INTERVIEW
"Everyone wants the same photo and above all pretend that he is alone." In his show Should we ban tourism?, Broadcast on TMC at 9 p.m. Tuesday, journalist Martin Weill deciphers this new trend and questions the consequences of mass tourism. Because the quest for perfect photography can have a significant environmental and local impact.
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Quotas to save sites
The journalist tells an anecdote in Cambodia, in one of the mythical temples of Angkor, the Angkor Wat temple, at daybreak. "We can have the impression that we are alone then we turn the camera, and we realize that there are thousands of us who got up at 6 am to take the same photo, avoiding the heads of other." Sometimes even forget the majestic place, some tourists climb to the top of the temples to take their photos and then descend.
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In some tourist towns, quotas have been introduced. In Dubrovnik, for example, arrivals are limited to 4,000 per day. On Mont-Blanc, it's 214 climbs. A solution that Martin Weill considers interesting. "Our question is provocative but in our investigation, we realized that there were ways to regulate tourism and make it more sustainable."
In Thailand, Maya Bay beach, made famous by the film La Plage , with Leonardo DiCaprio, is now closed to the public. The Similan Islands are also subject to tourist quotas. "We have fun in the report because the quotas are set at 3,000 arrivals on the beach, it still does a lot of people!", Says the journalist. "But we trust the experts and the government who explain that this does not destroy the seabed."
Unclog by inquiring about nearby places
"We are going to go towards more regulation, and it is also up to us, tourists, to better inform us, not necessarily to go to such and such a beach, because it is known, because we want the same photo as everything the world, but rather on those next door as beautiful ". The Angkor site, for example, is teeming with deserted places. "Angkor is gigantic, it is four times the size of Paris. The classic circuit goes through four temples, but ten minutes on foot you have magnificent and deserted temples. If these sites are unclogged and tourists make the effort, it would be good for the site. "
The locals are also confronted with the indecency of certain tourists who adopt disrespectful behavior. On the ancestral walls of the temples of Angkor, some engrave their names or a heart. And two tourists took a picture of their bare buttocks at a temple in Thailand. "It is a sacred temple, there are rules. It would not occur to you to be buttocks in the air in a church," denounces the journalist.
While tourism cannot be banned, it can nevertheless be regulated to become more sustainable. "It is necessary that all the actors of tourism agree: the tourists must be informed, the governments must regulate, and the travel agencies must also stop proposing certain circuits, in particular those with animals", judge Martin Weill. "If we do anything and we screw up all the sites, in ten years they won't have a job."