Garet Hegner, 81, remembers Pacific Beach before it became synonymous with 2 a.m. last calls and late-night dining. She says Garnet Avenue was meant to help residents “keep house” and run errands, not quench tourist and student’s thirst for night life and entertainment. In fact, 30 years ago, Hegner said the neighborhood’s movie theatre welcomed patrons only on the whim of its independent owner and was often closed even in daylight.

Hegner moved to the San Diego beach community in 1968 with her youngest daughter. She stayed for 10 years until development drew in tourists and college students, flooding the housing market with renters and chasing her out of the area.

Within the travel industry and academia, he said the concept of sustainability is moving beyond the green movement and focusing on three areas of impact: socio-cultural, ecological and economic.

“Tourism is often seen as a smokeless industry, producing only benefits,” Sasidharan said. “But tourism severely alters the sustainability balance-environment, society and culture and the economy-in San Diego and its borderlands.”

Brand vs. Cultural Identity

While policy-makers and the business sector associate tourism with dollar signs, Sasidharan said residents often see it as a deterioration of their home.

“Tourism can be a disruption of the social fabric of a community,” Sasidharan said. “If [residents] feel it is transforming their community, there is less and less support and this idea that ‘San Diego is not ours, but in the hands of hoteliers.’”

Hegner saw Pacific Beach’s dynamic change as more bars moved in to serve tourists and consumers. A young crowd quickly followed, changing the laid-back, small-community feel that attracted her to the area.

“The first night a group of students moved in next to me, they invited me to a party,” Hegner said. “Now why would a 50 or 60-year-old women want to go to a party?”

Others in the area also feared their town was turning into “another Miami Beach,” prompting the passage of Proposition D in 1972 to limit high-rise construction. Many left the neighborhood; Hegner has moved three times, finally settling in El Cajon near her daughter and grandchildren. Sasidharan said this sort of displacement is common in destination cities.

One solution, he said, is for communities to stray from the “guide book phenomenon” of travel to make destinations an “experience and not an activity.” He suggests cultural itineraries that promote San Diego’s Hispanic heritage and surf-town past or highlight the region’s border landscape.

David Clemmons, the founder of Voluntourism.org, which promotes helping communities while vacationing in them, said a new breed of tourists is looking for this type of experience. A University of California San Diego study shows that 40 percent of Americans are willing to spend their vacations volunteering, with another 13 percent saying they would dedicate a whole year to global volunteerism. And the study says this desire spans all generations and locales, with many retirees and Baby Boomers electing to vacation in North America for “voluntourism.”

Clemmons has worked with convention groups to incorporate service projects into their agendas, but he hopes policy-makers and the industry as a whole will expand on the concept. He suggested that public agencies like the Convention and Visitors Bureau choose annual themes on which to base service-oriented attractions.

“[Travelers] want to see what’s behind the curtain of a destination,” Clemmons said.

San Diego’s relationship with Mexico has great potential for this brand of tourism. By beautifying a school in Tijuana or cleaning up ecological preserves along the border, Clemmons said tourists can get a better sense of Southern California’s culture, what he calls a “rawthenticity.” What’s more, the connection “voluntourists” forge with the community can help with the stigma many residents place on tourism development, especially those who don’t directly see industry revenues.

“‘Voluntourism’ brings with it this element of people wanting to leave the destination as good or better than when they came,” Clemmons said.

Man-made Paradise: Environmental Impacts

Experts say this type of awareness contributes directly to an environmentally-responsible approach to travel. Carbon footprint calculations take into account individual air travel, but the city has little information about the tourism industry’s footprint, meaning accountability is largely in the hands of the tourists themselves.

“It’s really about common sense,” said Kate Buska, a spokeswoman for the San Diego Convention and Visitors Bureau. “You just do what you do at home [to conserve].”  

What the city does know is that San Diego has one of the highest per capita disposal rates in the country because of its designation as a destination city, said Stephen Grealy, who manages San Diego’s waste reduction program. He said hotels, restaurants and other businesses throw away 125,000 tons of waste each year compared to the 93,000 tons disposed by San Diego’s nearly 1.3 million residents. While most hotels have recycling programs, they haven’t been regulated by the city. Grealy said a report due out in August will reveal the effectiveness of these programs.

Nor does the city track how successful water conservation efforts by hotels have been, according to Louis Generoso of the city’s water department. Signs are placed near luggage carousels in the airport to remind tourists to save water, and the Environmental Protection Agency’s 1990 WAVE program set up hotel practices that allow visitors to forgo fresh towels and linens each day, he said.

The non-native landscaping at many of the resorts adds to the environmental concerns created by tourism, Sasidharan said, because of the excessive watering they require. Additionally, heavy vehicle use to get to attractions like Sea World or the Wild Animal Park, which are not served by trolley lines, takes its toll.

He said envisioning San Diego as a more walk-able city and encouraging eco-tourism that explores the county’s trails and parks is a more viable form of tourism. A pedestrian-friendly experience gets people on the ground and encourages them to explore more areas of the city, much in the way visitors to Portland, Oregon do. There, they have greater freedom to wander through various districts of the city, Sasidharan said.

Spreading the Wealth: Economic Impacts

Creating a region-wide appeal also helps spread the wealth. With large attractions dominating the industry, Sassidharan said most of the revenue generated goes back to corporate offices outside of the state. Family-owned businesses are left out of the mix and job creation is limited to the low-income positions, meaning most San Diegans never see the profits of tourism, which leads to greater disaffection with the visitor-oriented service industry.

Though tourism is considered an economic goldmine, it can actually diminish the value of the local job market. According to the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG), when economic stability is measured by average wages adjusted for inflation, the region has not kept pace with the rest of the nation. Since 1970, the average wage in San Diego has declined 5 percent, while increasing 10 percent in the state and 15 percent nationwide. SANDAG attributes this decline to an increase in low-income service jobs in the tourism industry-from 1994 to 2000, these jobs grew 24 times faster than high-wage jobs.

Those in line with the sustainable tourism trend have recognized that maintaining the well-being of a community requires a holistic approach. The ecology, culture and economy of an area must be protected for the industry to remain viable.

While many negative impacts of tourism might be hidden in San Diego, one need only look south to see how it can affect an entire population.

SDSU anthropologist Ramona Perez has spent more than a decade studying the effects of tourism on rural Mexican villages. The main draw of Atzompa, Mexico near Oaxaca is its green pottery, which is laden with lead. Tourists come from all over to purchase the wares, unaware that their purchases are risking the health of those who are making the lead-poisoned pottery. While Perez and public health students have worked to add vitamin C to the villagers’ diets in an effort to expel lead from their bodies, she knows the solution is really in redefining the area’s tourism industry.

“Ultimately, I’m trying to redirect tourist demand away from the green glaze without negatively affecting their lives,” she told SDSUniverse, the university’s online publication. “I can’t stop them from using the lead pots because it’s a primary economic resource, but I can shift attention away from the green glaze.”

Industry insiders like Sasidharan and Clemmons said they hope public officials, businesses and travelers will see that the effects of tourism go far beyond one’s pocketbook.

In the meantime, Garet Hegner has already felt the impact on a more emotional and social level.

“I just can’t keep up with the pace of the city anymore.” she said. “I think we’ve lost the ability to communicate as a community.”