Andrew Stone: What New Zealand can learn from Duterte's tourism crackdown

Sunset at White Beach on Boracay Island before the closure to tourists. Photo / Getty Images

Andrew Stone reflects on how too much of a good thing is killing some of the world's tourist destinations.

The island of Boracay is a slip of land which suffers from two fatal weaknesses. It has an astonishing white-sand beach — a magnet for tourists — and a hopelessly overloaded sewerage system.

The combination has poisoned the Philippine jewel. Boracay has become so catastrophically polluted that President Rodrigo Duterte has taken the dramatic step of closing the island to visitors.

His snap decision has thrown thousands of poorly paid island workers out of a job, turned off the tap for a lucrative source of foreign exchange and prompted howls of indignation from the high-end hotel industry which virtually smothers the tiny tropical destination.

Duterte had no choice. Boracay, which last year drew 2 million visitors, was drowning in a sea of sludge. Surveys showed virtually every commercial property was sending waste straight into the sea. The race to develop the island overwhelmed any sensible restraint on the ability of the water around Boracay to cope with all the funk flowing into the ocean. In short the place had become a toilet.

Named by Conde Nast readers just last year as the best island in the world, Boracay is a stinking case of greed, rapacious tourism and desperate economic need.

The prospect of Bali following the same foul path is a real possibility. Underwater film shot off popular beaches at the Indonesia resort island reveal a floating garden of plastic, the odd impoverished marine creature and an ecosystem on its last gasp. Sampling has found unsafe levels of human waste and heavy metals in waters of Bali beaches.

Koh Tachai, a Thai dive spot was closed after it came close to collapse under the weight of tourism and Maya Bay, setting for The Beach, the Leonardo DiCaprio film, is being closed to tourists to help marine life recover.

The first boats arrive at the Ko Phi Phi drawcard at 6.30am. By 7.15am the place is heaving as more and more boats motor in. The visitors have less and less to see. The sheer flood of arrivals is choking fragile coral.

In a global market these striking places are gasping because of their beauty. Even New Zealand is feeling the impact of allowing untrammelled access to sensitive places. Picture postcard settings are spoiled by streams of visitors arriving by the busload, or parked up in backpacker vans without a loo in sight.

Tourism is vital for here, and for Southeast Asia, where a staggering 100 million people visit a year. Thailand got 35 million of them last year.

With 12 million people working in the Asian industry, it is little wonder that authorities — Duterte aside — are not prepared to turn off the tourist tap.

The Filipino strongman showed one way of dealing with disasters. There are other options. Hotel construction has stopped in the Seychelles and the Galapagos Islands limit stays to 15 days.

Machu Picchu in Peru is reducing trekking numbers from next year and Cinque Terre on the Italian Riviera caps arrivals at 1.5 million. These measures may of course drive up the cost of visiting but they may also preserve what's there.

Travellers could be more mindful too. Do you really need to go to Bali, to Thailand or Myanmar next year? Do you want to kill off the coral a little more, or add to the piles of rubbish? Perhaps you already have made bookings. Then, at the very least, think about your impact and pack some litter bags.