EVERYONE WANTS (TO SELL/BUY) THE SIMPLE SOLUTIONS

Everyone loves a simple solution. Especially in tourism.

Plant a tree. Offset emissions. Switch to electric. AI will fix it.

Spread the tourists. Get them to stay longer. All year. Everywhere.

Take the train. Go local. Stop flying. Travel slower. Boycott.

Buy local. Eat local. Stay with locals. Ban cruise ships. Build bike lanes.

Tax the bad guys. Create a new label. Launch a new campaign. Make it “green.” Add sustainability to the brand. Get the certification stamp.

Use smaller plates. Reuse your towels. Skip the plastic straws. Fight food waste. Recycle the trash.

And, of course

Write a strategy. Sign a pledge. Measure the footprint. Compensate it. Communicate it. Forget it.

They sound good. Clean. Actionable. Like small band-aids on a deep wound.

But tourism is a complex ecosystem of dreams, money, politics, and human behavior. It’s built on contradictions and competing interests. Yet in every meeting, every panel discussion, and every glossy strategy report, the story gets simplified. A new slogan. A new campaign. A new spreadsheet.

As if we could just redirect people like shipments on a map.

But tourists are not packages. They are people. And people travel where they want, when they want, for reasons that rarely fit our neat categories.

Technology, we’re told, will save us. AI will measure, predict, balance, and optimize everything. But technology is only infrastructure. It has no will. No politics. No courage.

Carbon off-setting, meanwhile, buys us time, or at least the illusion of it. The problem is, time is exactly what we’re running out of. And it doesn’t work.

That’s why the simple solutions sell so well. They give us the comforting feeling of control, of progress, of doing something. They look great on PowerPoint slides and policy briefs.

But reality doesn’t care about our slogans. Real change means shifting structures, incentives, and power. It means admitting that the tourism system, as it works today, cannot be truly sustainable, no matter how many campaigns we redesign or how much green language we put on top.

Simple solutions sell. Complex truths scare people.

But the future won’t be fooled.