Outbound doesn’t care about sustainability | Well-being must include meaning

Send no more than 300 words on any tour­ism-related idea or con­cern you may have.

This is an open invit­a­tion to travel & tour­ism stake­hold­ers to con­trib­ute a “GT” Insight Bite_X (where ‘X’ is up to you). Or respond to this spe­cif­ic Bites ques­tion (still open as at June 2, 2025).

Thanks to Kev­in Phun for his thoughts about out­bound travel agents’ and tour oper­at­ors’ rela­tion­ship with the notion of sus­tain­ab­il­ity, and Wolfgang Georg Arlt for shar­ing his think­ing around well-being and meaning. 

Their responses appear in the order received. 

Click/touch a name to go to their “GT” Insight Bite_X:

Outbound agents, operators need not care about sustainability. Really?

Kevin Phun, Founder & Director, The Centre for Responsible Tourism Singapore

Out­bound travel & tour­ism com­pan­ies need not care much about sus­tain­ab­il­ity cer­ti­fic­a­tion because the nature of their busi­ness does not come into con­tact much with con­cerns around sustainability. 

I have heard people express this sen­ti­ment three or four times over the past two years, in con­ver­sa­tions around sus­tain­ab­il­ity cer­ti­fic­a­tion for travel companies.

I beg to differ. 

Out­bound travel oper­at­ors should indeed assume quite a bit of respons­ib­il­ity around prac­ti­cing sus­tain­able travel & tourism. 

Here’s why:

Out­bound tour oper­at­ors and travel agents arrange tours, or at least influ­ence itin­er­ar­ies; and that, obvi­ously, plays a big, really big, role in how their cli­ents affect the places they visit. 

When you plan itin­er­ar­ies, you decide how people travel, where people stay, and much of what they do. Obvi­ously those decisions have many poten­tially neg­at­ive and pos­it­ive impacts on destinations. 

How your cus­tom­ers travel to and around a des­tin­a­tion determ­ines, poten­tially, a large pro­por­tion of the green­house gas emis­sions and car­bon foot­print of the whole jour­ney. And your cus­tom­ers’ accom­mod­a­tion and the activ­it­ies they under­take determ­ine the type and scale of the pos­it­ive and neg­at­ive eco­nom­ic, social, and envir­on­ment­al outcomes. 

So, stop say­ing that sus­tain­ab­il­ity con­cerns are only for inbound tour oper­at­ors and not for out­bound ones! It is time we remove this ter­ribly inac­cur­ate idea that reflects a very poor under­stand­ing of the industry we claim to under­stand well.

The Centre for Respons­ible Tour­ism Singa­pore is a val­ued “Good Tour­ism” Part­ner.

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Well-being is holistic and must include meaning

Wolfgang Georg Arlt, Executive Director, Meaningful Tourism Centre, Nepal

Unlike well­ness, ‘well-being’ is hol­ist­ic and includes both phys­ic­al and emo­tion­al aspects. 

Fur­ther­more, well-being not only con­cen­trates on indi­vidu­als, in most cases ‘me’, but on the entire eco­sys­tem for human beings on Earth. We must stop dis­tin­guish­ing between ‘us’ and ‘the envir­on­ment’ when we think about well-being.

There­fore, obvi­ously, any meas­ure­ment of well-being needs to include the object­ive bene­fits and sub­ject­ive sat­is­fac­tion of all stake­hold­ers in the eco­sys­tem, includ­ing the environment. 

A healthy body and a high-pay­ing job are worth­less if there is no breath­able air. Free access to MOOCs (massive open online courses) has no value for some­body without enough food to sur­vive. And, with gla­ciers melt­ing and islands sink­ing, loc­al her­it­age and cul­ture can­not be preserved. 

The Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals have, albeit in an imper­fect form and with little meas­ur­able suc­cess, tried to define all major ele­ments needed for glob­al well-being and the neces­sary steps to move toward this goal. 

In tour­ism, six main stake­hold­ers can be identified: 

• Trav­el­lers,
• Host com­munit­ies,
• Employ­ees, 
• Com­pan­ies, 
• Gov­ern­ments at all levels, and
• The envir­on­ment, loc­al and global. 

The increase or at least sta­bil­ity in the well-being of all these stake­hold­ers is needed for sus­tain­able development. 

The way to meas­ure that is the use of ‘Mean­ing­ful Tour­ism’ tools to devel­op SMART KPIs (spe­cif­ic, meas­ur­able, achiev­able, rel­ev­ant, and time-bound key per­form­ance indic­at­ors) to achieve increas­ing bene­fits and sat­is­fac­tion for each group of stakeholders. 

Mean­ing­ful­ness is the found­a­tion of well-being for: 

• Indi­vidu­als in their private and pro­fes­sion­al lives;
• Soci­et­ies, in the form of just, reli­able, and inclus­ive demo­crat­ic struc­tures; and 
• Plan­et Earth, with an under­stand­ing that we are part of a single eco­sys­tem, the destruc­tion of which includes the destruc­tion of us all. 

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What do you think? 

In a com­ment below, share your own thoughts about out­bound’s rela­tion­ship with sus­tain­ab­il­ity and/or the notions of well-being and mean­ing. 

SIGN IN or REGISTER first. (After sign­ing in you will need to refresh this page to see the com­ments section.) 

Or write a “GT” Insight or “GT” Insight Bite of your own. The “Good Tour­ism” Blog wel­comes diversity of opin­ion and per­spect­ive about travel & tour­ism, because travel & tour­ism is everyone’s business.

This is an open invit­a­tion to travel & tour­ism stake­hold­ers from any back­ground to share their thoughts in plain Eng­lish with a glob­al industry audience.

“GT” doesn’t judge. “GT” pub­lishes. “GT” is where free thought travels.

If you think the tour­ism media land­scape is bet­ter with “GT” in it, then please … 

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Previous “GT” Insight Bites

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• “GT” Insight Bites: Nostalgia
• “GT” Insight Bites: Geo­pol­it­ics and tourism
• Tour­ism stake­hold­ers: Who has an out­sized voice? Who has no voice? Who cares?
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• What did tour­ism learn from the COVID-19 pandemic?
• In 2024, what are the best oppor­tun­it­ies for tour­ism over the next five years?
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• On enrich­ment, repat­ri­ation, the double-edged blade, and war
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• Hey, travel & tour­ism, are you ‘neo­co­lo­ni­al­ist’?
• Who’s the new boss? Asia Pacific tour­ism industry asso­ci­ation seeks leader
• ‘The hos­pit­al­ity industry offers a great career.’ Really?
• Cruise ships: Bless­ing or blight?
• Tour­ist vs trav­el­ler: What’s the difference?
• The heads of fin­ance, oper­a­tions, and PR walk into their boss’s office … 
• Yes, Tour­ism Minister
• What are tourism’s biggest chal­lenges & threats over the next five years?
• ‘Tour­ism is built on the back­bone of white suprem­acy’. What do you think?
• Really, what’s the dif­fer­ence? ‘Sus­tain­able tour­ism’ vs ‘regen­er­at­ive tourism’
• Want a career in tour­ism? Import­ant things you should know
• Diverse per­spect­ives on travel & tour­ism and a fairer world
• Diverse per­spect­ives on eco­nom­ic degrowth and tourism
• Diverse per­spect­ives on vis­it­or dispersion

Featured image (top of post)

Photo by Dav­id Cour­bit (CC0) via Unsplash. “GT” cropped it and added the words.

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