Most of the focus on overtourism has been on cities, but it is also a challenge in rural areas. I am writing this at RTD14 which is looking at the ... Read more
As I checked into my most recent rest camp in South Africa’s Kruger Park a few days ago, I was handed a questionnaire created by South African National Parks. The ... Read more
While there is little discussion of overtourism in the travel trade press and many destinations are in denial, the issue is hot in the national and local press. The issue ... Read more
Climate week NYC is the largest climate event in the world, New York City is its home, and this year’s event on 24 to 30 September is the 10th Anniversary. ... Read more
Tourism is about connections. Connecting to another place. Connecting with friends and family. Connecting to nature. It follows, therefore, that the better the connection, the more one connects, the richer ... Read more
Jost Krippendorf is the father of Responsible Tourism. In his seminal work on Holiday Makers, published in 1987, he foresaw the growth of the new form of tourism which had ... Read more
What difference does tourism make to our daily lives? We create memories and enable people to rest and unwind. These are important things, but of themselves, all they do is ... Read more
The overtourism issue has a great deal in common with the issue of climate change. We’ve known for a long time that the problem of overcrowding exists and that no ... Read more
So this is how it begins. I was three years old in the UK’s last long hot summer. Too young to remember it directly, instead the parched earth photographs define ... Read more
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the progress TUI is making in implementing their 2015-2020 Better Holidays, Better World strategy. They have understood that, to make real progress ... Read more
The TUI Group operates in 180 destinations, employs 67,000 people in more than 100 countries and provides holiday services to around 20m people. In size, they are world leaders. With ... Read more
Yesterday activist travel company Responsible Travel launched Crowded Out, a documentary about the growth of overtourism which is a consequence of exponential growth in travel and tourism bumping up against ... Read more
A couple of weeks ago the Swedish burger chain MAX Burgers announced that all its burgers are now climate positive. From June 14, 2018, any meal eaten at any one ... Read more
Tourism and the hospitality industry are often criticised for creating local quality service employment. There are three major reasons for this. People tend to waiters and room attendants as the ... Read more
Now in their 15th year, the tourism industry’s longest running and best known responsible tourism awards are once again looking to find the most inspiring companies and organisations work around ... Read more
Have you been on holiday recently and been amazed at what your hotel was doing for the local community, or perhaps taken a tour that really impressed you for the ... Read more
The judges can only select from amongst those that apply – if you know good candidates nominate them, phone or email them, and encourage them to apply. Don’t forget the ... Read more
Today is World Environment Day, and the theme is Beat Plastic Pollution. We’ve looked at this issue before, but so rapidly are the responses emerging, that it is worth revisiting ... Read more
The World Responsible Tourism Awards to be presented at WTM London in November are now open for nominations and applications. They close on 6th August and are free to enter. ... Read more
Like most of the best ideas, the Refill my Bottle initiative is incredibly simple. So simple that you’ve probably guessed most of what it is about from the title. Started ... Read more
Responsible Tourism is about taking responsibility to address the issues that matter whether in a particular place or one that occurs in many areas. This year in WTM’s World Responsible ... Read more
I come here at this time every year. I have been coming here now, every year, at the same time, for 10 years. And I intend to come here at ... Read more
Recent research published by TUI clearly shows that consumers expect the industry to take responsibility for ensuring that their product is sustainable. Research by booking.com found that 87% of global ... Read more
For a somewhat obsessive follower of tourism industry news like me, the spike in press releases that mark the annual Earth Day celebrations provide a quick reference point to the ... Read more
G Adventures has helped push sustainable tourism to the top of the world travel agenda. Katherine Lawrey speaks to founder Bruce Poon Tip about how the company did it ... Read more
Cape Town – Wilderness Safaris – an operator of safari camps, lodges and experiences in seven African countries, has grabbed the main prize at the 2018 African Responsible Tourism Awards, on Wednesday, ... Read more
TUI recently published survey results on UK consumer demand. 62% of UK holidaymakers agree it makes them feel better when they know their holiday was organised with respect for nature ... Read more
This month, Cape Town may or may not reach Day Zero, signifying the point at which the city runs out of water. According to an April 9th article on South ... Read more
A luxury island in the Seychelles, a cultural experience among the Maasai in Kenya and a township experience in Namibia are among the organisations selected as finalists for the 2018 ... Read more
The Western Cape government is to spend “millions” on making Table Mountain National Park (TMNP) safe for tourists and locals, says Economic Opportunities MEC, Alan Winde. He told Tourism Update on Tuesday that his ... Read more
It’s becoming more and more important to think about the marks we leave on places when we travel. After all, we all want future generations to be able to enjoy ... Read more
This article covers all you need to know about travelling to Cape Town, including detailed safety tips and information on health and medical facilities. Safety Here are our top tips ... Read more
Wellness and sustainable travel are top of the agenda for Central America tourism boards, writes Katherine Lawrey Costa Rica is promoting a new tourism strategy for 2018 titled Wellness Pura ... Read more
As Jane Ashton, then with First Choice, said in a newspaper interview back in 2006 “‘The product we sell is the people and environment – so we have an obvious ... Read more
A couple of exciting new stories about two upcoming hotels suggest the travel industry is beginning to wake up to the potential of the circular economy for tourism. In my ... Read more
Thomas Cook has just launched a new three-year sustainability strategy, promising to “Make a Difference with Every Holiday”. Their ambition is to make a positive contribution to the destinations they ... Read more
Last week, I spent a night in a hotel in Brussels that has taken a circular economy approach to redesigning the way its loyalty scheme works. Following on from my ... Read more
Here are five ways that Cape Town, host city of WTM Africa, is at the forefront of tourism trends, writes Katherine Lawrey. 1. Investment in Halal training Cape Town Tourism ... Read more
Fifty years ago my father took me for a day trip to Boulogne, just across the channel from Ramsgate. He headed us straight for the back streets to see how ... Read more
What connects most of the recent high profile campaigns to make tourism more responsible? Stop riding elephants. Don’t swim with dolphins. Avoid handicrafts made from endangered species. No selfies with ... Read more
There is mounting concern about orphanages and tourism around the world, but the response has been patchy. Our world is a diverse place and our understanding of orphanages varies between ... Read more
Last week Harold Goodwin’s blog laid out his reasons why the aviation industry’s approach to addressing its ongoing growth in emissions is inadequate. This week, I want to look at ... Read more
Globally aviation emits around 2% of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, bring its total emissions to around 5% of the global total; if aviation were a country it world rank ... Read more
Thomas Cook is making the news this week for a new programme it is trialing to enable guests to pre-book sunloungers before they come on holiday. From the end of ... Read more
It is a kind of pollution. There are of course several contenders. Carbon emissions and consequent global warming, soil degradation, overpopulation, biodiversity and plastics. It is not easy to decide ... Read more
This week the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) has launched an impressively extensive resource targeting food waste in hotels. Titled with one of the better acronyms around – BUFFET (Building ... Read more
In my last blog of 2017, I looked back at some of my personal responsible tourism highlights of that year. I’ve been on holiday for most of the time since ... Read more
2017 was the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development. Taleb Rifai’s tenure of office as Secretary General of UNWTO closed at the turn of the year and I asked ... Read more
Looking back over 2017 the issue of governance has come to the fore. The challenge of overtourism has emerged as a cause of significant concern in part because it boiled ... Read more
With the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development drawing to a close, I’ve looked back through the year’s headlines to chart an extremely personal selection of highlights from 2017… ... Read more
The concept of the “curate’s egg” was first used in the British satirical magazine Punch by George du Maurier in November 1895. The curate was too timid to complain of ... Read more
A few days ago, a new hashtag started appearing on Twitter. Created by the Good Awards, #pointlessplastics is encouraging people to tweet images of the unnecessary use of plastics (one ... Read more
At WTM London this month the least well-attended session of the Responsible Tourism programme was the one addressing climate change. We chose a panel of speakers from industry with experience ... Read more
Just two months ago, on September 18th, Hurricane Maria hit the Caribbean island of Dominica. Minutes before, this was the Nature Island, a tropical paradise of 365 river and pristine ... Read more
Tuesday the 14th November 2007 was the first WTM & UNWTO World Responsible Tourism Day, today we are ten years on. This year at WTM London we looked back at ... Read more
With a new Responsible Tourism Theatre in the Africa Section (AS580) the Responsible Tourism programme is now firmly established down on the show floor. An experiment last year it was ... Read more
A report released last week into the working conditions of hundreds of thousands of women cleaning bedrooms and other hotel areas across the world. Published by Oxfam Canada, Tourism’s Dirty ... Read more
World Responsible Tourism Day is on Wednesday this year and our main focus is on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Tanya Beckett will be interviewing tourism leaders from UNWTO, TUI ... Read more
Alongside the stories of Ryanair and Monarch’s woes in the last few weeks have been excited posts on the potential of electric flight, following Easyjet’s announcement that it hopes to ... Read more
2017 is a transition year. responsibletravel.com has decided to pursue other priorities and to pioneer creative projects to deliver change through our business; our activism and Trip for a Trip ... Read more
September 27th is the date on which we celebrate World Tourism Day and we can stop to analyse: how much has changed in the sector over the last few years? ... Read more
World Tourism Day occurs this week, with the theme for 2017 being “Sustainable Tourism – a tool for development”. According to the UNWTO’s official site for the event, “World Tourism ... Read more
With the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development focus on travelling with respect (#TravelEnjoyRespect) we have focused on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Respect is one of the core ... Read more
The images from the impact of Hurricane Irma on Caribbean islands such as Barbuda are shocking. These are places whose beaches and coastlines epitomise what many of us imagine when ... Read more
Word Responsible Tourism Awards have been presented at World Travel Market in London since 2004. Each year we have seen the bar rise, competition has been tough and the successive ... Read more
Among this summer’s slew of stories about overtourism, one took a slightly different angle. In an article titled 10 tourist destinations ruined by Instagram, the Independent reported how “the rise ... Read more
by Fedetur There is lot of talk nowadays about the transformation of the tourist, who is a product of the incorporation of technology and the growing awareness of sustainability, both ... Read more
Modern slavery is an underground issue in the UK, it is hidden from view. Trafficking is at the heart of much of it. I know of no evidence that children ... Read more
Last week I spent an afternoon training my binoculars on a field of cows. I got very excited by the sight of some pigs walking down a lane. Then had ... Read more
Last Saturday the London Times led its front page with a photo of Mo Farah winning the 10,000m at the IAAF world championships. But the headline on the front page ... Read more
When people are looking to assert how important tourism is as an industry, they are likely to cite the proportion of global Gross Domestic Product that it is responsible for. ... Read more
When you are working in the field trying to improve the livelihoods of local people this is the kind of email you want to receive: ““Hi – Peter , sorry ... Read more
Last week a significant climate change milestone was passed. On July 10th, the Climate Group’s RE100 (the RE standing for renewable energy) announced that the 100th multinational had signed up ... Read more
The concept of shared value emerges from the writing of Harvard Professor Michael Porter– well-known for his previous work on competition strategy, value chains and cluster theory. In 2011, in ... Read more
Despite the rain pouring down outside my window right now and the fact I am wearing a jumper in late June, I can’t actually see climate change. I can go ... Read more
Tourism and hospitality are labour intensive, with 8% of the global workforce employed in the sector. As the ILO has pointed out there are many highly skilled well trained professionals ... Read more
A couple of years ago I wrote a blog for this site reporting on inspirational tourism industry initiatives responding to the refugee crisis. My aim was to show “how tourism ... Read more
At the heart of Responsible Tourism are commitments to transparency and accountability. Responsible Tourism is about what people do, individually and collectively in businesses, to move towards sustainability. It is ... Read more
Last week, a village in Switzerland got loads of press coverage for banning tourists from taking photos of its scenery and sharing them on social media. According to the local ... Read more
The purpose of consumer facing certification is presumably to assure the guest or client that the hotel they are planning to stay in, or the operator they plan to travel ... Read more
Today is the UN’s International Day for Biodiversity. This year being the UN’s International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development, the theme is ‘Biodiversity and Sustainable Tourism’. Last Sunday, I ... Read more
Timeshare is almost a dirty word in tourism today. But its structure offers much for those trying to make the industry more sustainable. It can deepen connections between guests and ... Read more
For many years the industry has asserted its economic and social importance. The WTTC suggests that travel & tourism is 10.2% of world GDP and that the sector employs 292 million ... Read more
If I was asked to sum up the challenge facing tourism in one sentence, I would say something like the following: Can the travel industry of the future be environmentally ... Read more
The first Responsible Tourism panel on market access for SMEs and emerging entrepreneurs drew an audience of 90 to hear Enver Mally – originally an SME and now part of ... Read more
Written above a doorway at London’s Horniman Museum is an Einstein quote that reads: ‘The environment is everything except myself.’ When I saw it last week it reminded me of ... Read more
WTM, supported by the UNWTO, has sought to present examples of good practice to educate, inspire and challenge business and destinations to deliver on sustainability through WTM Responsible Tourism and ... Read more
by Luiz Del Vigna, ABETA For the first time in history, more than half of the world’s population lives in urban areas. Part of it is confined to mega cities ... Read more
Last weekend I paid for my shopping at a self-service till. I swiped my credit card across the automatic turnstile on the Underground. I streamed a movie from my Netflix ... Read more
How does a small archipelago cope with becoming Britain’s most successful cruise destination? In 2011 there were 36,000 cruise passengers, last year there were close to 100,000, projected to hit ... Read more
by FEDETUR Due to its multiplier effect, tourism generates economic and social benefits that help boost a destination’s economy, with the result that it is an important source of income ... Read more
Museums and Heritage Advisor doesn’t sound like a particularly radical or controversy-seeking website. Described as “The ultimate news, product and opinion resource for museum, gallery, cultural and heritage visitor attraction professionals”, ... Read more
The Resolution of the 70th United Nations General Assembly to designate 2017 as the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development has shone the spotlight on tourism. Tourism will either ... Read more
I should start by apologising to all women readers of this blog. You will learn nothing new from it. I doubt I have anything to say that you don’t already ... Read more
From a consumer or traveller perspective there are many answers, but it is not difficult for a traveller or holidaymaker to say why they are travelling. It could relate to ... Read more
Industry leaders are discussing why ‘Transformative Travel’ will be the travel trend of 2017 after Vogue released this article in January. While 2016 was all about experiential travel, this year ... Read more
The simple answer of course is that we should, because tourism is what we make it. We can make tourism better, we can use tourism to make better places to ... Read more
The rules of engagement are being changed. According to established social media thinking, the lifespan of a tweet is 18 minutes. Yet one of the tweets currently getting the most ... Read more
World Travel Market, Travel Tech Theatre, Monday 7th November 2016 Panel member and CEO of Barcelona Tourism Board, Jordi William Carnes discusses why he attended WTM London and the key ... Read more
In 2008 when the Second International Conference on Responsible Tourism in Destinations was held in Kerala there was overt and mounting hostility to the tourism industry in some of the ... Read more
