It’s time: Tourism event organisers & moderators must shut down selfish speakers

The 2019 Glob­al Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Coun­cil (GSTC) Asia-Pacific Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Con­fer­ence, Feb­ru­ary 28-March 2, was an enjoy­able event atten­ded by a good num­ber of pas­sion­ate pro­fes­sion­als from across the Asia Pacific region. 

And there was ample oppor­tun­ity in the pro­gram to mingle and to net­work, which many (most?) people would count as the primary reas­on for attend­ing such events. 

Del­eg­ates clearly enjoyed them­selves. I cer­tainly did, and I look for­ward to col­lab­or­at­ing with many of the lovely people I met. 

I also look for­ward to cov­er­ing future GSTC events if they’ll have me!

The breadth and depth and choice of con­tent in the GSTC2019Asia pro­gram was very impress­ive. There were ses­sions “GT” atten­ded that were so data-dense and research-rich and laser-focussed that sum­mary reports based off my notes will in no way do them justice. Instead, I hope to col­lab­or­ate with the mod­er­at­ors and pan­el­lists involved to deliv­er insight­ful con­tent right here on “GT”.

BUT

… unfor­tu­nately a couple of pan­el­lists in a couple of ses­sions “GT” atten­ded seemed to think that they were the sole reas­on del­eg­ates gave up their time and resources to travel all the way to Chi­ang Mai. 

In a couple of inter­est­ing — poten­tially very inter­est­ing — ses­sions, pan­el­lists flag­rantly ignored their guidelines for speak­ing time. This left the pan­el­lists who fol­lowed barely any time to present their — often more inter­est­ing — ideas. And it left no time at all for audi­ence engage­ment, Q&A, and debate.

Worse, these selfish indi­vidu­als spent much of the stolen time pitch­ing their pro­jects or des­tin­a­tions as if to tour­ists, rather than shar­ing mean­ing­ful insights with fel­low pro­fes­sion­als. Worst of all, one pan­el­list even dis­missed polite remind­ers from time­keep­ers by laugh­ing them off. Rude!

This cri­ti­cism is not tar­geted at GSTC or its ses­sion mod­er­at­ors … This selfish beha­viour hap­pens all too fre­quently at industry events!

It’s time to enforce some stand­ards in tour­ism con­fer­ence timekeeping. 

And it’s time we all agreed as an industry — as attendees of high-priced tour­ism industry events — to expect event organ­isers and ses­sion mod­er­at­ors to enforce their right to shut down pan­el­lists and speak­ers who exceed their allot­ted time or stray off topic.

I know I’m not alone in think­ing this. 

Com­ment below if you agree (or disagree).

Fea­tured image: “Finite World” by Joel Pen­ner (CC BY 2.0) via Flickr. “GT” cropped it.