DESERT FANTASIES - Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism - page 140

has been held in this part of the world, and for that very reason it takes on a new import-
ance.” He then introduced the sheikh, who said the issue of sustainable tourism “defines
our industry and the times we live in,” that green tourism is not a “niche concept” but one
that requires “a seismic shift in the way we do business.”
He revealed the results of a recent market survey showing that two out of every five tour-
ists is willing to spend more money for an environmentally friendly destination. “In other
words,” he said, “there is a high-end market waiting for us to deliver.”
That was the tension throughout the conference: how do you keep making all that
money from tourism, keep that industry at the top of its game, while decrying its ill effects.
Ministers of tourism from New Zealand and Thailand underlined how their countries de-
pend on tourism for 10 percent of the gross national products—the biggest industry for
both countries, bigger than lamb in New Zealand, bigger than rice in Thailand—and the
extraordinary efforts required to keep attracting all those tourists.
During a break Suraphon Svetasreni, the head of the Tourism Authority of Thailand,
told me how the government designed a program to keep tourists coming even in the time
of war. After demonstrators took over Bangkok's international airport in 2008 to force a
change in government, he designed a crisis program. He put it into play in 2010 when
new demonstrations broke out and Bangkok suffered through seventy days of urban violen-
ce. Fires destroyed several blocks in the city's swank districts. While the government and
armed forces battled the rebels from their own crisis center, Mr. Suraphon set up a parallel
tourism crisis communication center.
With members of the Thai Tourism Industry Association and Thailand's hotel asso-
ciation joining him, Suraphon launched a virtual campaign on Facebook and YouTube
showing you could still have an idyllic vacation despite the fighting. Airplanes were
rerouted. “We used social media, and sent out photographs of people on the beach in
Phuket and in Bangkok, in the parts where there were no problems—showing it was okay
to come to Thailand,” he told me.
The tourism trade in Phuket actually doubled from the previous year, proving, he said,
that you can work around a revolution as well as a global recession. “Tourism is strong,”
he said. “No one wants to give up their vacation.”
During the first morning panels several of the local hoteliers extolled the “green” stand-
ards of Abu Dhabi and Dubai for lowering energy usage and costs with new technologies.
Gerald Lawless, executive chairman of the Jumeirah Group, described his hotels as “lux-
ury without guilt.” He was referring in part to the Burj Al Arab, the luxury seven-star hotel
built to resemble the sail of a yacht that incorporates ingenious energy-saving, cooling and
lighting technology. But it was built on an artificial island that pretty much wrecked the
natural environment of that beach and is part of an overall destination that produces more
carbon per capita than any other spot in the world.