The “Good Tourism” Glossary

May 11, 2017

A 'Rafflesia arnoldii' and its buds in the foothills of Mt Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia. It's not a rose and it certainly doesn't smell like one. Source: Raphaelhui / Wikimedia.

This web­site is ded­ic­ated to “Good Tour­ism”, which is delib­er­ately undefined. 

If pushed, one might say that “Good Tour­ism” all about the (in)sincerity of the travel & tour­ism industry to accen­tu­ate the pos­it­ive and mit­ig­ate the negative. 

“Good Tour­ism” is in the eye of the behold­er. And diverse per­spect­ives are wel­come on this plat­form. Here you will find con­tent related to all of the defin­i­tions lis­ted below (as well as many that are not). Please sug­gest a term and defin­i­tion if it is not lis­ted here.

Click a linked term to find “GT” con­tent tagged with that term. The “GT” Blog tries not to get bogged down with ter­min­o­logy and defin­i­tions. Thus you may very well dis­agree with the tags applied to some posts. Feel free to com­ment about it, but remember …

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any oth­er name would smell as sweet.”
― Wil­li­am Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Pic­tured above is a Rafflesia arnoldii in the foot­hills of Mt Kin­abalu, Sabah, Malay­sia. The corpse flower, as it is com­monly known, is not a rose and it cer­tainly does­n’t smell like one! Source: Raphael­hui / Wiki­me­dia.

Accessible Tourism

Access­ible tour­ism “(also known as “Access Tour­ism”, “Uni­ver­sal Tour­ism”, “Inclus­ive Tour­ism” and in some coun­tries such as in Japan “Bar­ri­er-free Tour­ism”) is tour­ism and travel that is access­ible to all people, with dis­ab­il­it­ies or not, includ­ing those with mobil­ity, hear­ing, sight, cog­nit­ive, or intel­lec­tu­al and psychoso­cial dis­ab­il­it­ies, older per­sons and those with tem­por­ary dis­ab­il­it­ies” ― Takayama Declar­a­tion, UNESCAP, 2009

“Access­ible tour­ism is the ongo­ing endeav­our to ensure tour­ist des­tin­a­tions, products and ser­vices are access­ible to all people, regard­less of their phys­ic­al lim­it­a­tions, dis­ab­il­it­ies or age. It encom­passes pub­licly and privately owned tour­ist loc­a­tions.” ― Wikipedia

All-inclusive tourism

All-inclus­ive tour­ism (all-inclus­ive tours, all-inclus­ive hol­i­days, all-inclus­ive cruises, etc) offers pack­ages in which everything a trav­el­ler will need, such as trans­port, accom­mod­a­tion, food, entrance fees, guides, etc is included in the one price. This prac­tice may (or may not) be good for the cus­tom­er but it is often of very little value to a host community.

Community-based Tourism

Com­munity-based tour­ism ensures that the host com­munity of a des­tin­a­tion has a stake and/or say in the devel­op­ment of tour­ism with­in the com­munity via con­sulta­tion, decision-mak­ing, employ­ment, and/or dir­ect ownership.

Ecotourism

Eco­tour­ism is respons­ible travel to nat­ur­al areas that con­serves the envir­on­ment, sus­tains the well-being of the loc­al people, and cre­ates know­ledge and under­stand­ing through inter­pret­a­tion and edu­ca­tion of all involved (vis­it­ors, staff and the vis­ited)” ― Glob­al Eco­tour­ism Net­work, 2016; What is (and what isn’t) eco­tour­ism.

Ethical Tourism

Eth­ic­al tour­ism … The Glob­al Code of Eth­ics for Tour­ism (GCET) is designed to be a “fun­da­ment­al frame of ref­er­ence for respons­ible and sus­tain­able tour­ism”. Accord­ing to the UNWTO, the Code’s prin­ciples “amply cov­er the eco­nom­ic, social, cul­tur­al and envir­on­ment­al com­pon­ents of travel and tourism”.

The 10 art­icles to the Code per­tain to:

Art­icle 1: Mutu­al under­stand­ing and respect between peoples and soci­et­ies
Art­icle 2: Indi­vidu­al and col­lect­ive ful­fil­ment
Art­icle 3: Sus­tain­able devel­op­ment
Art­icle 4: Cul­tur­al her­it­age
Art­icle 5: Bene­fits for host coun­tries and com­munit­ies
Art­icle 6: Oblig­a­tions of stake­hold­ers
Art­icle 7: Right to tour­ism
Art­icle 8: Liberty of move­ment
Art­icle 9: Rights of work­ers and entre­pren­eurs
Art­icle 10: Imple­ment­a­tion of the principles

Inclusive Growth

“Eco­nom­ic growth that cre­ates oppor­tun­ity for all seg­ments of the pop­u­la­tion and dis­trib­utes the dividends of increased prosper­ity, both in mon­et­ary and non-mon­et­ary terms, fairly across soci­ety” ― Ogan­isa­tion for Eco­nom­ic Co-oper­a­tion and Devel­op­ment (OECD)

Inclusive Tourism

When referred to by The “Good Tour­ism” Blog, “inclus­ive tour­ism” means the same as OECD’s defin­i­tion of “inclus­ive growth” as it per­tains to tour­ism sec­tor growth and devel­op­ment. Else­where it often used inter­change­ably with “access­ible tour­ism”, which is confusing.

Regenerative Tourism

Regen­er­at­ive tour­ism chal­lenges and/or extends the concept of “sus­tain­able tour­ism” (see below). As at August 2020, “GT” used the same tag for both; “sus­tain­able tour­ism and regen­er­at­ive tour­ism”.

Responsible Travel (& Tourism)

Respons­ible travel is “con­duc­ted in such a man­ner as to not harm or degrade the cul­tur­al or nat­ur­al envir­on­ment of the places vis­ited” ― Travel-Industry-Dictionary.com

Respons­ible tour­ism is “mak­ing bet­ter places for people to live in and bet­ter places for people to vis­it” ― Respons­ible Tour­ism Partnership

Sustainable Tourism

Sus­tain­able tour­ism “takes full account of its cur­rent and future eco­nom­ic, social and envir­on­ment­al impacts, address­ing the needs of vis­it­ors, the industry, the envir­on­ment and host com­munit­ies” ― United Nations World Tour­ism Organ­iz­a­tion (UNWTO)

Sus­tain­able tour­ism has been chal­lenged and/or exten­ded by the concept of regen­er­at­ive tour­ism. As at August 2020, “GT” used the same tag for both; “sus­tain­able tour­ism and regen­er­at­ive tour­ism”.