by Bora Bora is close to paradise. The small island is part of French Polynesia and is located in the vast expanse of the south Pacific Ocean. Its central peak rises from green hills and overwater bungalows line the edge of its turquoise lagoon. Beyond a shallow reef, water stretches in all directions.
Over the last few decades, that splendor has become a problem. As Bora Bora became one of the most popular holiday destinations in the world, tourists flocked to the island on large cruise ships. It became so overspending that Bora Bora pledged in 2019 to tackle the problem by limiting the number of cruise visitors from 2022.
Then, French Polynesia made global headlines in 2021 by promising to ban cruise ships with more than 3,500 passengers from 2022. It later said it would limit the total number of tourists.
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But this year, a new government in French Polynesia abandoned that promise, and instead set a goal of almost doubling the number of visitors by 2033. It also welcomed large cruise ships to certain ports.
The dramatic policy change has created a divide within French Polynesia between those who want to grow the tourism sector, and others who support a more environmentally friendly model such as Bora Bora. Because of the change, cruise ships – which serve the islands’ tourism but pose risks to the environment – have been subject to special scrutiny.
An island ‘invaded’ by tourists
French Polynesia consists of more than 100 islands including Bora Bora and Tahiti.
Like many Pacific nations, tourism is vital to French Polynesia, contributing about 12% of GDP and 80% of export revenue, according to Tahiti Tourism. The industry has grown in importance over the past decade, government figures show, with the number of tourists rising from around 160,000 in 2011 to 236,000 in 2019 – mainly from the US and France.
This increase was due to the growth of sea tourism throughout the region. Rainui Besinau, chairman of the Bora Bora tourism association, remembers days when cruise ships with up to 3,000 passengers each would dock near the island and tourists would flood the streets of Bora Bora.
“The hotels wanted to protect the quality of their service,” says Besinau. “So when the ships arrived, the hotels closed the doors to the outsiders. they [didn’t] I want to be invaded.”
Instead, most cruise tourists walked several kilometers from the dock to Matira beach, one of Bora Bora’s main attractions. With so many people in the water, large amounts of sunscreen would slide off, says Besinau, into the magnificent reef.
Besinau says that before he took measures to restrict arrivals, there were “two fighting tourism models” on the island.
“A luxury model, with a very peaceful island without too many people on the water, and mass tourism with the cruise ships,” he says. “Those two models are not compatible.”
In 2019, due to the frustrations of the tourism industry – led by Besinau, together with the mayor of Bora Bora, Gaston Tong Sang, and a collection of business owners – the island’s local council decided to focus on luxury tourism by limiting the number of daily tourist arrivals enter directly. 1,200 from 2022.
Environmentalists welcomed the move. “It is logical to limit the number of tourists,” says Marie-Laure Vanizette, spokeswoman for the environmental group Te Ora Naho, to “preserve our assets and our way of life”.
Like many in French Polynesia, Vanizette is not against all cruise ships. She believes that vessels can take up less space from hotels, which she worries will destroy the environment and hinder local people’s access to land.
But when it comes to large cruise ships, she believes that having “those big monsters coming from outside” damages the landscape and environmental aspirations. “Big cruise ships have a bad reputation. They are big losers.”
According to a 2019 study, a cruise ship can generate more carbon footprint than 12,000 cars. Vessels often use bunker fuel: a tar-like substance that emits air pollution and greenhouse gases when burned. Many cruise lines have pledged to switch to liquefied natural gas (LNG), but environmentalists worry that using LNG risks releasing methane, which is also harmful to the climate.
The Cruise Line Industry Association (CLIA), which represents the world’s largest cruise lines, challenges that assessment. Its members are “committed to reducing carbon intensity on average across the cruise fleet by 40% by 2030 compared to 2008”, says Joel Katz, managing director of Clia in Austria, “and they are in pursuit of net-zero cruises -carbon by 2050.”
Katz says Clia doesn’t have data for the Pacific but that tourism brings benefits to societies: “Small coastal communities benefit from the cruise industry bringing in visitors to support local travel enterprises and provide jobs.”
French Polynesia to increase arrivals
As Bora Bora falls back on cruise tourists, the rest of French Polynesia is trying to take a different approach.
Moetai Brotherson, who became president of French Polynesia in May, told local media that he aims to welcome 600,000 tourists annually by 2033 – there were almost 219,000 last year. Guillaume Colombani, a tourism adviser to the Brotherson government, told the Guardian that French Polynesia would try to increase the number of arrivals to 600,000 a year within ten years.
Colombani says that “the previous government’s promises were made to limit people arriving at a time when there was a large cruise”. He says that as part of the goal of achieving the visitors, the government has identified abandoned hotels that could be suitable for development. It was also identifying public land that could be leased to investors for “new resort projects” with a focus on sustainability. In Papeete, the capital of French Polynesia, work is underway to build a new three-level cruise terminal that will open in 2024.
Many tourism operators cautiously welcomed a plan to grow the sector, but expressed concern about how the extra visitors would be catered for.
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Alexandrine Wan, chief executive of French Polynesian travel agency Nani Travels, says it may be possible to increase tourism sustainably but warns that the strategy must be “very well thought out and must be in line with the wishes of the population and the environmental” .
A tour operator based in Tahiti, Dominique Tehei, believes that more tourists could be a positive for the country.
“The problem is that we don’t have enough hotel rooms or activities for everyone – but if it’s fixed why? As long as we can accommodate them and distribute them evenly,” says Tehei.
maintaining a ‘calm island’
Bora Bora council director general Maireraurii Leverd told the Guardian the island would keep its limits on cruise tourists in place, even if the rest of French Polynesia boosted tourist numbers.
“We don’t have the same strategy for Bora Bora, because we are a very small island,” she says.
Vanizette, meanwhile, sees Brotherson’s approach as disastrous, especially when it comes to increasing the number of tourists. She says it is “a complete contradiction” to any sustainable tourism strategy.
Dr. Timothy MacNeill, director of sustainability studies at Ontario Tech University, says that “marine tourism is fundamentally bad in every way.”
“If you can think of an industry that’s a good candidate to stop altogether, it would probably be cruise ship,” he says.
Among these concerns, Vanizette hopes that Bora Bora’s approach to cruise tourism will once again become a model for French Polynesia. “[It] more sustainable, more ecological, and it helps families get more money,” she says.
Almost two years after Bora Bora’s limits on cruise tourists came into effect, Besinau says the thriving island remains committed to the approach.
“We want to keep this picture of Bora Bora as a peaceful island.”
