Guiding Principle 1 - See the whole picture: Recognize that most tourism by its nature involves the destination as a whole, not only industry businesses, but also its ecosystems, natural resources, cultural assets and traditions, communities, aesthetics, and built infrastructure.
As tourism grows, particularly in small island destinations, it places increased pressure on the destination’s natural resources and spaces, communities, and built infrastructure. If destination managers neglect to take these impacts into consideration and let tourism grow unmanaged, it risks overwhelming local systems, damaging fragile ecosystems, reducing the quality of life of residents, and degrading the visitor experience.
In Seychelles, the leadership recognizes the need to continually monitor visitor impacts and base tourism development decisions on the needs and resources of the islands. Regular carrying capacity studies, such as the one conducted by Sustainable Travel International in 2019, are used to assess current conditions and understand the implications of continued tourism growth.
These studies take a holistic and participatory approach that analyzes the health and carrying capacity of the destination as a whole, including social, economic, infrastructure, and environmental conditions. A number of indicators are examined, such as the amount of waste generated by hotels, the number of cruise ship passengers, and visitor perceptions of varying levels of crowding at beaches.
The findings of the studies are used to define a roadmap for low-impact, high value tourism development which outlines the ideal conditions and strategies to achieve them. Over time, Seychelles can use this framework to monitor tourism impacts and guide policy-making in order to balance growth with risk.