http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oc ... ard-ruling

Should travellers stay away from Easter island... Until such time when Chile finds and implements some way to restrict the unchecked hordes of travellers who by their sheer numbers are damaging the islands.

What do you guys think? Should individual travellers stay away to help reduce the numbers, or are people (morally speaking) within their rights to visit the island if they so wish?

are people (morally speaking) within their rights to visit the island if they so wish?

Yes. The alternative would almost certainly be a financial hurdle to visit Easter Island like Bhutan has, which would exclude budget travelers.

Behave responsibly, and don't visit in prison idiots like that Finnish guy.

Yes. The history of Easter Island shows what happens when environmental concerns aren't taken into consideration - it's important to make sure that the same thing doesn't happen again!

Mass tourism causes trouble in a lot of different locations. While I would like other people to stay away to make it a more enjoyable experience for me, I don't think this is an entirely reasonable expectation.

Restrictions on where people can go and what they can do are a sensible way of managing this. Absolute restrictions on numbers means only one thing - making it more expensive to visit. And even then, how successful will it be. Peru has tried restrictions on the Inca trail, Ecuador tries to restrict visits to the Galapagos. There's still loads of people who go. Managing the tourism is more important than restricting it.

The program that the court struck down sounds like it was probably a good idea. It will simply have to be tweaked to meet Chile's constitutional requirements.

I know they have tried restricting the Galapagous Islands, without further reading I don't know the details of the scheme or how effectively it works.

It's a difficult situation really. I am in 2 minds on this... I certainly don't want to see places like Easter Island made uber-expensive so that only the wealthier traveller can afford them. I would love to go there one day. On the other hand I think the concerns of local people and the local environment must come first. Perhaps some lottery system for those wanting to go, or perhaps it could be a case where a certain number of passes are made available per year and have you have to book at a certain time - like for a music concert...

This is a catch 22. If you restrict the number of visitors by increasing the cost to a point where there are only a small number who are willing to pay, you can use those funds to preserve the location but few get to enjoy it. If you don't charge the higher amount but only let in a certain number of people, you won't generate the revenue to preserve the location and the costs will be unsustainable.

Sounds like they need to restrict access through higher prices to me. It's the best compromise for the site, though maybe not the people who want to visit.

PhotoChick

Wow how things change. When we traveled to Easter Island in 1997, there weren't any crowds. It was hard to get much info about the islands in terms of where to stay, etc.

We showed up in February, having randomly picked the date, and ended up coming in on the eve of a big local festival. No one was at the hotel to check us in, they were all preparing for the parade. We finally found a maid cleaning one of the rooms, who after our explanation in halting Spanish, showed us to a room. It seemed like everyone in the whole town was in the parade. It was fantasic and very authentically local.

The other thing was that we'd planned to stay for 5 days and that was just plain "weird". Apparently, at that time the routine was set as everyone flies in, does an afternoon tour, does the all day tour on the following day, then a morning tour before flying out. We just threw everyone for a loop because we had days without tours.

There just weren't that many tourists back then. We kept running into the same people over and over in the town.

It's hard to believe it's changed like that, but since that's what everyone says it must be true. Sad, because it was really a very mellow relaxed place.

Yes. The alternative would almost certainly be a financial hurdle to visit Easter Island like Bhutan has, which would exclude budget travelers.

I'd argue that Bhutan limits the number of travelers by only having two planes and then insisting you have to fly into the country at least one of the directions. Then, of course, they up the daily rate to balance supply/demand. Having two planes also limits the total number of tourists at any one time regardless of what people would be willing to pay. This essentially keeps foreign impact down during during festival times.

I am not sure Easter Island would need the same approach. Although, Easter Island is a similar position in that there really isn't that many flights to the island and the flight themselves are not cheap. I'd be willing to guess that they are already capped on the number of visitors per year based on flights alone with the main stress and damage happening when the cruise ships arrive which I saw first hand when I was there. Anyway, I imagine the biggest concern among the islanders is actually Chileans relocating there and not the tourists. An influx of 2500 people on a permanent basis is twelve times more stress than averaging 200 tourists/day.

Unfortunately, Easter Island can't take the Maldives approach either. Which is to keep a few islands to yourselves and send the tourists over to their own islands with each island setup for a different budgets.