“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.

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

Tourists behaving badly are a threat to tourism & industry is partly to blame

April 11, 2019

"Eat the Guiri" graffito in Palma, Mallorca, Spain. By DustyDingo (CC0) via Wikimedia. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22121064 Guiri (pronounced ˈɡiɾi') is a colloquial Spanish slur used in Spain applied to foreign tourists, particularly from countries in northern Europe or the Anglosphere.

It is not only over­tour­ism, but also the bad beha­viour of even a few tour­ists, that will trig­ger a back­lash against the travel & tour­ism industry. This accord­ing to Freya Hig­­gins-Des­­bio­lles of the Uni­ver­sity of South Aus­tralia writ­ing for The Con­ver­sa­tion. How much is the industry to blame and what can stake­hold­ers do about it?  Japan’s […]

Read More Tourists behaving badly are a threat to tourism & industry is partly to blame

Safari tourism may make elephants more aggressive but is still the best conservation tool

March 22, 2019

"Cranky elephant charges our car in Tarangirie National Park, Tanzania" by Ben & Gab (CC BY 2.0) via Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/benandgab/29307883562/in/photostream/ "GT" cropped it.

While wild­life tour­ism products such as safar­is can help pro­tect anim­als and their wil­der­ness hab­it­ats by gen­er­at­ing income for con­ser­va­tion and work for loc­als, there are issues. This accord­ing to Isa­belle Szott and Nic­ola F Koy­ama of Liv­er­pool John Moores Uni­ver­sity writ­ing for The Con­ver­sa­tion. Going on safari in Africa offers tour­ists the oppor­tun­ity to […]

Read More Safari tourism may make elephants more aggressive but is still the best conservation tool

How Renaissance Venice coped with its short-term letting problem

March 16, 2019

overvisitation in Renaissance Venice

The Venice of 500 years ago had its own over-vis­it­a­­tion chal­lenges, includ­ing a boom in short-term accom­mod­a­tion rent­als. How they dealt with it chal­lenges us to think about today’s prob­lems in a more nuanced way, accord­ing to Rosa Salzberg of the Uni­ver­sity of War­wick. Cit­ies around the world have had dif­fi­culties bal­an­cing the interests of […]

Read More How Renaissance Venice coped with its short-term letting problem

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


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

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?