COMMENTARY
This short news clip highlights an important reality ... tourism needs beutiful places in order for tourism to attract customers ... but customers diminish the value of the location and too much success adds up to eventual failure.

While people may understand this dynamic, there are no quantiative metrics to measure this dynamic, and better to manage what is going on and what should be done.

This is, of course, what TrueValueMetrics sets out to do. There should be a metric that enables decision makers to know better what is going on and how decisions can improve the performance.
Peter Burgess

Asia-pacific Vietnam's Ha Long Bay risks flood of tourism UNESCO site, and one of the 'Seven Wonders of Nature', feels environmental impact of mass tourism.

Vietnam's Ha Long Bay was recently named one of the new 'Seven Wonders of Nature', and the area has made it on the UNESCO World Heritage list twice.

Around six million people visit the area each year, and the 1,500-square-kilometre site is feeling the environmental consequences of mass tourism.

Balancing the site's natural value against the lure of the tourist dollar is a challenge faced by Hanoi.

The strategy is to keep the tourist numbers growing, but spread them to the lesser known areas of Vietnam.

If not, Ha Long Bay may lose the very beauty that tourists now flock to see.

Al Jazeera's Aela Callan reports from Vietnam.