Tourism Economics Study Boosts Vacation Rentals and Downplays Local Concerns
Skift Take
Dennis' Online Travel Briefing
Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, Executive Editor and online travel rockstar Dennis Schaal will bring readers exclusive reporting and insight into the business of online travel and digital booking, and how this sector has an impact across the travel industry.A couple of days after the Visit Greater Palm Springs tourism board approved a resolution to oppose a referendum in La Quinta, California that would place tighter restrictions on vacation rentals, the tourism board promoted a board-commissioned Tourism Economics study that reads like a cheerleading pamphlet for the short-term rental industry.
In so doing, neither the Oxford Economics tourism research unit nor its tourism board client seem to have received the memo that destinations around the world are increasingly involving local communities in crafting visitor policies. It's not about tourism above all else anymore.
In a post-Covid world, after years of overtourism in some destinations, such as Barcelona and San Diego, California, where critics at times decry an Airbnb and Vrbo onslaught, aren't the locals supposed to be more than an after-thought?
However, the unvarnished reality — OK, let's face it — is that status quo thinking remains hardened at most tourism boards, and the actual execution of a new world order in tourism policy might be aspirational, but exaggerated.
The assumptions that Tourism Economics made in its study, published October 13, seem to be that nearly everything about tourism and accelerated visitor spending are positive for communities in the U.S., including in La Quinta, and that anything that blunts these dynamics are negative.
In writing about the pending tightened vacation rental restrictions in La Quinta, a golf destination about 25 miles from Palm Springs,
