A life-cycle framework reveals hidden costs of ecotourism

We outline the hidden environmental costs of ecotourism hotels using a life cycle approach. Our framework highlights the environmental, social and economic costs and benefits to the investor and the local community of, first, hotel planning and land clearance, then the construction phase, and finally the operational period. We focus here on examples of ecotourism in Zanzibar, and the Western Indian Ocean more generally. We propose that costs to the environment, both habitats and biodiversity, often fail to be front-ended while substantial costs to the local community increase over the hotel life cycle. It is rare that either are considered by eco-tourists, and neither are mitigated by any current eco-certification processes. Far greater transparency is needed in the tourism sector, and the environmental costs of eco-tourism, a huge industry, extend far beyond carbon travel footprints.