Does tourism ruin everything that it touches?

At the entrance to one of the ruined temples of Petra in Jordan, there is an inscription chiseled into the soft red rock. It looks as if it has been there for centuries. It could have been carved by one of King Herod’s soldiers, when they were imprisoned in the town in 40 BC. But closer inspection reveals that it is not so ancient after all. It reads:

Shane and Wendy from Sydney were here. April 16th 1996.

The ruins of Petra were discovered in 1810 by a Swiss explorer, and a recent report has just concluded that ‘they are in grave danger of being destroyed by the unstoppable march of tourism’. More than 4,000 tourists a day tramp through Petra’s rocky tombs. They wear away the soft red sandstone to powder and (occasionally!) scratch their names into the rock.

It is not just Petra that is under threat of destruction. More than 600 million tourists a year now travel the globe, and vast numbers of them want to visit the world’s most treasured sites: the Parthenon, the Taj Mahal, Stonehenge, the national parks of Kenya. The tourist industry will soon be the largest industry in the world, and it has barely reached its 50th birthday. Many places that once were remote are now part of package tours. Will anything put a stop to the growth of tourism?