The underlying theme of the book is that in every of the 15 mentioned destination there is a drama on the tourism arena, a fight for survival – for both humans, nature and culture – everything that makes destinations popular.

The tourism paradoxes

The tourism paradoxes are many. One is that as soon as a destination is declared a tourism paradise, it goes down. It doesn’t have to be like this, we know better, but it happens way to often anyway. Another paradox is that luxury tourism can contribute to reduce poverty: there are many examples that the so called “high income/low impact” travels, the opposite of low priced mass tourism, can save the environment and create growth and wealth in the local community it touches. Earlier we believed that threatening cultural and biological diversity around the world’s unsheltered destinations has the power to protect them.

Geo-tourism

The definition of geo-tourism is: tourism that gives advantages to help save, strengthen and emphasize a place’ local quality – environment, culture, aesthetics, cultural legacy – and that gives advantage to the local community.

It’s important to understand that what is done to day leads to preservation -or loss- of our country’s unique combination of population and nature, and it decides if the next generations will have a surviving tourism country.

The similarity of destinations

Despite of the enormous differences in culture, nature, climate and wealth all of the 15 destinations described in the book have very similar challenges in terms of tourism. It’s all about embracing diversity without loosing quality; to find a balance between the nature’s signals to think forwards and the tourisms demand of current gain; to realize that tourism can be its own worst enemy; but that there are solutions. It’s not to late yet.