Tourism consumption of biodiversity: A global exploration of forest product use in thatched tropical resort architecture

The influence of tourism on biodiversity consumption is massive, yet poorly understood. We investigate the emergence of the thatched hut as an icon of tropical tourism, exploring linkages between widespread conceptions of paradise, tourism architecture and tropical forest management. Drawing on fieldwork in Mexico, cross-disciplinary literature review and web-based research, we globally examined how ideas of paradise along with commodification of plant resources influence touristic use of plant-based construction materials. In contrast with declining subsistence use of forest-based building materials, thatched huts have become a prevalent element of tropical tourism architecture. We documented the use of 148 plant taxa in 31 tropical and subtropical countries on 4 continents. The emergence of thatched architecture in tourist contexts represents not only a scale-up in the demand of plant-based materials, but often resulted in changes in the species utilized, resource management regimes and governance, architectural uses, and often a partial or total substitution for synthetic look-alike materials. We identified four factors distinctive to the growing commercial versus declining subsistence presence of thatched hut architecture: (1) local regulations in forest product uses and building and urban development codes, (2) prevalence of aesthetic values over material authenticity and structural efficacy, (3) greater dependency on unpredictable economic and tourist destination cycles, and (4) greater maintenance needs in environments highly vulnerable to decay and extreme weather. Our pluralistic approach of examining the iconic thatch hut through diverse disciplinary perspectives facilitated identification of multiple facets of commonly overlooked forest product use and biodiversity consumption in tropical tourism.