Responsible travel & tourism

Scroll down for posts that have been tagged with “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”, accord­ing to Travel-Industry-Dictionary.comRespons­ible tour­ism is “mak­ing bet­ter places for people to live in and bet­ter places for people to vis­it”, sug­gests the Respons­ible Tour­ism Part­ner­ship.

Respons­ible tour­ism and respons­ible travel are approaches to tour­ism that pri­or­it­ise sus­tain­ab­il­ity, eth­ic­al prac­tices, and social respons­ib­il­ity. These types of tour­ism aim to min­im­ise neg­at­ive impacts on the envir­on­ment and loc­al com­munit­ies and max­im­ise pos­it­ive out­comes for all involved.

Respons­ible tour­ism and respons­ible travel can take many forms, includ­ing eco­tour­ism, cul­tur­al tour­ism, and volun­teer tour­ism. These types of tour­ism often involve close engage­ment with loc­al com­munit­ies, respect­ing loc­al cul­tures, and sup­port­ing loc­al busi­nesses and con­ser­va­tion efforts.

In recent years, respons­ible tour­ism and respons­ible travel have gained pop­ular­ity among trav­el­lers seek­ing mean­ing­ful exper­i­ences that have a pos­it­ive impact. How­ever, it is essen­tial for trav­el­lers to do their research to choose reli­ably respons­ible tour­ism options that align with their values.

“GT” tends to (though prob­ably incon­sist­ently) apply the respons­ible travel & tour­ism tag where the con­tent dis­cusses the respons­ib­il­ity of the trav­el­ler or tour­ist rather than the sup­ply-side stake­hold­er. There is of course plenty of con­tent (and tags) that address the respons­ib­il­ity of the travel & tour­ism industry to do no harm and make things bet­ter; tags such as “sus­tain­able tour­ism and regen­er­at­ive tour­ism” for example.

Tags are inform­al. The “Good Tour­ism” Blog tries not to get bogged down with ter­min­o­logy and defin­i­tions. If you dis­agree with tags applied (or not applied) to a post, feel free to com­ment on it or any post you think has been incor­rectly or insuf­fi­ciently tagged. “GT” encour­ages good-faith debate and discussion.

Coalition promotes Child Safe Tourism in Myanmar

September 21, 2017
One Comment

Myanmar coalition promotes Child Safe Tourism

While the world observes the troubles between the Rohingya and their neigh­bours in Myan­mar, the Uni­on’s tour­ism min­istry and the Myan­mar Respons­ible Tour­ism Insti­tute (MRTI) are work­ing with UNICEF to pro­mote Child Safe Tour­ism. Accord­ing to the Min­istry of Hotels and Tour­ism (MoHT), since July 31: “… sur­vey­ing and hold­ing aware­ness cam­paigns are being under­taken in […]

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“Historical moment” as tourism ethics code becomes a convention

September 16, 2017

unwto global code tourism ethics cover cr

The mem­ber states of the United Nations World Tour­ism Organ­iz­a­tion (UNWTO) have approved the UNWTO Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Tour­ism Eth­ics. This is based on the Glob­al Code of Eth­ics for Tour­ism (PDF 787 KB) and is, accord­ing to a UNWTO press release upon which this post is based, the first inter­na­tion­al con­ven­tion ini­ti­ated by the UNWTO. […]

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Tourism growth is not the enemy: UNWTO boss

August 27, 2017

Tourism growth is not the enemy according to UNWTO Secretary General Taleb Rifai

In response to an increas­ing num­ber of reports about “tour­ism-pho­­bia”, the the World Tour­ism Organ­iz­a­tion (UNWTO), August 15, released an opin­ion piece by its Sec­ret­ary Gen­er­al, Taleb Rifai, arguing that tour­ism growth is not the enemy; it’s how we man­age it that counts. As an eco­nom­ic activ­ity, travel and tour­ism is rel­at­ively young; yet it […]

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Vatican proclaims support for sustainable tourism “with a human touch”

August 3, 2017

Vatican sustainable tourism

The Vat­ic­an, via its Cath­ol­ic News Agency, has pro­claimed its sup­port for respons­ible travel and sus­tain­able tour­ism by urging tour­ists to “remem­ber the human per­son and the envir­on­ment in their travels, treat­ing people and things with respect”. Car­din­al Peter Turk­son wrote: “Hol­i­day time can­not be a pre­text either for irre­spons­ib­il­ity or for exploit­a­tion: in fact, […]

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Hotels train staff to read signs of modern slavery


modern slavery hotels. Old-school room keys.

Adult guests who check in with a child, repeat cash book­ings, or late check-ins without lug­gage could all be signs of mod­ern slavery under guid­ance newly issued to staff at a Brit­ish hotel chain. The 400 staff at Shiva hotels — from recep­tion­ists to human resources staff to clean­ers — will be trained as part of a com­pany-wide cam­paign to […]

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Is orphanage tourism a form of modern slavery?

July 21, 2017

Orphanage tourism and slavery. Tonle Sap, Siem Reap, Cambodia: A little girl making money for her family by posing with a snake in a water village of Tonle Sap Lake. Source: CEphoto, Uwe Aranas https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Cccefalon via Wikimedia https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tonle_Sap_Siem_Reap_Cambodia_Girl-begging-for-money-with-snake-01.jpg

Many travel & tour­ism pro­fes­sion­als are com­ing to believe that orphan­age tour­ism is at best a prob­lem­at­ic means to gen­er­ate income to sup­port chil­dren; at worst a form of mod­ern slavery. Slavery!? Mod­ern slavery is widely prac­ticed in the tour­ism sup­ply chain of devel­op­ing coun­tries, accord­ing to Aus­trali­an aca­dem­ics Joseph M. Cheer, Kent Goldsworthy, Leigh […]

Read More Is orphanage tourism a form of modern slavery?