluence of the U.S., but whatever. It's still like 20,000 feet, right? And so lots of people want to climb it, kind of like the Everest in North America. And so people go there and they don't know those Leave No Trace principles and they'll leave tons of trash and just degrade that natural, beautiful mountain as more people go. Right, and one of the things I'd like to add on to that point is just how social media can really, it can create an unrealistic expectation of the place you're traveling to. So, you know, you're not expecting all this trash everywhere and stuff like that, but. Yeah, Cam, for sure. Yeah, trash and all that stuff can be really bad. Like I talked about with Denali and there's like over-tourism and just like the amount of people. But why don't we talk about opportunities that social media can also present. Cam, why don't you take it away? Thanks, buddy. One opportunity for improvement is to use social media to promote responsible travel practices. For example, this can include sharing information about sustainable tourism practices, such as reducing plastic waste, respecting local cultures, and especially supporting local businesses. Right, and social media can also be used to highlight sustainable tourism initiatives and success stories in North America. So by showcasing examples of sustainable tourism practices, we can inspire others to adopt similar practices and promote sustainability in the tourism industry. Yeah, for sure there, Cam. Some opportunities for in the future definitely could be used to advertise cleanup efforts of areas that may have been a subject to over-tourism or lots of that pollution from like tons of posts on social media. It can also be used to further help restoration of those areas that have been subject to over-tourism like I said before. And it just can create an opportunity to create awareness for those areas and hopefully help them recover as an industry and depending on if it's a national park or maybe a city as an ecosystem as well. One of the most unique social media posts that I was following, one of the most unique social media Instagram sites, was one that was lobbying for change in Alaska, which was the area I was also focusing on. And they were lobbying for political and climate change because they figured that if they were using activism on their account, it would generate more buzz and in consequence would also get more tourism but in a more positive light in a more appropriate way. Thanks for that, Harrison. In contrast to all those opportunities that social media can present within the sustainable tourism industry, there's also that double-edged sword of threats it can present. And we'll get talking into a little bit of that starting off with you there, Cam. Thanks, Pal. Certainly there's threats. First of all, there's a potential for social media to contribute to the commercialization of tourism. Social media can create pressure on businesses to prioritize profit over sustainability. This can lead to development of unsustainable tourism products and services such as large-scale resorts and theme parks that we've seen so often. Yeah, it's also important to note that social media can also contribute to the commodification of culture and the exploitation of local communities. For example, tourists may be encouraged to participate in activities that are culturally insensitive or disrespectful. Isn't that right, Cam? Yeah, and often these local vendors might not put the environment first. For example, they might choose their profits over the ecosystem, which could lead to detrimental effects. Yeah, for sure. I've definitely seen it firsthand. When I've been down in the Caribbean, particularly the Dominican Republic, lots of the street vendors there are selling to literally get by. They don't got much on their mind when it comes to keeping the area ecologically well and making sure that the beaches are clean. Right. That's really just only on the big resorts. The big resorts really don't care about it either. They just kind of want to make as much profit as possible and try and push the locals out. Yeah, and one of the other threats we want to probably talk about is security, especially in the southern portion of North America, the Mexican region. They have extremely high crime rates, especially in Tijuana. I wrote my travel blog on that. It was a challenge to find a sustainable tourism practice that was practicing good security and keeping locals safe. That's a good point, Cam. Another part of this that we're not taking into account is the impact on the local wildlife and the animals because all this tourism and foot traffic, pollution and garbage, it's not good for these ecosystems. It's causing many, especially in the polar regions of Alaska, where me and Hayden did our reports on, it's causing a large extinction rate and endangerment rate because they just can't survive with all the garbage and the heat. It's only getting worse. Yeah, it is only getting worse. One thing specifically, like polar bears, the ice is melting. They're dying left and right. It's warfare out there. Those poor things. On top of that, it's also affecting some of the smaller and more indigenous animals that are in Alaska, such as arctic foxes and other rodents. Yeah, building on that, I think the real threat here is that the social media never really covers the extinction of these animals. Rather, they suppose pictures of rather cute animals instead of the honest druids that we are seeing today. Yeah, yeah. That's definitely a problem we can see. Definitely kind of a threat to the tourism industry in that area when people are expecting to go and see this cute, cuddly leopard seal or little arctic fox. In reality, it's an animal that's just barely skin and bone trying to survive with the global warming and all the trash and pollution that is brought in by unsustainable tourism. It brings in kind of a threat towards that idea of authentic tourism because the more that these ecosystems get destroyed, the farther removed that all the jurists who are excited to see all the animals and all the environments and meet all the people and experience all the cultures, all that's going to be gone because there's just not enough coverage on it and there is not enough lobbying for it. It just causes a lack of awareness from all people. Right. One of the things that I kind of talked about in some of my papers was how human activity really affects areas of potential threat. Activities such as hunting, fishing, trapping, they can also have negative effects on North American animals like over-harvesting of certain species can lead to population declines and that can cause cascading efforts on the ecosystem as a whole. Yeah, yeah. You can definitely see too, not just on animals but just on the earth in general, specifically here in Utah we have areas like Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante that are in the works of being opened up to oil drilling and have kind of been back and forth over the years depending on who is in office for president and kind of degrading those natural beautiful landscapes for the sake of getting some oil to fill that good old American grit. One of the craziest things about that is this is the first time in history that there's ever been a decrease in the national park size, especially for an industrial reason. Because when they were first founded back in the early 1920s, the idea and concept behind them was that it would be untouched wilderness to maintain America forever for the posterity for our future. And because now that they're opening up the argument for decreasing the size of national parks, that sort of lays the groundwork for future presidents, administrations, politicians to, say, take out parts of Yellowstone for fracking or maybe some of the ocean sea lines for the sake of oil drilling. It just kind of opens up a whole host of problems. Yeah, I think we can definitely all agree that while social media in light of sustainable tourism can benefit areas extremely well, it can also be a double-edged sword and totally destroy those areas when things are overposted and stuff. But with that being said, I think we're going to wrap it up here soon. If anyone else has anything to add, then feel free. I really feel like we covered all our bases here. It's been a pleasure joining you guys all on the podcast. It's always a pleasure to educate the community. Happy to be here. Thanks for... Yeah, it was a pleasure informing you guys all about the impacts of sustainable tourism and social media and how they coincide with each other. If you guys have any questions or comments, shoot us an email at ceilingman69 at gmail.com. And with that being said, enjoy the rest of your evening.