AI for Good

Chapter 5Nature-Dependent Tourism

—Darren Tanner and Mark Spalding

Executive Summary

Climate change and a dependence on tourism have led island countries to consider sustainable ways to manage their natural resources, often by embracing the concept of the Blue Economy: a sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth that preserves the health of the ocean ecosystem. Here, we used machine learning and artificial intelligence tools to leverage user-generated content in an effort to understand tourist activities and preferences, as well as to model and map multiple nature-dependent sectors of the tourism industry in five small island nations in the Eastern Caribbean. We additionally boosted the accuracy of these models by further incorporating input from local governments and tourism experts.

The approach that our research team developed is scalable and practical. It can be used by a number of countries that want to transform the role of tourism in their economies so that they improve the sustainable use of their natural resources in a way that preserves them, to the country's long-term economic advantage.

Why Is This Important?

Climate change is greatly impacting the planet. Unfortunately, current economic interests preserve that destructive process: vested interests that profit from climate change are unlikely to change unless motivated to do so through ecological policy and financial penalties.

One way to limit unsustainable consumption of natural resources is ...