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.

How running water changes lives: Tourism takes a second look in Tanzania

December 9, 2019

Fresh water runs from a newly-installed tap into the cupped hands of a Tanzanian man

Tan­ner C Knorr, Pres­id­ent of “GT” Insight Part­ner Second Look World­wide, takes us to Kakoi vil­lage in Tan­zania — the first bene­fi­ciary of a prag­mat­ic approach to sup­port­ing com­munit­ies that are dir­ectly affected by, or live adja­cent to, tour­ism activ­ity.  When trav­el­ling to devel­op­ing coun­tries, noti­cing dis­crep­an­cies between the areas of tour­ism and those imme­di­ately out­side is […]

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How can travel & tourism protect children from sexual exploitation?

September 24, 2019
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how travel tourism protects children from sexual exploitation

Jod­ie Spen­cer tells us why the travel & tour­ism industry has a cru­cial role to play in pro­tect­ing chil­dren from sexu­al exploit­a­tion, out­lines some of the loc­al and glob­al efforts to do just that, and sug­gests how we can all play our part. Travel & tour­ism brings a great deal to loc­al com­munit­ies. It gen­er­ates 10% […]

Read More How can travel & tourism protect children from sexual exploitation?

Thailand says “No” to ivory in two-tusked campaign funded by USAID

September 21, 2019

Cindy Bishop featured alongside Thai writing with the message "beautiful without ivory"

A two-pronged cam­paign to reduce domest­ic con­sumer and for­eign trav­el­ler demand for ivory and ivory products launched in Bangkok, Thai­l­and yes­ter­day.  While much of the focus of the launch event was on the domest­ic con­sumer cam­paign and the celebrity influ­en­cers who are the faces of it, of greatest rel­ev­ance to the tour­ism industry is the […]

Read More Thailand says “No” to ivory in two-tusked campaign funded by USAID

An industry first: ChildSafe community-based tourism

August 27, 2019

industry first childsafe community based tourism

Social change com­mu­nic­at­or James Suth­er­land describes the rationale for and res­ults of the first con­cer­ted efforts to ensure the safety of loc­al and vis­it­ing chil­dren in the con­text of com­munity-based tour­ism. Com­munity-based tour­ism (CBT) is rap­idly becom­ing a buzzword in the glob­al travel industry. Offer­ing dir­ect inter­ac­tions between people in com­munit­ies and the tour­ists and […]

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Politics v pilgrimage: some Muslims call for Saudi haj boycott


Pilgrim in supplication at the Sacred Mosque, Mecca, Saudi Arabia

Report by the Thom­son Reu­ters Found­a­tion, August 9, 2019.  As mil­lions of Muslims don robes and flock to Mecca for haj, a small counter move­ment to boy­cott the pil­grim­age in protest at Saudi Ara­bi­a’s polit­ics has won lim­ited sup­port online. Although the num­bers are dwarfed by the 1.8 mil­lion who have arrived in Mecca for Fri­day’s […]

Read More Politics v pilgrimage: some Muslims call for Saudi haj boycott

Is accessibility critical to sustainable tourism?

June 27, 2019

tourism for all accessibility unwto 2016

Access­ible tour­ism advoc­ate Neha Arora asks the travel & tour­ism industry to factor in the needs of the eld­erly and people with dis­ab­il­it­ies when design­ing sus­tain­able des­tin­a­tions and respons­ible products. Accord­ing to the UNWTO web­site, the defin­i­tion of sus­tain­able travel is: “Tour­ism that takes full account of its cur­rent and future eco­nom­ic, social and environmental […]

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