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.

The “Good Tourism” Podcast #1: Geoffrey Lipman & the existential threat

and October 27, 2017

Geoffrey Lipman

Pro­fess­or Geof­frey Lip­man joined Dav­id Gill­banks on Skype, Thursday, to record the first epis­ode of The “Good Tour­ism” Pod­cast. About pod­casts & how to sub­scribe to The “Good Tour­ism” Pod­cast  [UPDATE Novem­ber 8, 2017: The Inter­na­tion­al Insti­tute for Peace through Tour­ism has chosen five people from the world of travel & tour­ism to hon­our as “Glob­al Ambassadors […]

Read More The “Good Tourism” Podcast #1: Geoffrey Lipman & the existential threat

Lisbon locals face eviction in favour of trendy tourism, celebrities, short-term rentals

October 21, 2017

Lisbon tourism is booming. Locals are being indirectly forced out by trendy tourism and celebrities

Lis­bon tour­ism is boom­ing. With­in a month of the “GT” Insight dir­ect from Lis­bon — “Why We Hate Tour­ism Tours & why you should too” by Ricardo Oli­veira — the Thom­son Reu­ters Found­a­tion reports on the neg­at­ive impacts of trendy tour­ism on loc­als’ life­styles. Carla da Cunha has a tight budget with which to find a new home in […]

Read More Lisbon locals face eviction in favour of trendy tourism, celebrities, short-term rentals

Islands of darkness: Ireland’s ‘Alcatraz’ and the growth of dark tourism

October 15, 2017

Spike Island is part of the growth of dark tourism

By Gil­lian O’Bri­en, Read­er in Mod­ern Irish His­tory, Liv­er­pool John Moores Uni­ver­sity, writ­ing for The Con­ver­sa­tion. Spike Island — the former fort­ress and pris­on off the coast of County Cork in Ire­land — has been named Europe’s lead­ing tour­ist attrac­tion at the World Travel Awards. The island beat off com­pet­i­tion from Buck­ing­ham Palace, the Eif­fel Tower and Rome’s Colosseum […]

Read More Islands of darkness: Ireland’s ‘Alcatraz’ and the growth of dark tourism

From tourism to coffee, young Thais blend profit with social good

October 7, 2017

Young Thais like Aliza blend profit with social good, from tourism to coffee

Six years ago, Som­sak “Pai” Boonkam drew up a plan with two vil­lages in north­ern Thai­l­and for tour­ists to stay with loc­al fam­il­ies and immerse them­selves in hill-tribe cul­ture. The aim was for the vil­la­gers to see some fin­an­cial bene­fit from their coun­try’s multi-bil­lion-dol­lar tour­ism industry. Pai was sure it would be a hit with […]

Read More From tourism to coffee, young Thais blend profit with social good

#TravelEnjoyRespect video: “Beyond the great horizon”

October 3, 2017

#TravelEnjoyRespect video "Beyond the great horizon"

The Nation­al Academy of Arts, Cul­ture and Her­it­age (ASWARA), Malay­sia has released a video pro­mot­ing #TravelEn­joyRe­spect to help con­vey the mes­sage of how tour­ism can con­trib­ute to the 2030 Agenda for Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment and the Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals (SDGs). The 3.5‑minute music video (embed­ded below) was the concept of Pacific Asia Tour­ism Man­aging Dir­ect­or Steve […]

Read More #TravelEnjoyRespect video: “Beyond the great horizon”

Child sex tourism goes suburban, rural, online

September 26, 2017

Child sex tourism is moving away from red light districts and into the suburbs and country areas, and online.

Work­ing under­cov­er in bars and brothels across South­east Asia to com­bat child sex tour­ism and slavery, cam­paign­er Kev­in Camp­bell has posed many times as a tour­ist look­ing to buy sex with a girl. But these days, Camp­bell, who works for the anti-traf­fick­­ing group The Exodus Road, says it is far less com­mon to see young girls […]

Read More Child sex tourism goes suburban, rural, online