Planet Happiness: a Proposition to Address Overtourism and Guide Responsible Tourism, Happiness, Well-being and Sustainability in World Heritage Sites and Beyond

Abstract

Planet Happiness is pioneering a new approach to inclusive tourism planning, putting host communities at the heart of destination planning processes. Tourism is one of the world's largest and fastest growing industries. With 1.403 billion visitor movements across international borders in 2018 and employing more than one in ten people worldwide, tourism has a major impact on the well-being of destination communities. While tourism can be viewed as a vehicle for development, the term "overtourism" is increasingly applied to disaffected destinations around the world. Using concepts from community and social well-being, Planet Happiness proposes tourism should be planned and managed to strengthen the collective well-being of destination communities. Building on well-being knowledge accumulated with communities and governments since 2010, Planet Happiness provides a methodology and resources to enable host communities and wider stakeholders to guide tourism development away from overtourism and towards destination happiness, well-being and sustainability.

Subjective Well-Being in World Heritage Sites: Localization and Thematic Integration of the Happiness Index for Turkey

“…The second aim of this research is to integrate perceptions of tourism and conservation into the SWB assessment. An additional domain of tourism perception based on the criteria promoted by international institutions has already been proposed for the Planet Happiness project (Musikanski et al 2019) and this research complements this proposition by investigating theoretical approaches and region-specific studies in scholarly literature and applying this perspective in Cappadocia WHS, one of the most prominent tourism destinations in Turkey.…”

“…Notwithstanding the HI's role as a cross-culturally applicable SWB assessment instrument (Musikanski et al 2017b), an additional domain to assess the residents' perception of tourism activity derived from international institutions' sustainability frameworks has recently been proposed (Musikanski et al 2019). In this research, however, we focus predominantly on academic sources positioning WHSs at the nexus of tourism and conservation.…”

“…The scope of the data collected through these additional dimensions would help us to gain a deeper understanding to the interrelations between SWB and other factors that influence community members. In WHSs with small populations relative to visitor numbers, proliferation of tourism may eventually culminate into over-tourism, which is experienced by many heritage cities, e.g., Venice (Seraphin et al 2018), and Planet Happiness aims to address this possibility (Musikanski et al 2019). Planning initiatives are rarely a concerted effort, and expectations of residents or specific community subgroups are not always included in the decision-making processes (Corburn 2003).…”

“…This way, SWB indicators can be leveraged as a tool to aid sustainable development trajectory and to guide good governance (Ott 2009). Planet Happiness is a global project with a mission to steer tourism development towards well-being and happiness of communities around World Heritage Sites (WHSs) (Musikanski et al 2019). In order to assess well-being and happiness of local communities, Planet Happiness utilizes a survey instrument of Happiness Index (HI), which is a statistically valid and multidimensional measure of happiness and well-being (for a full list of the items in the HI and their domains, see Musikanski et al 2017a) to be administered in the WHSs worldwide, including cultural, natural and mixed heritage sites located in vastly different geographies and institutional contexts.…”

“…The institutional context of Turkey and WHS of Cappadocia is used as the empirical research setting. Cappadocia is one of the WHSs from Turkey that have joined in the Planet Happiness Project in its initial phase (Musikanski et al 2019). Turkey's national government attaches paramount importance to increasing the international recognition of its heritage assets, as indicated by the exponential growth of tentative sites (UNESCO 2018b).…”