Future Here Now: Tourists on our Terms

Try it on

This week's Future Here Now examines the complex and often problematic tourism industry. Thousands of communities across the world rely on tourism of some type to bring in much-needed income and jobs, and an influx of tourists often gives locals access to businesses that their local population couldn't support alone. Tourism can even give local people access to the world in ways that they wouldn't have had otherwise, and tourists can turn into investors, new tax paying residents, new business owners, and even new leadership.

But tourism can also cause a lot of problems, ranging from environmental degradation to dead-end jobs and disincentive to invest in education, loss of local culture and uniqueness, and housing inflation that pushes out the very people that serve the tourists. From Banff to the Florida keys, from Wisconsin's Door County to Las Vegas, tourism- dependent communities face surprisingly similar problems - problems that often seem nearly impossible to unwind.

So what will Fusion Era tourism look like, and how will the trends that are shaping this new era change our assumptions and our practices around tourism? And what new challenges will tourism economies face as a result? These are the questions we will be looking at this week.

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Try it on

Think about the last time you went to a place that attracts a lot of tourists. It might be a state park, or a historic city, or Disney World, whatever.