“Good Tourism” news & events

Enjoy “GT’s” monthly “Good news in tour­ism” posts, which sum­mar­ise a month’s worth of “GT” Insights, “GT” Travel, “GT” Part­ner news, and your comments.

Also find here Partner/Sponsor mes­sages from The “Good Tour­ism” Blo­g’s Part­ners and friends plus cov­er­age of travel & tour­ism industry events to which “GT” is invited or oth­er­wise involved. Ad hoc sponsored news posts are also very welcome.

“GT” retired its weekly “Good news in tour­ism” posts in April 2021. The weekly posts fea­tured brief sum­mar­ies of and links to pos­it­ive industry news from off-piste sources. Before Decem­ber 2019, “GT” would sum­mar­ise under-repor­ted news stor­ies or thought-pro­vok­ing fea­ture art­icles by non-industry media. The sources were well-attrib­uted and linked. Any con­tent “GT” repub­lished in full was avail­able for that pur­pose from the likes of The Con­ver­sa­tion and Thom­son Reu­ters Found­a­tion.

On the tiger trail, India’s women unveil and roar ahead in tourism

March 15, 2019

A group of women safari guides poses for a photo at Pench Tiger Reserve in central Madhya Pradesh state, India on May 19, 2016. Photo credit: Satpuda Foundation http://satpuda.org

Female nature-based tour­ism guides in India, such as at the Pench Tiger Reserve in Mad­hya Pra­desh, are help­ing to upend sex­ist views, accord­ing to a report by the Thom­son Reu­ters Found­a­tion. Bob­bing along a dirt track in a cent­ral Indi­an tiger reserve, Var­sha Hinge sur­veyed the land­scape for paw­prints and listened out for deer calls […]

Read More On the tiger trail, India’s women unveil and roar ahead in tourism
Posted in "GT" news & events, "GT" news from Asia
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Elephants are smart. What if tourism jobs were good for them?

March 14, 2019
5 Comments

A mahout feeding an elephant at the Elephant Nature Park, near Chiang Mai, Thailand. By Adbar (CC BY-SA 3.0) via Wikimedia. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mahout_Elephant_Nature_Park.JPG

Work, includ­ing offer­ing tour­ists rides, is “not bad” for ele­phants — in mod­er­a­tion — so long as it takes into account the work­load, stress, and wel­fare of each indi­vidu­al ele­phant, accord­ing to Dr Pakka­nut Ban­siddhi, Research­er, Cen­ter of Excel­lence in Ele­phant Research and Edu­ca­tion, Chi­ang Mai Uni­ver­sity. Dr Pakka­nut revealed this at the Glob­al Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Coun­cil con­fer­ence in […]

Read More Elephants are smart. What if tourism jobs were good for them?
Posted in "GT" news & events, "GT" news from Asia, Downloads
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On Kangaroo Island and elsewhere, beware the lure of the luxury ecotourist

March 12, 2019

Admiral's Arch in Flinders Chase National Park on Kangaroo Island. Image by Michael Baragwanath via Pixabay

Cater­ing to lux­ury eco­tour­ism is at odds with the wild and undeveloped nature of nation­al parks that loc­als want, accord­ing to Freya Hig­­gins-Des­­bio­lles of the Uni­ver­sity of South Aus­tralia. Kangaroo Island, less than 130 kilo­metres from Adelaide, is one of Australia’s eco­lo­gic­al jew­els. Tour­ism Aus­tralia describes it as a “pristine wil­der­ness”, with cliffs, beaches, wetlands […]

Read More On Kangaroo Island and elsewhere, beware the lure of the luxury ecotourist
Posted in "GT" news & events, "GT" news from Oceania, "GT" news international
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Homeless Dubliners to give tours with a difference as tourism booms

March 9, 2019

Featured image: Patrick McEvoy, Eddie Dooner, and Ronya Arya Phoenix, are training up to become tour guides with My Streets Ireland , a social enterprise. By Emma Batha, Thomson Reuters Foundation. "GT" cropped it.

New tours of Dub­lin, Ire­land to be launched mid-March will be led by home­less people trained up as guides by a social enter­prise. They will offer unique per­spect­ives to some of the more than 6 mil­lion vis­it­ors expec­ted in the Irish cap­it­al in 2019. Report by the Thom­son Reu­ters Found­a­tion. Dub­lin’s Phoenix Park boasts the […]

Read More Homeless Dubliners to give tours with a difference as tourism booms
Posted in "GT" news & events, "GT" news from Europe
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It’s time: Tourism event organisers & moderators must shut down selfish speakers

March 8, 2019

It is time tourism event organisers and session moderators shut down selfish speakers. Featured image: "Finite World" by Joel Penner (CC BY 2.0) via Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/featheredtar/3077913104 "GT" cropped it.

The 2019 Glob­al Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Coun­cil (GSTC) Asia-Pacific Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Con­fer­ence, Feb­ru­ary 28-March 2, was an enjoy­able event atten­ded by a good num­ber of pas­sion­ate pro­fes­sion­als from across the Asia Pacific region.  And there was ample oppor­tun­ity in the pro­gram to mingle and to net­work, which many (most?) people would count as the primary reason […]

Read More It’s time: Tourism event organisers & moderators must shut down selfish speakers
Posted in "GT" news & events, "Good Tourism" Events, "GT" news international

Hey, tourism! Shouldn’t the needs of host communities ALWAYS come first?

March 7, 2019

Community-based tourism. Mae Hong Son Hilltribe Trek, a Planeterra project

The prin­ciples of com­munity-based tour­ism should be at the centre of ALL cat­egor­ies of tour­ism — niche or main­strean; urb­an or rur­al; cul­tur­al or nature-based; eco- or adven­ture; gast­ro­nom­ic or party; moun­tain or beach … you get the idea. There­fore, the needs of the host com­munity must always be con­sidered before the needs of vis­it­ors.  This is […]

Read More Hey, tourism! Shouldn’t the needs of host communities ALWAYS come first?
Posted in "GT" news & events, "Good Tourism" Events, "GT" news from Asia
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