Abstract
In September 2017, Hurricane Maria caused widespread devastation in Puerto Rico. In its aftermath, Puerto Ricans envisioned destruction as an opportunity to renovate and innovate. In this context, community-based tourism has become a key factor to foster economic recovery and build resilience in local communities. This chapter aims at analyzing some of the recovery efforts in the field of community-based tourism in the island after Hurricane Maria. Whereas on the one hand, tourism and the visitor economy occupy a prominent position in the governmental “Disaster Recovery Plan,” on the other hand various non-profit organizations are working hand in hand with local communities to tackle untapped economic opportunities. In this chapter, the authors will analyze the efforts of the Foundation for Puerto to help communities around the island transition from relief to recovery. The lessons extracted from this case could be useful for destinations that are exposed to natural disasters, or those who wish to retain population by creating tourism-related business and employment opportunities, among others.
TopThe Impact Of Hurricane Maria In Puerto Rico
In September 2017, in the term of a couple of weeks, the island of Puerto Rico was hit by two major hurricanes (Irma and Maria)1, which wreaked havoc and caused important damage to its natural environment and infrastructures, with the ensuing economic and social impact. The archipelago, that had already been facing a recession for over a decade, was thrown in the doldrums in the aftermath of the hurricanes. The government estimates that the damages produced by the hurricanes to the tourism industry amount to $ 547 million in direct income (Gobierno de Puerto Rico, 2018: 43), while a survey of municipalities showed a decrease in economic activity, particularly in key industries such as agriculture, tourism and retail.
Hurricane Maria, which was the worst hurricane to hit the island in 80 years, caused more damage and had a deeper impact in the island's economy, as tourist arrivals decreased sharply, and more than 10.000 small businesses were forced to close, the situation being even more serious in communities outside the San Juan metropolitan area. By 2018, according to the UNWTO, Puerto Rico’s visitor arrivals had decreased by 18% and tourist revenues by 15%.
In the aftermath of a disaster, communities need to fix the damage and rebuild. The discourse of change is a common feature in such scenarios, as disasters present both challenges and opportunities. They are an opportunity to start again, to replace the things that did not work, to renovate technologies that were obsolete, to create and innovate. Puerto Rico was already suffering the effects of an economic and financial crisis before the hurricane, economic activity is unevenly distributed, and some areas are still in need. As a result, according to the US Census Bureau, the population had been decreasing since 2004 due to migration, and the hurricane has accelerated the population loss trend.
In 2017, before the hurricanes, it was estimated that 3.4 million Puerto Ricans lived in the island and about 5.6 million lived in the U.S. Since then, in the following two years, about 130,000 Puerto Ricans migrated as a direct result of Maria’s devastation, and the government reported that it expects an additional 8% population loss by 2024. To make things worse, the ones leaving are the young generation outside urban areas, the ones staying the older one, which result in a dramatic human capital loss.
Even though Community-based Tourism (CBT, hereafter) is not the answer to all the island’s problems, it can be part of the solution. In July 2018, the government published its recovery plan “Transformation and Innovation in the Wake of Devastation: An Economic and Disaster Recovery Plan for Puerto Rico”, in which sustainable tourism plays an important part as a key to boost local economies while preserving unique natural, cultural and historical assets. In the same month, the non-profit DMO Discover Puerto Rico started operations with the mission of promoting Puerto Rico abroad as a premier destination for business and leisure travelers. Whereas, amongst grassroots initiatives, Foundation for Puerto Rico’s Bottom Up Destination Recovery Program identifies and invests in four impact areas in its effort to support communities to become more resilient and active in the creation of economic opportunities, one of those lines focuses in “developing branding and marketing strategies to bring more tourists to the community in a sustainable manner”.
Although recovery has been slow and taken longer than expected, Puerto Rico is an example of resilience in the face of adversity. CBT was already shaping public and private efforts in this Caribbean island before hurricane Maria, and it is expected to be playing an even more important role in the mid and long-term post-disaster recovery efforts. Whereas in the 1950s, governmental policies aimed at attracting big investment to build infrastructures and large leisure complexes, some of them with serious environmental impact, the present development of CBT is more sustainable since it takes place at a smaller scale. Furthermore, the involvement of civil society in CBT can help “turning local communities from resource users to resource protectors” (Zacarias & Loyola, 2017: 142).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Donor-Assisted Community-Based Tourism (DACBT): Promoted by national and international cooperation agencies as well as NGOs, that assists local communities immersed in subsistence economy to generate their own micro-businesses by providing cash funding and technical support.
Resilience: The ability of human or natural systems to cope with adverse events and be able to effect a quick recovery.
Civil Society: The organized non-state, non-market sector.
Limit of Acceptable Change in Ecosystems: A framework aiming at preserving an appropriate balance in ecosystems by establishing a threshold, that is considered acceptable, in the variation of a particular ecological component or process.
Business Incubator: An organization that helps entrepreneurs shape their business ideas into startups and early stage companies, and/or accelerating their launch to the market.
Community-Based Tourism (CBT): A tourism concept that seeks a suitable balance between the environmental, Economic, and socio-cultural aspects of tourism development, by placing in the hands of local communities the development and management of visitor facilities and attractions, whose benefits revert in the community itself.
Destination Management Organization (DMO): Tourist organization in charge of promoting the assets of destination and creating brand awareness in order to attract visitors, who in turn will dynamize the economy with their expenditures.
Visitor Economy: A tourism concept that highlights the multiplier effect of tourism in the local economy, accounting not only for direct tourism expenditure in goods and services, but also for indirect consumption in agriculture, business services and communications, amongst other components of the supply chain.
Carrying Capacity: The quantity of simultaneous visitors that a tourist destination can support without seeing negatively affected its physical, economic, and socio-cultural environment.
Paradores: Privately operated family-owned small inns, which conform a network that has succeeded in building a strong recognizable brand.
Pro-Poor Tourism (PPT): A tourism concept that advocates for tourism as a tool to fight against poverty. It aims at generating net benefits and improving livelihoods. Benefits are not necessarily economic, they might as well be social, cultural, or environmental.
Tourism Diversification: A destination’s efforts to create various tourist products that suit different visitor needs and desires, in order to improve tourism-generated income or balance seasonality.
Destination Branding: Marketing practice which aims at making the destination easily identifiable in order to increase its value and attractiveness in the public eye.
Community Benefit Tourism Initiatives (CBTIs): A tourism concept which raises the need to search for economic benefits for the community, regardless of other socio-political issues, defending that the community should have ownership, management, control over tourism projects.