Courtesy : ceur-ws.org
Eco-tour technological latest
With the ecological crisis of the last decades, new forms of consumption appear which redefine
our habits and in particular our way of traveling. Thus, ecotourism has grown rapidly in
the last decades, also correlated to the increase of tourism in general [8]. While HumanComputer Interaction (HCI) practitioners are interested in applying technological products to
ecotourism [5], a certain paradox arises. Is technology an ally to ecotourism or a dangerous
enemy?
As pointed by Greenpeace in 2017 in the Clicking Clean report, the Information Technology
(IT) sector is an important actor of the carbon footprint. With over 4 billion people active
users of the internet, the energy footprint of the IT sector is already estimated to consume
approximately 7% of global electricity. This calls into question the use of technology in naturebased, environment-respectful approaches, such as ecotourism. Yet technology can also be a
powerful ally for the environment, as discussed by Kaltschmitt et al. [4]. HCI researchers, being
at the forefront of technological evolution, must be aware of these questions and should lead the
way to ideological evolution. Our primary audience consists of HCI researchers and designers
who are interested in building new tools for ecotourism.
We suggest developing tools to turn current tourists into ecotourists by providing or proposing
alternatives to traditional tourism. However, technology can also cause new issues such as
standardizing our vision and practice of tourism or increasing the sense of deprivation and
frustration. We present these two visions and try to provide elements to understand pitfalls of
Proceedings of the NatureHCI 2021 workshop, co-located with the CHItaly 2021 conference, July 12, 2021, Bolzano, Italy.
© 2021 Copyright for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY
Figure 1: Some tourists have been accused of spoiling the ”super bloom” by taking pictures with flowers.
current technologies but also design opportunities. These pitfalls and opportunities are derived
from a discussion with a researcher in landscape architecture and urban planning, which we
seek to illustrate with existing technological approaches.
- Technological pitfalls for tourism
Technology can be used to bring people closer to nature, however, there may be pernicious
effects to technology. We present two particular points where technology can be detrimental to
tourism: i) how technology standardizes the way people value a place or an object; and ii) how
technology increases the sense of deprivation and frustration.
2.1. Technology can standardize the way people value a place or an object
As theorized by Walter Benjamin in his seminal essay ”the art of work in the age of its technological
reproduction”, ”the desire of contemporary masses to bring things ‘closer’ spatially and humanly,
[…] is just as ardent as their bent toward overcoming the uniqueness of every reality by accepting
its reproduction” [1]. In other terms, the greater the availability and the fidelity of a copy, the
more people will need to experience the authentic in their life.
When applied to tourism and heritage sites (monuments, cities, natural and cultural landscapes…), this statement rings in a unique way: Indeed, places (i.e. realities) that attract the
largest influx of tourists are by and large the places whose pictures (i.e. reproductions) are the
most widely available. The visitor numbers and the reproduction fueling each other.
To reuse Walter Benjamin’s terminology, the cultic value of a genuine cultural landscape is
reinforced by the availability and the fidelity of its pictorial reproductions. The rise of social
media has amplified this phenomenon in ways that Walter Benjamin himself could not possibly
have anticipated. Since Walter Benjamin wrote these lines in 1936, the intertwined development
of technology and culture has never been so true.
2.2. Technology can increase the sense of deprivation and frustration
Today, the improvement of technology (VR, smartphone, etc) and its access in greater quantity
(Youtube, etc.) push the massification of tourism and the standardization of tourist interests.
Figure 2: Ogilvy’s data driven add campaign for Deutsche Bahn. This campaign suggested lookalike
places in Germany based on popular pictures of touristic areas
While virtual reality can offer tourism many useful applications [2], it can also lead to increase
users’ desire to visit the real site. However, undertaking such trips may be hindered by economic
conditions (trips are expensive) or ideological convictions (e.g. to refrain from flying for
ecological reasons). Although, the representation of touristic sites can support ”motionless trip”,
it can also increase the sense of deprivation and the frustration of not being able to visit such
places.
Technology can also lead to the massification of tourism, which can be detrimental to nature
and ecology. Each site has a carrying capacity [3, 7] that cannot be exceeded without consequences. An example of such overcharge has been seen in California in 2016, where thousands
of wildflowers bloom all at once, transforming arid landscapes into vast fields of flowers. When
the town of Lake Elsinore experienced such a phenomenon called the ”super bloom”, it also
experienced an influx of an estimated 50,000 visitors. Social network influencers were accused
of ruining flowers by taking photos Fig. 1 which were posted on the networks and thus increased
the awareness of this place. - Technological opportunities for tourism
On the other hand, technology can help change the traditional view of tourism and mentalities.
These offer design opportunities for technological tools, including leveling the playing field
between different geographic locations.
3.1. Level the playing field between different geographic locations
While some locations are attractive because of the many photos and advertisements online,
technology has the ability to level the playing field between different geographic locations. In
this direction, the German public railway company (Deutsche Bahn) produced an advertising
campaign where they used an algorithm to find German lookalike landscape photos of popular
touristic sites1
Fig. 2. By increasing the diversity and availability of sources, the Deutsche Bahn
offers cheaper travel destinations that are closer to the users. In doing so, they promote local
tourism, give visibility to local tourist sites and support the spread of tourists across different
locations, thus lightening the pressure on the most visited areas.
Such technology is a great tool to increase the diversity and availability of different locations,
reducing the feeling of frustration or deprivation while promoting local tourism. This advertising
campaign was a great success for Deutsche Bahn and the reason was that Germany has enough
cultural heritage to allow such algorithms to work. - Discussion
As researchers and designers, we need to be mindful of the socio-technical context in which
technologies are designed and employed. On one hand, technology can play a role in reinforcing
mass tourism and mass capitalism, with its known environmental issues. On the other hand,
technology can complement the ecosystem and reinforce good environmental practices. Thus,
our aim was not to provide an exhaustive list of pitfalls and opportunities for ecotourism, but
rather to question the impact of current technologies and to open up new design possibilities
and opportunities.
We argued that technology can increase the sense of deprivation and frustration of users.
Similarly, Guttentag et al. [2] raised this issue, arguing that: [potentially] an attempted VR
substitute would have the exact opposite of its desired preservationist impact and increase users’
desire to visit the real site”. However, the pitfalls and opportunities presented are not ground
truth, but rather dynamic and evolve according to the socio-technical and economical context.
For example, in times of global pandemics (e.g. SARS-CoV-2), where the world is subject to travel
restrictions, technology can support the access of inaccessible sites and potentially alleviate the
sense of deprivation.
We illustrated how technology can level the playing field between different tourist locations
and thus, turn current tourists into ecotourists. Technological tools have the power to redirect
the influx of tourists from one place to another. However, how to control this flow of people
remains an open question. One solution is to develop tools for people that act every day for
tourism, land use planning, tourism regulation, and nature preservation. Because they know
the local problems, they should be able to better visualize and control the touristic traffic in their
area. How can we take into account the interests of the different stakeholders (local residents,
heritage conservationist, etc.) is an important question, as these interests may be diverse or
even contradictory