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.

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 […]

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

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 […]

Read More An industry first: ChildSafe community-based tourism

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

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 […]

Read More Is accessibility critical to sustainable tourism?

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