Tourism boom creates pressure on the historic sites of Tibet

Monday, June 28, 2021

In Tibet, tourism is thriving as more travelers from China are traveling in-country because of the pandemic, posing risks to the delicate environment and historic sites of the region.

At the Potala Palace, the number of visitors has been limited to 5,000 per day. Balancing the demand of the tourists with the urgency to reduce wear and tear on the massive hillside structure is a major challenge, said Gonggar Tashi, the head administrator.

“The biggest challenge for us is the contradiction between the protection and usage of the cultural relics,” Tashi told journalists in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital.

Each year, millions of visitors come to Tibet and last year witnessed a 12.6% rise from the year before, explained Ge Lei, the Deputy Director of the China Tourism Marketing Association. He hopes that by 2026, the amount of visitors will get double.

Tourists are attracted to the “mystique and myth of Tibet as a remote snow-bound land,” said Travis Klingberg, a cultural geographer at NYU Shanghai. “But Tibet has become a place of beautiful natural landscapes meaningful to the Chinese nation.”

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