How tourism averts disaster: By thinking, acting globally

Tan­ner C Knorr is wor­ried. He’s wor­ried for travel & tour­ism-reli­ant parts of the world he thinks may be headed for a cliff’s edge, includ­ing places he knows very well. In this “GT” Insight, the founder of two “GT” part­ners sug­gests how the whole world might pull togeth­er to avert disaster.

When COVID-19 hit I was con­cerned about many things, but not imme­di­ately about the poten­tial con­sequences it would have on the tour­ism industry. I doubt any of us expec­ted the impacts to be as broad and harm­ful, but after all hindsight’s 2020, right?

With­in a week of the inter­na­tion­al travel bans to Europe, I knew we were going to have a prob­lem with our private tours through Off Sea­son Adven­tures. More import­antly, I knew we would see a loss in the crit­ic­al con­tri­bu­tions from those tours that go to our part­ner­ing non-profit, Second Look World­wide. 

After push­ing our sched­uled tours back mul­tiple times we’ve now simply left them open-ended until there is some kind of sol­id, reaf­firm­ing sign of resur­gence. I’m not wor­ried about tours begin­ning again through Off Sea­son Adven­tures. Giv­en the low oper­at­ing costs asso­ci­ated with keep­ing the busi­ness alive, we could prob­ably last a year or two with a slow and steady drip of funds. 

I am, how­ever, wor­ried about the organ­isa­tions in our part­ner­ing des­tin­a­tions abroad who don’t have anoth­er place to turn when there is a decline in tour­ists and cor­res­pond­ing rev­en­ue. It’s not about our com­pan­ies here in the US, but rather who they truly bene­fit; the guides, lodges, and small tour com­pan­ies and non­profits abroad. 

For us, the issue seems like it will be pro­longed by the lack of Amer­ic­an trav­el­lers. The world doesn’t want us trav­el­ling right now, which is com­pletely under­stand­able giv­en our rate of infec­tions. I won­der if this will change in the com­ing months as the vir­us con­tin­ues to rav­age the US and becomes more vis­ible to areas of the coun­try where it was ori­gin­ally dis­missed. We can’t seem to work togeth­er and admit that COVID is a coun­try-wide issue that takes col­lect­ive action to solve. 

Don’t get me wrong, I under­stand that times are tough for many Amer­ic­ans too. How­ever, the amount of resources in the US and Europe are far great­er than des­tin­a­tions in Africa, Lat­in Amer­ica, and Asia. 

We must real­ise that our domest­ic actions are hav­ing real impacts all over the world (and far bey­ond the tour­ism industry). I know this because our col­lect­ive inab­il­ity to travel is dir­ectly affect­ing live­li­hoods in places where Off Sea­son Adven­tures’ and Second Look Worldwide’s imme­di­ate fam­ily of organ­isa­tions oper­ate: Uganda, Tan­zania, Nepal, and else­where. Com­munit­ies here don’t have a safety net and often rely exclus­ively on tour­ism income to survive. 

What are we doing about this? 

Gen­er­ally, we’ve star­ted to see a good shift; from Plan­t­erra’s COVID emer­gency grants, Impact Travel Alliance’s digit­al events to raise funds for at-risk tour­ism ven­tures, to the Future of Tour­ism Coali­tion. At Second Look World­wide we are rais­ing funds through fun trivia nights instead of through tours. Many of us have made a pivot, not neces­sar­ily for our own organ­isa­tions to sur­vive, but to con­tin­ue the work we’ve set out to do for and with oth­ers. This is a start, but if we don’t (con­tin­ue to) think big­ger about the prac­tic­al solu­tions, the industry is headed for an exten­ded downturn. 

Where do we go from here and how do we get out of this mess? 

In a recent white paper by Epler­Wood Inter­na­tion­al, A Mar­shall Plan for Tour­ism: Can it be built?, Megan Epler Wood com­pares rebuild­ing the tour­ism industry now to rebuild­ing Europe after WWII. A coordin­ated sys­tem of recov­ery fin­ance must be put into place as soon as pos­sible, on a massive scale, par­tic­u­larly for lower-income coun­tries and com­munit­ies most impacted by and reli­ant upon tour­ism. (Full dis­clos­ure: I also work for Epler­Wood International.)

We are in a glob­al­ised soci­ety and eco­nomy and the travel & tour­ism industry is no excep­tion. We must think and act accord­ingly with pre­cise and meas­ur­able tac­tics to avoid dis­aster, spe­cific­ally for the numer­ous SMEs around the world most heav­ily impacted by the travel & tour­ism crisis. 

Fea­tured image (top of post): “Danger cliff edge” sign on a windswept grassy land­scape. Image (CC0) via Pikrepo. So how does tour­ism avert disaster?

About the author

Tan­ner C Knorr is own­er & founder of the sus­tain­able tour oper­at­or and “GT” Part­ner Off Sea­son Adven­tures and pres­id­ent of “GT” Insight Part­ner Second Look World­wide, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organ­isa­tion that ensures the bene­fits of tour­ism are real­ised in loc­al com­munit­ies by spon­sor­ing infra­struc­ture improve­ments. Off Sea­son Adven­tures keeps more than 90% of the tour costs with­in host eco­nom­ies and con­trib­utes sig­ni­fic­antly to con­ser­va­tion with­in des­tin­a­tions. Extens­ive stake­hold­er meet­ings and inter­na­tion­al part­ner­ships go into his work with both organ­isa­tions. Tan­ner also man­ages com­mu­nic­a­tions for Epler­Wood Inter­na­tion­al.

With a Bach­el­ors in Archae­ology and a Mas­ters in Admin­is­trat­ive Stud­ies (Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment & Tour­ism Man­age­ment) from Boston Uni­ver­sity, Tan­ner has taught tour­ism-related sub­jects at Har­vard Exten­sion. He is now a PhD Stu­dent at Ari­zona State Uni­ver­sity (Com­munity Resources & Devel­op­ment, con­cen­trat­ing in Sus­tain­able Tourism).