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.

Hey, tourism! Shouldn’t the needs of host communities ALWAYS come first?

March 7, 2019

Community-based tourism. Mae Hong Son Hilltribe Trek, a Planeterra project

The prin­ciples of com­munity-based tour­ism should be at the centre of ALL cat­egor­ies of tour­ism — niche or main­strean; urb­an or rur­al; cul­tur­al or nature-based; eco- or adven­ture; gast­ro­nom­ic or party; moun­tain or beach … you get the idea. There­fore, the needs of the host com­munity must always be con­sidered before the needs of vis­it­ors.  This is […]

Read More Hey, tourism! Shouldn’t the needs of host communities ALWAYS come first?

Most elephant tourism activities are “not bad” in moderation: Experts

February 28, 2019

ACEWG appears to be tackling the valid concerns around elephant tourism head-on. Image: ACEWG

If there was a defin­it­ive point to come out of the ses­sion on ele­phant tour­ism at the 2019 Glob­al Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Coun­cil (GSTC) Asia-Pacific Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Con­fer­ence today in Chi­ang Mai, it would be that there are no defin­it­ive points. Exactly what con­sti­tutes appro­pri­ate, prag­mat­ic stand­ards for ele­phant wel­fare is yet to be determ­ined. Given […]

Read More Most elephant tourism activities are “not bad” in moderation: Experts

Terrorism and tourism’s diabolical relationship

November 17, 2017

Terrorism and tourism's diabolical relationship

Ayşegül Acar, research assist­ant at Kar­abük Uni­ver­sity, Tur­key, and doc­tor­al stu­dent at Istan­bul Uni­ver­sity, explores the dis­com­fit­ing rela­tion­ship between ter­ror­ism and tour­ism in this “GT” Insight. Bombs explod­ing one after anoth­er, vehicles plough­ing through masses of people, media cov­er­age, and the responses of those in power; they all cre­ate ten­sion, inter­na­tion­al con­flict, dis­order, and political […]

Read More Terrorism and tourism’s diabolical relationship

The “Good Tourism” Podcast #2: How to be a plastic-free hotel in 15 minutes

and November 15, 2017

plastic-free hotel

As co-founder of the not-for-profit Refill NOT Land­fill in Cam­bod­ia, Chris­ti­an de Boer claims a hotel can oblit­er­ate its reli­ance on plastic water bottles in about 15 minutes.  All it takes is will­power, a sig­na­ture, and a will­ing­ness to absorb or pass on about a dol­lar a day per guest. With more than a dec­ade’s worth […]

Read More The “Good Tourism” Podcast #2: How to be a plastic-free hotel in 15 minutes

Why we are banning tourists from climbing Uluru

November 8, 2017

climbing Uluru will be banned from 2019

The Uluru-Kata Tjuta Nation­al Park board of man­age­ment has announced that tour­ists will be banned from climb­ing Uluru from 2019. Uluru, formerly known in Eng­lish as Ayer­’s Rock, is an icon­ic sand­stone rock form­a­tion that rises dra­mat­ic­ally from the flat plains of Aus­trali­a’s red centre. Kata Tjuta (“many heads”), 25 km to the west as […]

Read More Why we are banning tourists from climbing Uluru

Galapagos tourism threatens native wildlife

November 2, 2017

Galapagos tourism threatens wildlife. Image by By Agencia de Noticias ANDES (CC BY-SA 2.0) via Flickr

While the Galapa­gos tour­ism industry relies on nat­ur­al and his­tor­ic­al and nat­ur­al his­tory attrac­tions, it is also one of the threats to that same her­it­age … By Veron­ica Tor­­al-Granda, PhD can­did­ate, and Steph­en Gar­nett, Pro­fess­or of Con­ser­va­tion and Sus­tain­able Live­li­hoods, Charles Dar­win Uni­ver­sity, writ­ing for The Con­ver­sa­tion. Nat­ive spe­cies are par­tic­u­larly vul­ner­able on islands, because […]

Read More Galapagos tourism threatens native wildlife