International “Good Tourism” news

Here you will find glob­ally-rel­ev­ant news about The “Good Tour­ism” Blog’s Part­ners and friends — espe­cially their sus­tain­able tour­ism and/or respons­ible travel activ­it­ies — plus “Good news in tour­ism” and cov­er­age of inter­na­tion­al travel & tour­ism industry events to which “GT” is invited or oth­er­wise involved. Ad hoc sponsored news posts are also very welcome.

Before Decem­ber 2019, “GT” would sum­mar­ise under-repor­ted news stor­ies or thought-pro­vok­ing fea­ture art­icles of inter­na­tion­al import­ance by non-industry media. The sources were well-attrib­uted and linked. Any con­tent repub­lished in full was avail­able rights-free for that pur­pose from the likes of The Con­ver­sa­tion or the Thom­son Reu­ters Found­a­tion.

Culture & heritage focus for first “Good Tourism” Insight Partnership

November 21, 2019

Image by Anonymous Traveller from Pixabay

The World Tour­ism Asso­ci­ation for Cul­ture & Her­it­age (WTACH) is the first “Good Tour­ism” Insight Part­ner. As a “GT” Insight Part­ner, WTACH will inspire deep­er industry-wide con­ver­sa­tions around cul­ture & her­it­age tour­ism.  WTACH will reg­u­larly identi­fy and invite an opin­ion or prac­tice lead­er work­ing in the area of cul­ture & her­it­age tour­ism to write a […]

Read More Culture & heritage focus for first “Good Tourism” Insight Partnership

SUN, WTTC report strong on “existential climate crisis” & tourism’s response

October 2, 2019

cft ambitions report 2019 snip

The SUNx (“Strong Uni­ver­sal Net­work”) Pro­gram has issued its first annu­al “Cli­mate Friendly Travel – Ambi­tion Report”.  Pre­pared on the side­lines of the Septem­ber UN Gen­er­al Assembly and in col­lab­or­a­tion with the World Travel & Tour­ism Coun­cil (WTTC) “to sup­port a Cli­mate Neut­ral Travel & Tour­ism Sec­tor by 2050”, the doc­u­ment was made avail­able to […]

Read More SUN, WTTC report strong on “existential climate crisis” & tourism’s response

Politics v pilgrimage: some Muslims call for Saudi haj boycott


Pilgrim in supplication at the Sacred Mosque, Mecca, Saudi Arabia

Report by the Thom­son Reu­ters Found­a­tion, August 9, 2019.  As mil­lions of Muslims don robes and flock to Mecca for haj, a small counter move­ment to boy­cott the pil­grim­age in protest at Saudi Ara­bi­a’s polit­ics has won lim­ited sup­port online. Although the num­bers are dwarfed by the 1.8 mil­lion who have arrived in Mecca for Fri­day’s […]

Read More Politics v pilgrimage: some Muslims call for Saudi haj boycott

Climate change & air travel: Why we have a responsibility to tourism-dependent countries

August 7, 2019

Passenger jet taking off at dusk with a silhouetted man watching it leave

Writ­ing for The Con­ver­sa­tion, Tom Baum of the Uni­ver­sity of Strath­clyde dis­cusses the respons­ib­il­ity borne by rich-world nations — and indi­vidu­al trav­el­lers — for poor coun­tries’ “neo-colo­n­i­al depend­ence” on tour­ism and air travel. Few would deny the threat to our plan­et posed by cli­mate change, or the role that humans have played in the degrad­a­tion of the nat­ur­al environment. […]

Read More Climate change & air travel: Why we have a responsibility to tourism-dependent countries

Rethinking tourism so that locals can benefit from hosting visitors

May 25, 2019

Anti-tourism, pro-refugee graffiti in Coimbra, Portugal. By Tm (CC BY 2.0) via Wikimedia. GT cropped and enhanced it.

Writ­ing for The Con­ver­sa­tion, Freya Hig­­gins-Des­­bio­lles of the Uni­ver­sity of South Aus­tralia points to examples of how host com­munit­ies have regained some con­trol of their tour­ism assets. Tour­ism today has a prob­lem and needs an entire rethink. Pun­dits are debat­ing over­tour­ism, peak tour­ism and tour­is­mpho­bia. Cit­ies such as Bar­celona, Venice and Dubrovnik are wit­ness­ing a […]

Read More Rethinking tourism so that locals can benefit from hosting visitors

Want to become a better person? Travelling more might be the answer

May 4, 2019

Travel makes people better. Image by ar130405 from Pixabay (CC0)

Writ­ing for The Con­ver­sa­tion, Hec­tor Gonza­­lez-Jime­nez of the Uni­ver­sity of York sug­gests how one might bet­ter one­self and the world through travel. Trav­el­ling offers new exper­i­ences and can open people’s minds. It allows you to get out of your daily groove – of work, com­mut­ing, house­work and cook­ing – to think about the things that […]

Read More Want to become a better person? Travelling more might be the answer