IB Geography • Section 4
Managing Tourism and Sport for the Future
Future possibilities for management of, and participation in, tourism and sport at varying scales
Restored from the original AdornGeo Weebly page • syllabus order preserved
Unsustainable Tourism, Hotspots & Carrying Capacity
The consequences of unsustainable touristic growth in rural and urban tourism hotspots, including the concept of carrying capacity and possible management options to increase site resilience.
The original AdornGeo sequence begins with the point at which visitor growth overwhelms the environmental, physical, social or perceptual capacity of a place. Carrying capacity is not one fixed number: it changes with season, infrastructure, visitor behaviour, residents’ tolerance and the management strategy used. Venice, Barcelona and fragile island destinations show why the benefits of tourism can become concentrated while its costs are displaced onto residents and ecosystems.
- Physical carrying capacity concerns space, transport, water, waste and accommodation; environmental capacity concerns the amount of change an ecosystem can absorb.
- Social carrying capacity is reached when residents’ quality of life or visitor experience deteriorates beyond an acceptable level.
- Common consequences include crowding, rising rents, congestion, water stress, waste, habitat loss, cultural commodification and conflict between residents and visitors.
- Management can ration access in time or space, change prices, disperse visitors, regulate accommodation, improve public transport, educate visitors or reinvest tourism revenue locally.
- A strategy increases resilience only if it reduces pressure without simply transferring the problem to another neighbourhood, season or destination.
Hotspot pressure audit
- Read the recovered Guardian article and watch both embedded reports. Sort each consequence into economic, social, cultural or environmental impacts.
- Build a carrying-capacity diagram with four thresholds: physical, environmental, social and perceptual. Add located evidence from Venice or Barcelona.
- On the two maps, identify where pressure is concentrated and suggest one way to disperse visitors by route, season or time of day.
- Rank visitor caps, tourist taxes, cruise restrictions, accommodation regulation and education from most to least effective. Justify the ranking for two stakeholders.
- Answer: Examine how carrying-capacity management can increase the resilience of one tourism hotspot. [10]
Watch: Why anti-tourism protests have grown in European hotspots
Watch: How mass tourism changes cities
Venice and Barcelona
Both cities receive global visitor flows, but the pressures are distributed differently. Venice combines a small resident population, fragile lagoon setting and cruise/day-trip flows; Barcelona combines dense residential neighbourhoods, short-term accommodation and conflict over public space and housing.
- Distinguish pressures created by overnight visitors, day visitors and cruise passengers.
- Compare the interests of residents, local businesses, municipal government, accommodation platforms and visitors.
- Judge whether regulation should target visitor numbers, tourist behaviour, accommodation supply or the spatial concentration of attractions.
Sustainable Tourism & the Growth of Ecotourism
The concept of sustainable tourism, including the growth of ecotourism.
Sustainable tourism is a goal for every form of tourism: economic benefits should endure, local communities should retain meaningful control and environmental damage should remain within acceptable limits. Ecotourism is a narrower, nature-based form that should educate visitors, contribute to conservation and benefit local people. The label alone proves nothing, so the original AdornGeo activity asks students to test claims rather than accept green marketing.
- Sustainability balances environmental integrity, economic viability and social or cultural equity across generations.
- Ecotourism should be nature-based, educational, low-impact, locally beneficial and linked to conservation funding.
- Local ownership, local supply chains and fair employment increase the multiplier effect and reduce leakage.
- Small groups can still damage a sensitive ecosystem; flights, luxury facilities and imported goods may create a large hidden footprint.
- Greenwashing occurs when environmental language is used without measurable conservation, community or carbon outcomes.
Ecotourism claim checker
- Complete the original embedded AdornGeo introduction, then write five criteria that a genuine ecotourism project must meet.
- Use the Kenya videos to trace three flows: tourist money, conservation benefits and local decision-making power.
- Create a scorecard for conservation, carbon, water, waste, local employment, cultural respect and ownership. Apply it to one lodge or community enterprise.
- Read the Amazon article and identify where the ecotourism label conflicts with local outcomes.
- Write a judgement: Ecotourism is sustainable only when local communities control both decisions and benefits. Discuss. [10]
Watch: UNEP: Malewa Wildlife Lodge and sustainable tourism in Kenya
Watch: Women-led mangrove ecotourism in Gazi Bay, Kenya
Watch: Conservation and community in a Kenyan conservancy
Community conservancies and ecotourism — Kenya
Kenyan community conservancies use wildlife tourism to create employment and finance conservation while keeping land in community ownership. The model provides a strong test of whether tourism revenue, decision-making and environmental gains remain local.
- Identify how visitor fees and lodge employment can make living wildlife economically valuable.
- Examine possible trade-offs between conservation rules, livestock grazing, land access and dependence on international visitors.
- Evaluate the evidence needed to distinguish a community partnership from externally controlled green marketing.
Factors Influencing Future International Tourism
Factors influencing future international tourism, including greater use of social media, international security and diaspora growth.
The recovered AdornGeo task treats future tourism as an interaction between demand and supply. Rising incomes, more leisure time, diaspora connections and online images can increase demand; transport, accommodation, digital booking and government policy can increase supply. Security shocks and viral media can rapidly redirect flows, creating winners and losers at different destinations.
- User-generated images, reviews and short-form video reduce information barriers and can rapidly create a new hotspot.
- Peer recommendations may be trusted more than official advertising, but algorithms can concentrate visitors in highly photographed places.
- International security standards can make travel safer, while conflict, terrorism, disease or perceived risk can abruptly reduce arrivals.
- Diaspora tourism includes visits to friends and relatives, heritage travel and return visits to ancestral homelands.
- Future flows will reflect income growth, visa policy, aviation access, climate change, carbon policy and the ability of destinations to manage capacity.
Build three future-tourism scenarios
- Complete the original embedded activity and the recovered questions in the Future of Tourism reading.
- Draw three causal chains: social media to visitor growth; a security shock to redirected flows; diaspora growth to VFR tourism.
- Create optimistic, managed-growth and disrupted-tourism scenarios for 2035. Include demand, transport, security, climate and destination capacity in each.
- Choose one destination and design a strategy that gains benefits from future growth without exceeding carrying capacity.
- Evaluate the claim that social media will influence future tourist flows more strongly than international security. [10]
Watch: Factors influencing global tourism
Political & Cultural Influences on International Sport
The growing importance of political and cultural influences on international sport participation, including international agreements, inclusion via changing gender roles and the growing importance of the Paralympics.
International sport is governed through agreements, eligibility rules, funding systems and cultural expectations. Participation is therefore geographical as well as athletic: access varies with gender norms, disability inclusion, conflict, state policy, income and the power of sporting institutions. The Olympics and Paralympics provide visible evidence of changing participation, but formal inclusion does not automatically remove unequal facilities, pay, media coverage or leadership.
- International federations and agreements standardise rules, eligibility, anti-doping and access to competition across borders.
- Governments use sporting participation, boycotts, hosting and team recognition to project identity and political values.
- Changing gender roles and institutional targets have widened women’s participation, although opportunities and resources remain uneven.
- The Paralympic movement expands elite participation and challenges perceptions of disability, while access to classification, technology and funding differs between countries.
- Inclusion should be assessed through athlete numbers, events, funding, leadership, media visibility, facilities and long-term grassroots participation.
Participation and power inquiry
- Create a timeline showing changes in women’s Olympic participation and the development of the Paralympic movement.
- Build an inclusion dashboard with six indicators: athletes, events, funding, leadership, media coverage and grassroots access.
- Compare the influence of one international sporting body, one national government and one changing cultural norm.
- Use the embedded clips to distinguish symbolic visibility from structural change for athletes.
- Discuss whether political agreements or changing cultural attitudes have done more to widen participation in international sport. [10]
Watch: The Olympic journey toward gender equality
Watch: The history of the Paralympic movement
Watch: How Para sport drives wider social change
The Paralympic movement
From the first Paralympic Games in Rome in 1960 to a global movement, Para sport has widened elite participation and visibility for athletes with disabilities. Its geography also reveals disparities in national funding, specialist equipment, classification expertise and accessible facilities.
- Map how participation and medal success may reflect development, funding and access to technology.
- Distinguish the effects of international governance from changes in public attitudes and media representation.
- Evaluate whether a mega-event creates lasting local accessibility and grassroots participation after the closing ceremony.