Thailand says “No” to ivory in two-tusked campaign funded by USAID

September 21, 2019

Cindy Bishop featured alongside Thai writing with the message "beautiful without ivory"

A two-pronged cam­paign to reduce domest­ic con­sumer and for­eign trav­el­ler demand for ivory and ivory products launched in Bangkok, Thai­l­and yes­ter­day.  While much of the focus of the launch event was on the domest­ic con­sumer cam­paign and the celebrity influ­en­cers who are the faces of it, of greatest rel­ev­ance to the tour­ism industry is the […]

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An industry first: ChildSafe community-based tourism

August 27, 2019

industry first childsafe community based tourism

Social change com­mu­nic­at­or James Suth­er­land describes the rationale for and res­ults of the first con­cer­ted efforts to ensure the safety of loc­al and vis­it­ing chil­dren in the con­text of com­munity-based tour­ism. Com­munity-based tour­ism (CBT) is rap­idly becom­ing a buzzword in the glob­al travel industry. Offer­ing dir­ect inter­ac­tions between people in com­munit­ies and the tour­ists and […]

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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 […]

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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. […]

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Is accessibility critical to sustainable tourism?

June 27, 2019

tourism for all accessibility unwto 2016

Access­ible tour­ism advoc­ate Neha Arora asks the travel & tour­ism industry to factor in the needs of the eld­erly and people with dis­ab­il­it­ies when design­ing sus­tain­able des­tin­a­tions and respons­ible products. Accord­ing to the UNWTO web­site, the defin­i­tion of sus­tain­able travel is: “Tour­ism that takes full account of its cur­rent and future eco­nom­ic, social and environmental […]

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How tourism in India can help protect olive ridley turtles

June 5, 2019
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Olive ridley turtles by Chandan Singh (CC BY 2.0) via Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/scorius/137320371/

In her second “GT” Insights con­tri­bu­tion, A Lajwanti Naidu shares what she has learned about olive rid­ley turtles and how the Andhra Pra­desh Tour­ism Author­ity does and can con­trib­ute to their con­ser­va­tion. Travel teaches more than books do. With this in mind, Andhra Pra­desh Tour­ism Author­ity organ­ised an edu­ca­tion­al tour to Diviseema and the Krishna […]

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