Responsible travel & tourism

Scroll down for posts that have been tagged with “respons­ible travel & tourism”.

Respons­ible travel is “con­duc­ted in such a man­ner as to not harm or degrade the cul­tur­al or nat­ur­al envir­on­ment of the places vis­ited”, accord­ing to Travel-Industry-Dictionary.comRespons­ible tour­ism is “mak­ing bet­ter places for people to live in and bet­ter places for people to vis­it”, sug­gests the Respons­ible Tour­ism Part­ner­ship.

Respons­ible tour­ism and respons­ible travel are approaches to tour­ism that pri­or­it­ise sus­tain­ab­il­ity, eth­ic­al prac­tices, and social respons­ib­il­ity. These types of tour­ism aim to min­im­ise neg­at­ive impacts on the envir­on­ment and loc­al com­munit­ies and max­im­ise pos­it­ive out­comes for all involved.

Respons­ible tour­ism and respons­ible travel can take many forms, includ­ing eco­tour­ism, cul­tur­al tour­ism, and volun­teer tour­ism. These types of tour­ism often involve close engage­ment with loc­al com­munit­ies, respect­ing loc­al cul­tures, and sup­port­ing loc­al busi­nesses and con­ser­va­tion efforts.

In recent years, respons­ible tour­ism and respons­ible travel have gained pop­ular­ity among trav­el­lers seek­ing mean­ing­ful exper­i­ences that have a pos­it­ive impact. How­ever, it is essen­tial for trav­el­lers to do their research to choose reli­ably respons­ible tour­ism options that align with their values.

“GT” tends to (though prob­ably incon­sist­ently) apply the respons­ible travel & tour­ism tag where the con­tent dis­cusses the respons­ib­il­ity of the trav­el­ler or tour­ist rather than the sup­ply-side stake­hold­er. There is of course plenty of con­tent (and tags) that address the respons­ib­il­ity of the travel & tour­ism industry to do no harm and make things bet­ter; tags such as “sus­tain­able tour­ism and regen­er­at­ive tour­ism” for example.

Tags are inform­al. The “Good Tour­ism” Blog tries not to get bogged down with ter­min­o­logy and defin­i­tions. If you dis­agree with tags applied (or not applied) to a post, feel free to com­ment on it or any post you think has been incor­rectly or insuf­fi­ciently tagged. “GT” encour­ages good-faith debate and discussion.

Taming the beautiful monster: What ‘critical tourism studies’ means to me

March 23, 2021
4 Comments

Dragon's eye. Image by Victoria_Borodinova (CC0) via Pixabay. https://pixabay.com/illustrations/dragon-fantasy-eye-3916633/

Some observ­ers of the ‘cul­ture wars’ in the west will be sus­pi­cious of the word ‘crit­ic­al’ in aca­dem­ic con­texts due to con­tro­ver­sial ‘crit­ic­al the­ory’ and its influ­ence. In this “Good Tour­ism” Insight, Meghan L Mul­doon explains what ‘crit­ic­al tour­ism stud­ies’ means to her. (And can a crit­ic­al tour­ism schol­ar love trav­el­ling? Dr Mul­doon does.) [Thanks to […]

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The PR challenge of opening Thailand safely to inbound travel & tourism

March 11, 2021
3 Comments

Smiling eyes of a Bangkok taxi driver. Image by David Gillbanks

The COV­­ID-induced travel & tour­ism depres­sion has hit Thai­l­and hard. Ranked eighth in terms of inter­na­tion­al vis­it­or arrivals in 2019, Thai­l­and is the poorest of the des­tin­a­tions in the top 10. It is no won­der then that an industry-led pub­lic rela­tions cam­paign advoc­at­ing for a safe reopen­ing has emerged: #OpenThai­l­and­Safely. Head­ing up its mes­saging and […]

Read More The PR challenge of opening Thailand safely to inbound travel & tourism

Climate change, COVID-19, and the need for global systemic change

March 2, 2021

Working women protest in Dhaka, Bangladesh. By MARUF_RAHMAN (CC0) via Pixabay. https://pixabay.com/photos/women-crowd-protest-protesters-5963960/

Tan­ner C Knorr picks up themes dis­cussed in a webin­ar by the US-based Cen­ter for Respons­ible Travel and maps them onto five core ten­ets of the Future of Tour­ism Coali­tion. Mr Knorr is the founder of two “Good Tour­ism” Part­ners: Second Look World­wide and Off Sea­son Adven­tures. This is his fourth “Good Tour­ism” Insight. “Crisis […]

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Vietnam’s ‘little tiger’ meat trade and why travel & tourism should help tackle it

February 9, 2021
16 Comments

May 21, 2019 in Hanoi, Vietnam: Cat in a cage, ready to be sold, killed, and cooked © FOUR PAWS

From the front line of a fight to end Viet­nam’s trade in cats for their meat, veter­in­ari­an Kath­er­ine Polak of FOUR PAWS Inter­na­tion­al explains why the cat meat trade presents a danger to travel & tour­ism, and how industry stake­hold­ers can pledge their sup­port. It’s a “Good Tour­ism” Insight.  Images in this post may cause […]

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The five most visited “Good Tourism” posts of 2020 (& all time)

December 31, 2020
One Comment

Five! Image by yohoprashant (CC0) via Pixabay. https://pixabay.com/photos/colorful-five-fingers-kid-fingers-4043742/

I jot down this irrel­ev­ant pre­amble on Decem­ber 31, 2020 … Most of the past 364 days have been ter­ribly tough for many, of course, espe­cially travel & tour­ism folk. Can­’t say much more about it than every per­son and their pet has already said — “Good rid­dance 2020 … Hope 2021 is bet­ter … blah blah […]

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Khiri Travel to go carbon-neutral from January 2021


Little Home at Phu Langka National Park in Phayao Province, Thailand. Image supplied by Khiri Travel.

Khiri Travel is intro­du­cing com­pre­hens­ive off­set­ting pro­gram with Cli­mate­Care.  The DMC is also offer­ing new low emis­sions ‘slow travel’ hol­i­day options. Asi­an DMC Khiri Travel is on its way to becom­ing fully car­bon neut­ral.  As part of its approach to take respons­ib­il­ity for its impact on the envir­on­ment, Khiri Travel has partnered with cli­mate and […]

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