Calling tourism the social organization of leisure in time and space opens the question of who wins and who loses depending on their mode of production and consumption. On the one hand, it leads us to raise the aspiration to work less, to devote our free time to enriching our affections and knowledge, to rest and enjoy our common goods free of charge and for the benefit of the community. But, on the other hand, it also leads us to view tourism consumption as a bait that makes us want disappointing illusions (like reaching crowded attractions), spending money we don’t have (and even to go into debt to pay for our vacation). ) or damage environmental resources that are common, public goods or in any case do not belong to us (such as climate, water or housing as accommodation to visit our favorite destination).
Given this dichotomy and in a nutshell, diminishing tourism offers more vacations and less consumerism for capital accumulation. Those of us who signed this text are part of various academic groups and social movements in which we analyze the challenges ahead and how we propose to overcome them. From a geographical point of view, these challenges can be distributed according to their analysis on two scales, global and local.
The main challenge for tourism on a global scale is its dependence on fossil fuels, particularly for air transport and its polluting derivatives which aggravate climate change. But the ambivalence already mentioned hides the tourist waste of the wealthy social class, which creates and deepens social inequalities. We are so deceived that we call a tourist someone who travels very frequently by private plane, someone who canned themselves on low-cost flights, or someone who enjoys their free time on Sunday in nearby areas. Because the word tourism has a “glitter” effect which masks the appropriation of added value through the exploitation of labor or the financial rentism of the megalomaniac construction of resorts, mega-projects of ports or airports and therefore a whole enormous paraphernalia of transgenic monstrosities which serve, more than anything else, for the reproduction of capital.
On a local scale, the most pressing challenge today lies in the touristification of the city. To highlight one of the main challenges at this scale, the expanding frontier of the tourism sector commercializes accommodation, making it more expensive until it is out of reach of the resident population. Platform capitalism, let’s simply call it Airbnbification, is the most obvious cause. This inflation of essential goods is spreading with the reconfiguration of the commercial fabric, the public space of squares, beaches or promenades, transport or public facilities and even once popular and affordable moorings. Touristification is further aggravated by excessive dependence on tourist income which is not equitably distributed; on the contrary, it is associated with working conditions, wages or training that are worse than the average for other sectors of the economy. activity ; Thus, the exceeding of the biophysical limits of mass tourist destinations manifests itself in the climate emergency due to heat waves, droughts or the deterioration of ecosystems and the extinction of species, aspects which also harm the experience tourist itself. its own development.
How do you plan to reduce tourism to address these global and local tourism challenges? Social groups in intensely touristy urban environments (without going any further, in Barcelona, Ibiza, Madrid, Seville or Tenerife) raise the urgency of detouristifying basic necessities, starting with housing, prohibiting their use for tourist rental . Just as tax progressivity applies to water waste, they also propose penalizing the frequency of flights or banning them over affordable distances by train. The political proposal for degrowth is based on the planned contraction and convergence of flows of energy and materials consumed per capita. As an alternative, and taking into account the maxim that the market is not a panacea, proposals for the decommodification of leisure activities are being launched; for example, through social tourism aimed at achieving redistributive effects of social and environmental justice. In short, degrowth advocates tourism aimed at the reproduction of life, to the detriment of tourism which serves the reproduction of capital.
