The Royal Palm Hotel on Santa Cruz Island was built a few years back against the express wishes of the Galapagos National Park Authority. However, given that it was being built outside the park the Park had no means of preventing the construction.

The precedent it set is that hotels can be built on the 5% or so of the islands that are not National park. This means that there is no effective means for the national park to control visitor numbers (it can and does control the numbers visiting by boat and supervises it closely).

This raises the prospect of unlimited tourism growth with all the strains on services (water, waste, etc) and pressure on ecosystems that this entails.

In addition, visitors to the hotel can fly out for one or two nights (cruises are really only 4/5 or 7 nights) meaning an increase in flights to the islands and greater risk of introduction of invasive species.

So, that’s the bad. A big luxury pad flying in the face of the Galapagos National Park authority and cashing in on time poor luxury travellers.

However, now that it’s there, they Royal Palm has begun to do some considerable good.

For instance, they have started to work with the locals on Santa Cruz to reintroduce native species to gardens and farms on the island and eliminate the introduced species of plants.

They have a very effective and highly regarded training scheme for locals to work in hospitality and catering. It has been a traditional paucity of suitable staff on the islands that have forced hotels and boats to employ staff from the mainland.

This in turn increases the pressure of immigration on the islands. It is the growth in human population above all else which threatens the stability of the islands’ ecosystems.

The Royal Palm is working well in training locals and therefore reducing strains of immigration from the mainland.

Then there’s the fact that even if they do only fly out for one or two nights, guest still have to pay $100 national park entrance fee.

In summary, it is important to maintain a sense of perspective and at least appreciate that while a hotel/property might be all bad in one aspect, it can still do good.

I would personally avoid the place at all costs as I think you can visit the Galapagos Islands in a culturally/environmentally better way (see for instance http://www.pura-aventura.com/category/30_galapagos_cruises_holidays) but I must admit that I’m not as rude about the Royal Palm as I used to be.

These are the people who ask us over and over, “where is the best place to go in Europe?” They are trophy travelers, just wanting to set foot in all the right places. Nothing else seems to matter.

james

I left a message saying that I disagreed and some people pointed out that maybe my opinion also derives from a different attitude towards interpersonal relations that Italians could have.

Somebody wrote:

“The big problem, I think, is that Italians (and actually, from what I’ve experienced, Europeans in general) really do want more of a friendly relationship with visitors than many travelers are interested in (Americans and Germans in particular, and yes I know that’s over-generalizing), particularly when traveling in groups.”

I replied that

“if there is not that interest, (not so much of friendship but of mutual interest, curiosity and respect), then that is the worst type of traveler you can meet. They could as well read a guidebook and watch some documentaries and stay home.”

Of course, just my personal opinion.

You can read more about the discussion here. And my comment about the whl.travel blog article is here.

Thank you!

And I totally agree with you: ethical or responsible is indeed about considering the balance between what you take and what you give.

For those who don’t know Giulia, she’s the gracious host of La Locanda della Valle Nuova in beautiful Le Marche.

By the way, are you suggesting that, normally, I don’t provoke you enough!? )

As you can see, if properly provoked, I can write hundreds of words too….