Turkey’s had a rough ride in the past couple of years, but the omens are good for 2018. Gavin Haines tracks the return of key markets After a tumultuous few ... Read more
It may have been the fourth and final day of #ATMDubai25 but that didn’t mean things slowed down at all. The halls were once again a hive of activity and ... 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
It was business as usual on day three at #ATMDubai, with travel professionals from around the world once again filling the halls at the 25th edition of the Middle East’s ... Read more
Day two of #ATMDubai25 was once again all about making things happen. With a buzzing show floor that continued to connect travel professionals and communities from around the world with ... Read more
At midday today the 25th edition of Arabian Travel Market, the leading global event for the Middle East, got underway! Inbound and outbound tourism professionals filled the halls, all here ... 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
Let’s all do a little time-travelling and look back in the mid-90’s to early 2000’s. This was a time in commercial travel where in general, airlines’ business class seats were ... Read more
1. What are you looking to promote at ATM this year? After extensive refurbishment of all 194 rooms in our luxurious hotel in Marburg, Germany we are hoping to encourage ... Read more
After financial difficulties impeded the opening of Baha Mar in the Bahamas, the development is finally welcoming guests. Andrew Doherty reports Following more than two years of delays, the ... 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
Celebrations around the island, new aircraft for Air Mauritius and hotel refurbishments mark an anniversary year, finds Katherine Lawrey This year will be a special one for Mauritius as ... Read more
According to ancient Hindu beliefs, Ayurveda was gifted to mankind by Lord Brahma (Creator of the Universe) to help us lead a healthy and fruitful life free from mortal ailments. ... Read more
SOUKYA International Holistic Health Centre, is the first healing centre of its kind in the world where it judiciously combines different traditional systems of medicine including Ayurveda, Homeopathy, Naturopathy, Yoga ... Read more
One of the seminar sessions I am running at this year’s Arabian Travel Market is called Smart Tourism 2020. I do work within both the tourism and travel industries and ... Read more
Artificial intelligence has the potential to be as transformative as the introduction of computers – and the travel industry stands to benefit. Jenny Southan explains Over the past few years, ... 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
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 the tourism and hospitality sectors in the GCC mature, Dubai’s hotel supply continues to grow from 105,000 keys to 130,000 keys in the next year or so. As supply ... Read more
Dubai continues to break the mould with its attractions and hotels. Tom Jordan rounds up new headline acts in the emirate and elsewhere As Dubai Expo 2020 creeps ever nearer, ... Read more
Phocuswright has been tracking the size and growth of total and online travel markets for over two decades. In 2017, we sized the total market globally at US$1.6T. While online ... Read more
Sri Lanka’s tourism industry is prospering, fuelled by a diversification of its visitor markets. Dave Richardson explains Nearly a decade on from the end of its civil war, Sri Lanka ... Read more
A new report by the Global Wellness Institute sheds light on the spa trends of the future. Charlotte Cullinan asks the experts how these will change the industry The wellness ... Read more
Maitha Al Mahrouqi, undersecretary for the Oman Ministry of Tourism, shares the country’s tourism strategy Oman’s goal by 2040 is to attract 11.7 million annual visitors. How do you aim ... Read more
The Middle East’s relatively young population (38% below 20 years old and 27% millennials) and high Internet penetration (74%) are helping to driving double-digit growth in the region’s online travel ... 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
Virtuoso, a luxury consortium with a keen eye on global trends, gives the lowdown on the luxury market to Charlotte Cullinan Luxury travellers will be heading to colder climes in ... Read more
As travellers enjoy the benefits of shared economy business models in companies like Airbnb and Uber, I cannot help but think that the theory of negative correlation rings true across ... Read more
I have been doing some research for a presentation I will be giving next month. I am going to be talking about our future customers – Generation Z. They were ... Read more
A £40 million Discover England fund has been distributed to ensure England stays competitive in the global tourism industry. Debbie Ward finds out what the grant recipients will bring to ... Read more
By Kathi Everden A golf challenge on the opening day, VIP evening preview, lunch time closures and public days … it was all very different when Arabian Travel Market kicked off ... 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
Now that Palma de Mallorca has reinvented itself as a city break destination, Katherine Lawrey finds out how the city is refining the visitor experience. Encouraging visitors to disperse throughout ... 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
If there’s any consumer market that’s been studied the most the in last five years, it would be Generation Y, more popularly known as the Millennials. Millennials, classified as those ... 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
The Travel Industry has come a long way and is continuously developing. This includes both supply and demand. Latest trends shown in The Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report 2017 indicate many ... Read more
Phocuswright has been tracking the shift of global travel bookings from offline to digital for over 20 years. Today, while only about half of travel is booked online in the ... 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
This year will see a record 27.2 million passengers take a cruise and more than 27 new ocean, river and specialty ships make their debut, the latest statistics from Cruise ... 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
I will be running a new seminar at this year’s Arabian Travel Market. I am calling it Smart Tourism. The ‘smart’ concept has reached almost everything around us. I have ... 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
What are you looking to promote at ATM this year? This is an exciting year for The Ascott Limited as we expand our global footprint and set to surpass the ... 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
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
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
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
The fourth and final day of #ATMDubai did not disappoint. The halls were once again packed with industry professionals looking to unlock business potential within the Middle East. Meanwhile, there ... Read more
Day three at #ATMDubai continued the theme; quality and quantity of exhibitors, visitors and buyers, plus another packed day of education across the ATM Event Programme. If you haven’t joined ... 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
Day two at #ATMDubai kicked off with an in-depth look at cruise tourism. With Dubai alone targeting one million cruise tourists by 2020, our cruise experts were on hand to ... Read more
At 1pm today Arabian Travel Market opened its doors. Tourism professionals from around the world filled the halls, all here to take advantage of this unique opportunity to unlock business potential ... 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
When you mention Dubai to a tourist, it conjures images of the Burj Khalifa, sunny beaches and, of course, a shopping metropolis. Until now, other than a sensational choice 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
I’m looking forward to a lively discussion with our line up of airline leaders from Asia. We are fortunate to have two of them joining us and there’s plenty to ... Read more
With The Saudi’s endeavour to attract more foreign visitors in an attempt to open both the economy and the tourism industry to the world, the need to broaden the travel, ... 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
Entrepreneurship is an important yet untapped resource in the MENA region. Even as recently as the 3rd March 2017, an event was held in Brussels with several institutional actors from ... 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
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
Millenials, often known as the smartphone generation as 76% of them own smartphones globally, are often associated with experiential travel. Yet, according to TripBarometer, 2015, 69% of global travellers – of ... 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