Bad Tourist Behavior Could Be The End Of Easter Island

Easter Island features 887 stone figures, known to the locals as moai, spread across the island. Their purpose remains a mystery and there have been many theories about the intimidating stone figures. Meanwhile, many travelers have the island on their bucket list as one place they really want to visit. However, the main thing that ultimately keeps the island’s economy going is mass tourism, but it could also be its ruin.

Bad tourist behavior on Easter Island

Like many popular destinations, Easter Island is attracting visitors again following the pandemic. However, with travelers returning comes a spate of bad behavior on the island. This has led to new conversations about how visitors to the island should behave during their visit.

Reportedly, this includes a new trend of photos, revealing people making it look like they are picking the noses of the iconic moai. Pisa has travelers pretending to hold up its leaning tower, while others make it look like they are holding the Great Pyramid of Giza in the palm of their hand. However, this type of behavior is not welcome on Easter Island.

Educating visitors to Easter Island

Jo Anne Van Tilburg of the University of California in Los Angeles is an archaeologist and the director of the Rock Art Archive. Meanwhile, she is also the Director of the Easter Island Statue Project.

Part of her life’s work is to protect and study the moai. However, recently she has been focusing more on educating the hundreds or thousands of tourists who visit Easter Island. Her aim is to teach them how to behave properly, not only on a personal level but also on an environmental one.

Once one tourist takes a “humorous” shot of the moai and shares it on Instagram, this instantly draws others into doing the exact same thing.

Speaking to CNN Travel, Van Tilburg explained:

Because of the ubiquitous nature of photography in our community, people take the same picture repeatedly. Once one person picks a nose of the moai, you can be sure there will be multiple thousands [of photos], because people are lemmings.

Comparing the example of the behavior at the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Great Pyramid of Giza, she added:

There’s nothing creative or interesting or humorous about it. The herd instinct is real.

Van Tilburg and Rapa Nui National Park

It was back in 1981 as a doctoral student that Van Tilburg first visited Easter Island, which forms part of Polynesia, but is also a territory of Chile. This was well before the island was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1995.

Since that time, she has returned regularly and has noted the change in the types of people who choose to visit Rapa Nui National Park. When Van Tilburg first visited in the 1980s, around 2,000 to 5,000 visited Rapa Nui National Park each year.

Fast forward to now, and it’s more than 100,000 tourists that visit each year. In fact, while originally there were two flights a week from Santiago, these days there are three flights every day.

So many tourists heading to the island are a huge burden for the around 6,000 full-time residents on Easter Island. This is especially so when it comes to water and other natural resources that are in limited supply and must be conserved.

In the past, tourists were allowed to roam freely among the moai, this now has to change. With overtourism comes restrictions, leading to tourists having to stick to a certain path and only see a few of the iconic statues.

Bad behavior isn’t new to Easter Island

The latest misbehavior of tourists isn’t new. Back in 2008, there was the case of a Finnish man who climbed one of the statues and chipped off a piece of its ear. He was arrested and fined $17,000 and was banished from the island for three years.

Meanwhile, according to Van Tilburg, there has been a shift among the visitors to the island. Previously, tourists were those interested in archaeology and history, which had saved up to take a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the island. Nowadays, those visiting are people who are mere “collectors of places.” In other words, popular destinations they can show off on social media.

Some controls were put in place in 2018 to protect Easter Island and its statues. These days, international travelers and Chileans who are not Rapa Nui can only get 30-day travel visas, rather than the former 90-visas.

How to protect Easter Island?

Van Tilburg has come up with a few suggestions on how to visit Easter Island and show respect for the people and the statues. She suggested that potential visitors “read and prepare” prior to their visit. According to Van Tilburg, once you show your guide you have a serious interest, they will take you seriously. She added: “Make your questions deserving of answers.”

Part of reading up about Rapa Nui National Park and its iconic moai also means recognizing Easter Island as a living site, not a museum. Speaking of the local residents, she closed with the words:

There are [almost] 1,000 statues and there are 5,000 people.

Their faces are just as important.

Hopefully, visitors to Rapa Nui National Park will take Van Tilburg’s words to heart. In the future, let’s hope they view the island, its people and its mysterious statues with the respect they deserve.